Locus #7
Art zine, various, 32 pgs., locus-zine.com, $10
The fine folks at Locus have issued another beautiful, full-colour zine of art by multiple contributors, this time with the theme “Upside Down.” With some contributors turning in single pages and others two, the 32-page collection offers up a lot of graphical diversity. The theme of the issue is interpreted by the artists in a number of ways, sometimes simply by having a figure standing on their head. In other cases, the themes appear in ways more suggestive of irregular juxtaposition or straight-up chaos. Two of my favorites in the collection are from Christy Lundy and Glenn Harvey. In Christy Lundy’s charming contribution, a happy family is at play in their living room, reading, playing with toys – except they’re all dogs. In Glenn Harvey’s skillful mainstream comic art style, a bedroom, its sheet-draped inhabitant and its contents are all afloat and flipped about, as if being tossed by a tornado. The artists curated for this issue all employ vivid colour printed and presented nicely here. The paper is heavy and the prints fill the entire page. The superimposition of page numbers on the artists’ work is somewhat regrettable. The collection as a whole, though, is well done, impressively assembled and worth picking up. (Joshua Barton)