Esteemed reader: you’re in so deep now! Perhaps you’re a diehard zine fanatic. Perhaps you’re even a publisher yourself. But perhaps you just picked up this copy of Slingshot because it was free at that one rad bookstore or coffee shop or food coop near you, and you’re still not sure what exactly this big scribbly beauty even is! Regardless, we adore your attention. But also we challenge you: go farther! Read another beautiful / scribbly / lefty / independent publication before the next slingshot finds its way to your hands. Smash the institutions of your own habits! Read new things so you can think new things! Explore! Explore! Explore! And if your explorations lead you (yes, you!) to scribble, paste, and copy a zine of your own, send it our way for review! We’ve documented some of our recent encounters below, as a place for you to start.
Fluke 21: The Colossus Compendium $5+postage
PO box 1547 Phoenix, AZ. 85001
Three interview pieces on underground artist Buzz Burr to commemorate his passing. People who dig train culture, installation art and weirdos from rural areas will find nourishment. Some of the info works better for those already in the know. The pages drip with emotion and love….maybe wear a bib while consuming?? (egg)
Ouch! Vol. 3
By Ouch! Collective ouchcollective.com Emerging in a tumultuous time to be queer, Ouch! Vol. 3 weaves together the voices of queer, trans, and nonbinary poets and writers from around the world, alongside surreal and sometimes erotic imagery, engaging with themes of grief, joy, and transformation, asking “what it means to move forward in life when it feels like everything is collapsing.” And perhaps more importantly, “What kind of world could we live in without joy and creativity?” The printing is gorgeous, full color and glossy, guiding the reader to new landscapes, offering a written and visual aesthetic that captures the terrifying uncertainty of staying alive in a world that says it doesn’t want you. And yet, here we are. In the words of BEE LB (they/them) whose work appears on p. 4, “the sun melts like butter across the golden haze of field / and my boots kick up dust, dirt // take me far from home.” (H-Cat)
The Wax Paper – Vol 4, No. 14
12 (14×2) Folded pages – $7 thewaxpaper.com
These pages are 14″ x 22″ folded, so it’s a true broadsheet format. (For reference, Slingshot is 11″ x 18″ folded.) I rarely discuss the packaging at this level but Wax Paper is so large it actually changes the way you have to read it. I had to fold it into quadrants, something I haven’t done since I read the Village Voice on the A-train in New York. That was way back before they went all digital in 2017. It returned to print in 2021 as a quarterly, but today I think I’d rather read Wax Paper.
The experience of reading in quadrants is that of folding, unfolding, rotating, flipping, and refolding — one handed if you’re strap-hanging. Imagine that while trying to follow the narrative of a story whose bits and pieces are hidden in different sections of the newspaper. But it was very immersive: Continued next page.
But Wax Paper is no ordinary newspaper. Despite their homage to Studs Terkel, the content is primarily what I’d call “high lit”, but well varied. The art was alternately colorful, strange and grotesque. I liked that too. I never know what to say about poetry but I did chase Jordan Jame’s prose across 6 separate pages. Someone shot Kris Kristofferson and I needed to know how that story ended. No spoilers. (Jose)
90 Day Trial
30 pages – $15 junimadii.com
I briefly met Ms. Sackett at a zinefest and I was immediately taken by the art in this one. Each page contains one or more small individual paintings on prepared corrugated cardboard. The edges are rough, and each one has a partially visible gesso layer below a thin base layer of pink and peach paint that looks like it was put on with a dented roller. The irregularities in color and material provide a continuity of style and presence you rarely see in hand drawn, fully analog comics. Her drawing style reminds me of James Kochalka. So thanks for the opportunity to name check him. We haven’t talked in years.
The plot chronicles her 90 day trial of an unnamed SSRI. It’s not a clinical trial, so it’s not about dosage and blood levels. There are no tales of dizziness, blurred vision and constipation. There were no horrific side effects, at least not that she shared. It’s just the context for 90 days of her life: cats, cookies, Metro cards, weather, positive affirmations and various social interactions. I’ve known a lot of people who have tried SSRIs. It’s not for everyone but it seems to have done Maddie some good. I wish her well. (Jose)
Clock Tower 9 – Issue #19
$4 – 24 pages
instagram.com/somanyaccident
Most of this issue is built around an interview with Danny Noonan’s friend Nicole and an array of “ugly” vegetable pictures. What makes a vegetable ugly and why do we as Americans have such idealized versions of vegetables? It’s a rhetorical question. The evils of marketing are pervasive and wholly responsible.
Or are they? Do we have some preference for the symmetry and the golden ratio built into our idea of beauty? Noonan explores the topic both in word and deed. This issue has more pictures than usual — all vegetable portraiture of course. They’re bulbus, asymmetrical, splotchy, russeted, cracked, wrinkled and occasionally anthropomorphic.
Some years ago I worked at a farmers market. The ugly vegetables were hard to sell. People wanted to touch them, look at them and even take pictures of them but nobody bought them. They just handled them until they were dented and bruised. So I took them home: the potato with ears, the wrinkly tomato, and those leggy carrots. If you were wondering, they do all taste the same as their more regular counterparts. Like us, on the inside they are more alike than not. (Jose)
I Love Soda – Issue #5
8 pages facebook.com/ilovesodazine/
I do appreciate a silly zine once in a while. Life can’t all be introspection and coping mechanisms. Rebecca just likes Soda. I met her briefly at a zine fair and her first question was “What’s your favorite soda?” All I could tell her was that I haven’t drank any soda in over a decade. Most of it is cloyingly sweet and tastes entirely unlike food — even less so than candy. If you read the bottle you find a list of ingredients which always starts with water and usually ends with phosphoric acid. Everything in between reads more like a solvent than a beverage. How the hell did we get acclimated to drinking this?
I drink tea, black tea with nothing — no sugar, no honey, no milk. I prefer the darkest, most cloudy and bitter tea I can find: Irish breakfast, Assam, Yorkshire etc. It’s the means to my highly caffeinated ends. But Rebecca finds joy in her fizzy sugar water. Neither of us is an aesthete. But she and her zine remain bubbly and delightful. (Jose)
Sober – Issue 5
28 pages – $12.34
jaredcodywolf.bigcartel.com
Have you ever looked deep into the abyss and seen the very eye of true madness? This zine goes way beyond the freakiness of the old Zap Comix. Everything is intensely psychedelic and dense with imagery. Cody Rapp a.k.a. Jared Cody Wolf isn’t limited to a particular media. He mixes drawings with collage, and colored pencil with pen and ink or acrylic all in screaming technicolor.
It’s stylish; simultaneously H.R. Giger and S. Clay Wilson but just as weird as Victor Moscoso, and Rick Griffin. I studied each page carefully. It’s difficult to catch every image, and every broken line of text; in multiple languages no less. Slowly it dawned on me. There are dicks everywhere. Not in a pornographic way (not all the time anyway) more of a Daniel Johnson way. But what I realized I was seeing (other than dicks) were homages to other art, artists and music.
The only thing lacking here is a narrative voice. Where Moscoso managed to tell stories Cody manages very little continuity from page to page other than dicks, guns, spacemen and random references to Mithra. TLDR: It’s really trippy man! jamhotradiofm.com/why-i-create-jared-cody-wolf
Curanderismo Reclaimed
meggomez@pdx.edu 7 pages – digital
Before you google “healing modality” let me tell you that curanderismo is a Latin American shamanistic healing tradition. (Calm yourself, this isn’t about ethnobotany.) This zine dives right into the violent crimes of Hernando Cortés in his conquest and colonization of Mexico. It explains very directly the function of spiritual activism and its goals of collective liberation. I think it’s the first zine I’ve ever read that includes a religious invocation on the topic of radicalism. These are deep waters.
After defining terms it dives right into the tale of a lone curandera living on Suavie Island. But that was just a paragraph, a teaser. The next page is entirely devoted to rites and rituals. Maybe that’s unfair of me to want more anthropology, but I really wanted to hear more about individual curanderas. I didn’t get that, but I did get a good reading list should I want to pursue further learning, and I think I do. (Jose)
GNARR GNARR – Issue #1
22 pages (color) – $10 instagram.com/gnarr_gnarr
A flyer came in the mail, a man in a tiger mask surrounded by a mesmerizing swirl. At the bottom was a QR code that read “scan me.” It looked more like a warning than an invitation, but nonetheless here I am with a zine that defies categorization.
It opens with a short biography of rockabilly hero Pat Capocci. Pat could time travel back to 1955 and play the same Fender Telecaster and blend right in. But this isn’t a rockabilly zine. On the whole, it sweats pure randomness. There are doodles, scratch and sniff pics that I’m afraid to sniff, and an interview with a random hat embroiderer.
Then it got weirder. Someone’s cat writes a column. An Orangutan threatens us in Español. Two rogue accordionists wrestle. I think I saw a Chupacabras. Then there is that brief news break: “Scientists Discover Gaping Hole in Uranus.” On the whole, it reads like it was written on a dare. (Jose)
Ear of Corn – Issue 56 & 57
24 pages – $2 foodfortunata@hotmail.com
I got an email from Food Fortunata, and then two issues of Ear Of Corn came in the mail. Food Fortunata is the godfather of tardcore; a genre with a mixed reputation even in the punk community. But he’s in Encyclopedia Metallum and I’m not. So I have to envy Dave Schall in all his strange and subversive glory.
The most remarkable thing about Ear of Corn is that since its inception in 1989 it’s largely kept the same formula. That’s over thirty five years, fifty seven issues, and tens of thousands of words and it’s never drifted off course. That’s despite the fact that Ear of Corn is not even Food’s solo project. This time around credited contributors are Duncan, Tex, and Francois; be they real or be they imagined. Just as others did twenty years ago, they wrote poetry, prose, reviews and interviews.
Just like in issue #1 there is still punk poetry here, but now it’s about PFAS. There are fewer interviews but there are also fewer G.G. Allin’s in the world. There’s a smattering of zine and book reviews but the meat and potatoes in these two issues are album reviews. These are also very short; almost like haiku. They include everything from Devo box sets to obscure punk bands beneath the radar (and possibly contempt) of Razorcake. As an underground icon, Food has access to things you can’t imagine, and probably shouldn’t. But Ear of Corn remains both highly influential and highly readable, which keeps me coming back. (Jose)
Copy This Cassette!
56 pages – $3 copythis.bandcamp.com
There’s something to be said in this era of disposable digital journalism for longform media. When you read a record review today it usually can fit on a matchbook. When you watch a video it’s 30 seconds long. Copy This Cassette! bucks the trend and goes long.
After two pages of introduction the opening article is a 12 page interview with Joshua James Anderson from AntiquatedFuture. That’s followed by 6 pages of interview Q&A with Marc Masters, the author of the book High Bias. D. Blake Werts is no novice. He formerly ran the zine Copy This! which goes back to 2014 and was heavy on the interviews. That solid journalistic foundation makes this zine …is to cassette culture what Creem magazine was to rock n’ roll. It makes sense. LPs were only up to about 50 minutes long. The humble cassette was up to 120. Good mixtapes make for long attention spans.
Speaking of long, the other half of the 56 pages was entirely filled with cassette reviews. It opened with the comment that “you won’t find much punk/scream/metal here.” Sure enough, the most distorted guitar in the lyrics was from The Silver Doors. Sure, D. Blake Wertshas is a little bit of a grumpy old man when it comes to young fellas screaming their guts out into an SM58. But he comes by it naturally, and as he says “Razorcake already does a superb job… ” (Jose)
Murder & Mayhem – Spring 2024
18 pages – free pdf treyoftoday@yahoo.com
Murder and Mayhem looks like the kind of zine you used to find on the sidewalk after a big punk show. We’ve all found one. It had sneaker prints on the cover and was all crumpled, gritty and smelled funky. I don’t think Trey Ballz minds that. I sort of imagine him to be a little crumpled and gritty.
Trey is basically incoherent but he has good taste in music. He reviews records and then desecrates a grave. He rants and raves. He commits slander, and then visits a nice museum. The ads are for boutique punk labels and clown porn. I don’t even know what to say about clown porn. I’ve never typed those two words in that order before. Clown. Porn. This zine has more racial slurs than I am comfortable with. I imagine Trey is hard to be friends with but I’m glad he exists. (Jose)
The (Un)civil Society, Counterarguments Vol 1.
$7 – 14 pages + CD-R
theuncivilsociety.bandcamp.com
This is not a zine, not technically. These are liner notes to the album Counter Arguments, Volume 1, by the artist The (Un)civil Society. Hey but that’s OK though. Plenty of cool bands have put out overgrown liner notes as zines with their albums; Firewater and Mike ill come immediately to mind. (Also the image of a man smoking in a gorilla mask I can’t quite place.)
When hacks like myself write record reviews we infer an artist’s influences. It is certainly true that it’s our opinion, but that’s not an objective truth. Moreover, we are not always in agreement with the artist. But that’s not an objective truth either! Curse you John Locke! All of that is to say, sorry dude, I just don’t hear Raymond Scott, strangely I hear Todd Rundgren. But I’m glad you’re having a good time. That’s what it’s really all about. (Jose)
TACO RAT # 2
14 pages – free-ish TacoRatSAtX@gmail.com
I briefly debated: is Taco Rat supposed to be one word or two? On the inside cover are two ads: one for Arty with Tapes of Hell, a horror VHS thing and another for The Weird People Show, on WSCA-LP up in Portsmouth, NH. I think that sets the stage more or less. The Whiskey Joe album “Live on the Radio” was recorded on that very program.
I should mention there’s a bit of a poop motif here. The main feature is a biography of a man named Barry that painted on toilet seats. The cover reads “In Crapper We Trust.” The back cover is a collage of toilets and a plunger. It’s not full bore coprophilia, but definitely a theme of sorts.
Food Fortunata wrote some of the record reviews which is how this came my way. That’s certainly a seal of approval. I thought this zine was run by Mike Scholarry, but this one is credited to “Patterson.” Perhaps the Scholarry Brothers are too busy running a record label, making music and broadcasting unhinged, gritty country music into the ether. (Jose)
Restless Legs – Issue 8
brybry@riseup.net Free – 52 pages
The senseless death of August Golden made it all the way to Rolling Stone magazine. But the write up that the Restless Legs Inquirer gives here is the only coverage you need to read. August was one of the many residents of Nudieland, a DIY venue/squat in Minneapolis, MN. As in the last issue, the images are a series of masterful candids. They capture something rare and fleeting; not punk rock, but the visage of youth itself. None of the photos are labeled, but August is pictured at least three times, four if you count the pile of cut flowers at the end.
This issue starts with a tale about August, and Hippie Greg the landlord. Then Emily died, and Paul died. But they all loved that hopeless city to death. The danger of an open door is that anything can come through it. Its greatest strength is also its greatest vulnerability. I prefer to think they make that choice knowingly. To some degree every home is a safe little bubble separate from the mad world outside. Some beast reached in and took one of the kids, and like a true monstrosity it was random and horrible and there are no goddamn answers.
I’ve never understood why when punks get together they always seem to write pop music. It’s not what’s in my heart, not even now, after all these years. I think the answer is that it’s what’s in their hearts. They’re happy, or at least they are trying to be. (Jose)
Oak Journal – Issue #5
$26 – 90 pages oakjournal.org
Let’s start by pointing out that oakjournal.org and oakjournal.com are very different websites. After that admittedly bad start I conducted my usual research. I quickly found that I recognized a few authors’ names: Sascha Engel, James Morgan, Clare Follmann, and John Zerzan of course.
Oak is a serious glossy magazine mostly focused on anarchist and anti-civ theory. But it’s not purely academic like similar publications. Oak seems to make more room for application over theory. It’s a more interesting area for me personally. Arguing endlessly about Kropotkin’s zeitgeist makes me weary. It’s a pursuit for the young.
The strongest article here was about the Forest Defenders in Atlanta. It opens with a quote from Tortugita “We’re not going to beat them at violence. They’re very, very good at violence. We’re not.” Then to prove him right, the Atlanta PD shot him to death while he had his hands up. Those details are from the article written under the pseudonym, Dandelion. What strikes me most is how much of that article, like some of the others, might legitimately be called journalism. It makes the overall theme much more accessible than dry explorations of thought. Perhaps this is the path forward for sharing these kinds of ideas? People still read right? (Jose)
Surprisingly OK
$4 – 72 pages sheerspite.ca
This zine came in with a bundle of older zines by the enigmatic Lee P. at Sheer Spite. There is nothing more enigmatic than a well-adjusted human being. The oldest of the batch is a reprint of Pals, the Radical Possibilities of Friendship. That came out in 2013, and went through a major revision in 2015. I read them all for context. Buried in the middle is the best writing prompt I’ve seen in years “Thanks for holding my hand when we saw the UFO. I’m sorry about everything that happened after that.”
We have a new kitten and this is the only zine in the stack he felt the need to chomp. His bloodlust is insatiable. They are teeny, tiny squeezable little predators. I feel like Lee is someone who would be surprisingly OK with kitten chomps.
The zine goes all in: trauma memes, self-criticism, personal analogies, Arthur Rinmbaud… yes all the way to the bottom with French poets, the cop in your head and SSRIs. Lee pulls no punches and treats the topic as serious as your personal therapist, if your therapist was Hyperbole and a Half. It’s as readable as this topic gets. (Jose)
Node Pajomo
$1 – 24 pages
PO Box 2632, Ballingham, WA 98227
This is the final issue of Node Pajomo. In way of explanation, it reads that “it takes too much time, energy, resources and mental space” to continue. I can confirm that reading a stack of zines is a big commitment of time. There are only 200 copies of this issue, and there will not be a reprint. Smoke ’em while you got ’em folks. Always recommended as fuck.
As in previous issues the topics constitute the most random mailbag ever: road trips, found media, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, sad British people, hate, collage, sad collage, sad British collage… every possible permutation is represented in this oversized issue.
In light of that announcement the reviews take on an additional layer of gravitas. His review of Asymmetrical Anti-Media #16 states that “Now that Node is dead this is `The Only Review Zine That Matters” thus naming the work of Jason Rodgers as his heir and successor. The king is dead, long live the king. (Jose)