Review: Remnants
Céline Huyghebaert’s latest work, translated by Aleshia Jensen, explores the gap left by the death of her father. A melange of form informs the process of understanding the author and her father.
Reviews
Review: Considerations
In the grand Oulipo tradition, Considerations sees Montreal’s Fortner Anderson undertake a constrained writing project: 1,000 numbered sentences, each with only one verb. Treat it like a daily Far Side calendar, serving yourself to a gag or observation when you feel like it.
Review: The Closer
You don’t have to be inside baseball to appreciate Jason Smith’s The Closer, a noir potboiler knocking dingers into the highly detailed background.
Review: Shelterbelts
Shelterbelts is an understated but forceful debut — a modern prairie drama with its own distinct visual language and memorable cast of characters, an impressive work that leaves one wanting more in the best way possible.
Review: Maria
In just a handful of words, Andromeda skillfully sketches Maria as a brash teenager, in a Puerto Rican family in New York City, and then as an equally brash ghost haunting the halls of their old apartment.
Review: Tear
Tear creates a superimposition of architectural and mental space characteristic of psychoanalysis, where physical spaces become symbolic of psychological states. A deeply gothic novel somewhere between Henry James and Shirley Jackson.
Review: How To Say Hello
Max Morris’ Gary Panter-esque edu-comic should resolve all of your greeting related problems in the post-lockdown world.
Review: Para-Social Butterfly
Designed and executed like a VTuber’s fever dream, Para-Social Butterfly adapts well-worn avant-garde and modernist poetics to stranger-than-fiction internet subcultures to present a surprisingly sympathetic critique of life under the ubiquitous influence of celebrity.
Review: Café 24-hour Loneliness
No need to flag down a server — your bill has arrived. This zine’s six poems come stuffed inside an authentic leather restaurant bill holder. They’re typed on thin strips of paper that mimic receipts, and all end with “CUSTOMER COPY.”
Review: 3 Essays on Late-Career Jack Kirby
Andy Brown, a scholar of Kirby and founder of Conundrum Press, has collected three of his essays regarding Kirby’s work after the ‘King of Comic’ bitter departure from Marvel.
Review: Houseplants in Horror Films
Paul Cooke’s fanzine makes you ask yourself: Did the houseplant witness the horror? Do its descriptive factors foretell the torture in the final act? Or am I creating sinister campfire stories in my own mind?
Review: Pixel Dog’s Purgatory in Hell
Pixel Dog discusses a wide range of topics from capitalism to lo-fi music in a playful and often dark critique. A snarky satire that will resonate with the left-leaning and jaded across generations.