Shadow puppetry has long been an underappreciated art form and the shadowy mountain goat that adorns the cover of this zine is nothing short of fantastic. So freakin’ life-like–helluva umbra! And it just gets better from there, as From Idle Hands The Devil’s Work sets forth to skew convention, with a very cool focus for this issue: Halloween. It opens up with an intro and then, a “Special Halloween Manifesto”, delving into the occult and obscure Asian mysticism (or what is assumedly obscure Asian mysticism). Things cloud further with some commentaries on the history of Halloween, costuming and ultimately, some very scary recipes. Through out, the focus is quasi-educational and From Idle Hands The Devil’s Work is far more based in reality than a lot of zines you’re likely to encounter. Even interviews with a radio DJ and fellow zinesters keep the rhetoric to a minimum and the zine effectively functions as a platform for fact dispersion and historical truths. Plus the layout and appearance is crisp, uncluttered and exceedingly straight-forward, which makes for a pretty linear read. It’s actually refreshing since the heavy-handed self examination is kept to a minimum and the prose is kept firmly entrenched within reality. Or some semblance therein (again, Halloween is the focus). (Cameron Gordon)
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