Reviews

Review: Cursed Bunny

In a series of stories mostly set in modern-day South Korea, Bora Chung writes of heads coming up out of toilets, robots that fall in love and unexpected pregnancies. Her stories read like parables, where decisions made for business’s sake have long and supernatural repercussions.

Review: Atticus

This full-colour, richly collaged mini-zine is a touching tribute to a real-life friend, Atticus, and a rendering as fable of Atticus’s coming out and transitional journey.

Review: Ticket for Reference

Prolific Australian zinester Kate Dunn writes a frank but sentimental mini-memoir of her call centre work. Drawing on several years experience of frontline phone wrangling, caught between customers, bosses, and a year of middle management.

Review: Pacifique

Sarah L. Taggart’s remarkable debut plays with being a psychological thriller, working in elements of a love story. Never patronizing or judgmental, what sets Pacifique apart is how Taggart writes about mental health.

Review: On Writing and Failure

Orwell, Joyce and Austin could barely get jobs, never mind publishing deals. Stephen Marche asks: “Why would it be any different for you?”

Review: Run Wolf Run

Run Wolf Run is a well done comic-and printed in nice risograph package to boot, but does that make it worth howling over?

Review: Blind Alley: The First Year

Visually distinct with a whimsical, costume-ish quality to character designs, there’s a comfortable tone of strangeness throughout Blind Alley that would feel at home in EarthBound or Twin Peaks.

Review: Solastalgia

Toronto photographer Mar Wan captures the damper that the COVID Era threw on city life and subculture. Street preachers, doom prophets, the masked and unmasked. All in a city where the sun is out but no one’s sure if it’s safe to play.

Review: Literal Bimbos

With its glut of glittery, girly stickers, fire photography, takedowns of Pretty Women and useful relationship advice, Literal Bimbos, a litzine created by sex workers, is a work of art.

Review: Plumstuff

Rolli’s poetic voice is often likened to e.e. cummings’ light verse, chiefly in how he toys with syntax and nonsense. But there’s a keen sardonic edge, too — think of Shel Silverstein and Hilaire Belloc.