Blood Miracles, The Lark Ascending, Go Long, Only Skin & wish you were
Artzine/fiction collection, Ian de Rege, Blood Miracles Zines, etsy.com/people/ian108, $25 (for all four zines)
Made up of four smaller parts, this series displays an impressive, if inconsistent, range of styles and approaches. It includes Blood Miracles, Go Long, wish you were, Only Skin, and The Lark Ascending. The first two are largely artzines, collage booklets printed in full colour. The latter titles are instead short stories, still printed in a collage-art style, but with more of a focus on text and Rege’s hand-drawn artwork. Go Long and wish you were are the highlights of this series. Rege makes a habit of contrasting the picturesque with the graphic for an unnerving, often uncanny effect. Go Long sports an outlined group of children wearing racoons masks, overlaid with the text “they are wrong… underestimate the perils”. Similarly, wish you were’s final page sports a mess of butterfly wings in a crumpled ball, over the title “THIS IS YOU”. Perhaps it has to be seen for full effect, but the effect is nonetheless chilling. Only Skin and The Lark Ascending leave something to be desired. Rege’s narrative voice seems to wander aimlessly through Only Skin, and his artwork does less to add to the narrative than it should. Instead of gleaning new insight into his sad, wandering characters through visual depiction, we really only catch glimpses of them smoking or smiling without any animation. Rege’s artwork never tries to add anything of significance to his words, and those words are too short-lived to make an impact on their own. All in all, this entire collection is worth checking out. While Rege’s collage work is his best, the whole package is admittedly snappy, complete, and well put together. (Joel W. Vaughan)