Devon Hyland is a Toronto comedian (see Sharpeners section), and Barkey Always Barks is his first attempt at creating a zine. It is a short story that hangs loosely on a plot line about a young man whose landlord hires an assassin to kill him because he is too noisy. Yet, after making it through five introductions, and heaps of self-referential footnotes and parentheses, the reader understands that Hyland is more interested in the act of writing than he is in the story he is telling. As such, the narrative doesn’t always make sense, but the tangents are strange and hilarious. I also thoroughly enjoyed the writer’s use of word-play, especially when he gets carried away with rhymes: “we built a gun out of some spare Luger parts ?… we built some gum out of some spare sugar parts ?… we built a mountain lion out of some spare cougar parts.” Dan Weir’s black-and-white illustrations add to the story, highlighting and completing Hyland’s jokes. All in all, some really good stuff here. (Norah Franklin)
litzine, Devon Hyland, illustrated by Dan Weir, $2.50, [email protected].