Sleeze Zine History Archived in No Toner

Zines were once best recognized as a platform where your most indecent and sleaziest thoughts could mingle without judgement. Where trashy, low-brow art could be celebrated in all its strange campy glory. It’s raw, gross, incorrect, and, most importantly, a whole lot of fun.

Memorializing the obscure and taboo, ‘filth zines’ were abundant in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Hal Kelly, Toronto writer, archivist and creator of the zine series Trash Compactor, assembled a collection of filth zines from this era and compiled them into No Toner: Trash Culture Zines of the Eighties and Nineties.

No Toner is 156 pages filled with some of the weirdest trash, now forever archived. Smutty images and angry prose line the document, a reminder of when the shocking and sensational weren’t heavily censored. No Toner is beautiful pandemonium.

“Trashy zines cover the personal obsessions of whoever is producing them,” says Kelly “cheap horror movies, trashy records, books, TV shows or other forms of obscure culture. Zines are part of a history of disposable culture that needs to be documented while we still can.”

You can submerge yourself into No Toner: Trash Culture Zines of the Eighties and Nineties online from Impulseb.com or in Toronto from Midnight Mass bookstores.

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