(Micro) Zine Of The Week: Cryptic Slaughter Vol. 25

Cryptic Slaughter Vol. 25
by Giovanni

Giovanni picks up his pen again for the first new issue of CS in five
years. We find him in Syria and then Turkey, reminiscing on what got
him started writing as a teenage punk, in between razro-sharp
vignettes and observations of his travels.

Find Cryptic Slaughter at your library.

(Micro) Zine Of The Week: Peops Vol. 6

Peops Vol. 6
by fly

You’re in NYC, running into all of these amazing people, what do you do to remember these meetings? Instead of taking photographs, fly drew pictures, and Peops collects them. Included in this one is Nick Zedd, Sophie Crumb, and Hettie Jones.

(Micro) Zine Of The Week: Razorcake Vol. 58

Razorcake. Vol. 58

To prep for Mark Sultan’s (aka BBQ) imminent show in St. Aug, you won’t go wrong with Razorcake’s lengthy interview that takes in all parts of the garage rock titan’s anti-career. Features on Pil and Nervous Gender make this issue a win!

Find Razorcake. Vol. 58 at your library

(Micro) Zine Of The Week: In Every Town

In Every Town:
An All-Ages Munsic Manualfesto

More polished than a zine, this is less a manifesto and more a step-by-step handbook to running a noncommercial music venue where you live. Thought provoking and practical, In Every Town is the successor to MRR’s Book Your Own F**king Life.

(Micro) Zine Of The Week: Blues Real Bad

Blues Real Bad
by Kevin Singles

Kevin Singles crafts a gorgeougly rendered, barely-fictionalized take on the myth of Robert Johnson. Weaving together narratives and cinematic jumpcuts, we see the lengths a guitar player will go to really play the blues. And what it costs.

(Micro) Zine Of The Week: A Very Kraftwerk Summer

In the spirit of Stand By Me, Chris Hutsul remembers a (fake) youthful summer spent in the company of the man-machines of new wave: Kraftwerk! Whether at the arcade or the mall, Kraftwerk were the perfect summer best friends. Pure delight.

(Micro) Zine Of The Week: The Prince Zine

The Prince Zine by Joshu James Amberson

Amberson (Basic Paper Airplane) gamely takes on the pop music enigma Prince with this one-off zine. Will he be able to accomplish what it took Ronin Ro 370 pages to do in HIS Prince book? Surprisingly yes. Great for novices and obsessives.

Zine of the Week: Practice Apartment

Practice Apartment

Interesting concept, this. Practice Apartment is either a “greatest hits” or a “Whitman’s Sampler”-esque compilation zine compiling some of the best stories from the now out-of-print zines “Laundry Basket: Tales of Washday Woe,” “10 Items Or Less: A Grocery Shopping Zine,” and “Potluck! A Cooking Compilation.” (Incidentally, all three of these are available separately as well from your Zine Collection here at the library!)

With a new introduction drawing all three threads together under a Home-Ec theme. The end result is a series of short, snappy vignettes and cartoons that capture the absurdity, humor, and even beauty that result from mundane tasks we’d often rather not be doing. The tone shifts from fond reverie to biting satire at the drop of a dryer sheet. On one page you’ll find out how NOT to wash a vintage Agent Orange concert shirt (hint: certainly not in a washer load with a bunch of cloth diapers and bleach) and on the next you’ll find fond reminiscences of gorging on comfort food with grandparents, then you’re off to a tale of a shopper looking for cheese that’s “particularly Christian.” (They went with Saint Andre because it sounded religious.) All this and cartoons by the likes of Shawn Granton and Carrie McNinch? Your weekend to-do list never looked this good.

Find it in JaxCat

Zine of the Week: Middle School by Monica Gallagher

Middle School
by Monica Gallagher

Does middle school even still exist? It seems like a torment from a bygone age, like the Spanish Inquisition. No one with good sense looks back on middle school fondly, and Monica Gallagher captures the deep existential dread that would result from the most trivial matters so expertly in her brief Middle School minicomic. From the pop culture references on the cover (an MC Hammer CD, an industrial-size bottle of hairspray), I’m guessing that Gallagher and I are around the same age, which makes her tale hit close to home personally, but c’mon, adolescent trauma is universal.

The story is that Gallagher’s middle school, in an innovation that makes my stomach hurt just reading about it, sent sixth graders to an “outdoor education” camp at the beginning of the school year to… I don’t know, break their spirit fully right off the bat? It is there that this comic begins, a tangle of self-doubt, life-or-death decisions, all-consuming infatuations, and an ironclad social hierarchy. It’s hilarious and cringe-inducing in equal doses. The art is assured and captures the essential awkwardness of everyone involved. And whaddya know? Is that an almost happy ending? Can’t be….

Find it in JaxCat

Zine of the Week: The Amish Elf by Chris Kerr

The Amish Elf
by Chris Kerr

You could be forgiven for taking a look at the cover and title of Chris Kerr’s minicomic and think it a one-note joke. C’mon an Amish Elf? There’s gotta be a bad standup routine in there somewhere about oversize buggies? And yet, to his eternal credit, artist Kerr takes this limited concept and weaves a touching and bewitching mythos around it.

The plot is oblique and impossible to sum up in a brief manner to anyone’s satisfaction. Let’s just say that it’s a travelogue the likes of which you’d never read in a Disney story or Piers novel. Surreal phantasmagoria contrasts nicely with the more Spartan reality of an Amish village in a very entertaining manner.

No dialogue, bereft of any text, the weight of the storytelling falls on Kerr’s simple pen-and-ink line drawings. His art style is very familiar (I’m thinking of Magnus Carisson’s Robin and Russian dolls for some reason) and very individual at the same time. Whereas the lead characters–the Elf, the Wizard, and the Amish–are drawn in a very naive, cartoonish style, suddenly he’ll throw you for a curve by drawing, say, an alligator or an opossum in stunning photo-realist detail. Yet it’s the cartoons that pack the emotional punch, a page where a squirrel triumphantly teaches the Amish Elf to throw nuts at targets blindfolded is uplifting, and a shot of stoic Amish parents fighting back tears over the supposed death of their son is wrenching.  And that last page? Man…

Read it, give it to your friends to read, and then argue over the plot more than you did with Twin Peaks!