Zine Review

Review: Resist #50

Mat Resist’s DIY institution, which I first encountered at a Christian alternative music festival held on a former pig farm, hits a milestone. Surviving and thriving in the Anthropocene.

Review: Grace

Grace is an unflinching dive into the chronic pain of Holly English’s maternal grandmother and how it affected three generations of her family. I expected the story to be about an attempt to heal, instead, it focuses on more of the medical system’s failures.

Review: Larange Enters the Corn Void

Amanda Berlind’s sensibilities come through in her illustrations, which seem to pulse on the page and vibrate to a sonic frequency not normally visible to humans.

Review: Bones

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

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: 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: A Shot in the Dark

Zinester Karin Panther produces this series in a quest to reunite people with their long lost photo slides. She combines analog and digital methods to scavenge and print these vintage pictures for public consumption.

Review: Spread Love Comix

More so than the numerous instances of porking and bodily fluids flying about, the passion of each of the contributors to Spread Love is clear. There’s a lot of passion on full display and I’m not just talking about the smut!