Reviews

Review: Bones

Bones is a joyful, seafoam coloured zine covered in skulls, 70s orange flowers, beautiful brown vines, and white specks of dust.

Review: Artist

Amusing as it is honest, Artist achieves what few can in creating a cultural product about artists that doesn’t fall prey to the temptation to navel gaze or air sour grapes.

Review: My Volcano

J. E. Stintzi’s emulates our distracted and desensitized present with a distant narrative voice, a rash of characters and 232 micro-chapters that rapidly switch between storylines.

Review: If It Gets Quiet Later On, I Will Make a Display

Nick Thran’s book-fueled memoir revolves around Thran’s move from New York City to Fredericton, New Brunswick — in itself a shocking enough contrast that is layered on top of a change in lifestyle (home-ownership) and career (moving to full-time childcare).

Review: On Sneaking

Jon Iñaki’s comic outlines their philosophy and tips to avoid detection. You must avoid lures that lead you into traps. You must unmesh yourself from the distortions that have so far distracted you from your path.

Review: Ritual: Reflections On The Things We Do

From describing full moon rituals to intricate political art projects and daily habits, many kinds of rituals are on display in this anthology. Though this theme should unify the content, it was difficult for me to really get into the writing.

Review: Together We Make the Dream Real

An earnest and unfiltered travelogue of the early 2010s, Travis Egedy parses half-thoughts about isolation, extinction, loss and art among a frenzied scene.

Review: On Heaven + Holiness

This dispatch on the intersection of longing and holiness carves a palindromic path from church, to heaven, to bodies, to desire, back to bodies, to holiness and back to church again. These concepts are thoroughly entwined, at least for writer Despy Boutris.

Review: Trains

2021 Zine Awards winner O. Ashby skillfully weaves together the tangible, unignorable presence of trains with the subtler substance of the time and place in this unnamed part of the Chicago in ways that evoke its status as a home.

Review: Falling Hour

Over-educated and nominally leftist in his beliefs, Hugh Dalgarno waits around for someone to buy a picture frame from him. It’s a book that’s about nothing, but it’s also a book that is stuffed with ideas and opinions.