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zine reviews
Mar. 25th, 2021 11:57 pmI'm not getting ahead of these reviews... One per week!
First zine: Important Life Lessons I Have learned From the Plants I've Tried to Grow, by Katie Haegele, 2015, quarter-page-ish, 16 pages. (zine not for sale anymore)
It's pretty straightforward plant advice, along with plant drawings, that you can transfer to life, or rather people. It could be pithy but it actually works. A couple examples:
"A weed is just a plant you didn't want in your fussy fucking garden"
"Any tiny bit of green on an ugly, frizzled old plant means it's still alive. Don't give up on it yet"
The sum of these aphorisms might help you take better care of your plants or your friends, whichever you have a more clumsy thumb with.
Second zine... Well, I received a distro submission in the mail. I think I have not received one of those in 8 years? At least 5. When I had a website I always wrote that I wasn't taking submissions, because most submissions were frankly crap. Good writers are often not great at promoting themselves: you have to seek them out and find them yourself. Whereas the attention-seekers that have nothing to say are the ones that find you. So I opened the envelope and the cover seemed playful enough. But then it's all hand-written, it's not good hand-writing, and the guy is just a young man ranting at the world with clichés you've heard before. No need to name it, he'll eventually notice he doesn't get attention, and stop. Or he'll keep at it and become better. It's a rare zinester who's bad at it that keeps going at it for more than a few issues, especially these days.
First zine: Important Life Lessons I Have learned From the Plants I've Tried to Grow, by Katie Haegele, 2015, quarter-page-ish, 16 pages. (zine not for sale anymore)
It's pretty straightforward plant advice, along with plant drawings, that you can transfer to life, or rather people. It could be pithy but it actually works. A couple examples:
The sum of these aphorisms might help you take better care of your plants or your friends, whichever you have a more clumsy thumb with.
Second zine... Well, I received a distro submission in the mail. I think I have not received one of those in 8 years? At least 5. When I had a website I always wrote that I wasn't taking submissions, because most submissions were frankly crap. Good writers are often not great at promoting themselves: you have to seek them out and find them yourself. Whereas the attention-seekers that have nothing to say are the ones that find you. So I opened the envelope and the cover seemed playful enough. But then it's all hand-written, it's not good hand-writing, and the guy is just a young man ranting at the world with clichés you've heard before. No need to name it, he'll eventually notice he doesn't get attention, and stop. Or he'll keep at it and become better. It's a rare zinester who's bad at it that keeps going at it for more than a few issues, especially these days.