Perpetual Motion Machine
The cover is a cacophony of old SF comics strips distorted and copied onto clear plastic vinyl, set against the backdrop of chocolate-milk-coloured sewing stencils. You’ll never see another zine like PPM, and no two PPM’s will ever look alike (PPM #1 was encased in cereal box flaps.) PPM issue 2 features “the corruptive works of Mark Connery, Steve Venright, Marc Bell, Stuart Ross… The horror! The horror!” Page 1 promises the reader a butterfly-infested extravaganza, welcoming us with “moths to a flame, we welcome you to the hit parade.” Layout is purposely messy, looks like the poems were artfully set to page on a crappy old typewriter. The entire zine is deliberately cryptic and circular, for example, instead of including the writer’s name next to their work, each person is symbolized by an insect or bird, and you have to go to the end of the zine to decipher the secret code – Steve Venright is an owl, Stuart Ross a beetle. The comics are superb, how could they not be! The writing varies, but is mostly strong. I especially liked Stuart’s “After The Event, But Before The Thing That Happened”. Well worth the $2. (EPW)