zines - books - 2008 - Make A Zine!: When Words and Graphics Collide

Make a Zine: When Words and Graphics Collide
Bill Brent and Joe Biel et. al.
Microcosm Publishing
2008
160 pages

Hi everybody!  I purchased Make a Zine: When Words and Graphics Collide from Pandemonium, a book and record store around the Keele and Dundas West intersection in the Junction neighborhood of Toronto.

The Make a Zine Co-authors are Bill Brent, who is the former editor of the Black Sheets zine, and Joe Biel, founder of Microcosm Publishing and zine distribution (as well as author of a number of zines on a variety of topics).  Combined, the pair have a comprehensive knowledge of zine publishing and the zine community.  Make a Zine is, like Alex Wrekk’s Stolen Sharpie Revolution, a how-to guide to making zines and entering the zine subculture.

Make a Zine is divided into chapters, most of which are practical guides for some aspect of zine production, although a number of them transcend the precise task of zine-making. The second chapter, for example, titled Organization, is simply tips on keeping a neat workspace.  The third chapter, Layout and Type, and many that follow, are about the specific tasks involved in zine production proper.  The authors give in depth advice on how to produce a zine that approximates the appearance of a newsstand magazine.   The authors advise, for example, to pullout eye-catching quotes, and to lay out the text with two columns to a page which are standard techniques of magazine formatting.  It is tempting to interpret this advice as a criteria for what Biel may look for in a zine that he may consider for his Microcosm distribution, however I know that Biel’s catalogue is actually quite varied in the materials it offers.  

Biel and Brent’s advice is directed towards making zines as readable as possible.  Their advice is practical, and good for a zinester who wants to produce legible literature.  Many zinesters take up zine-making with readability as a secondary concern, and are more interested in playing with layout and eschewing the standard formatting of magazines.  I personally find Stolen Sharpie Revolution to be more interesting with regards to layout concerns, because while Wrekk gives advice that is similar to what appears in Make a Zine,  Stolen Sharpie Revolution is formatted according to its author’s own idiosyncratic style.  Their advice for other aspects of publishing, such as ‘sales’, ‘copyright concerns’ and the section about compensation for contributors, however, would have broad value within the zine community and potential adherents.

The two main authors also solicit advice from comrades who have specialized knowledge in a particular area that is relevant to zine-making.  Fly, a prominent zine comic artist, wrote the chapter titled DIY Comix, while zinester Katie Haegele wrote a piece advocating the use of Creative Commons licencing agreements, and Paul T. Olson advises readers about libel (the book primes zinesters in all relevant legal concerns).  The final piece of text in the book is by Stephen Duncombe, a zine scholar who wrote Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture.  Duncombe’s brief essay laments the co-option of underground zine culture by major corporations who want to infuse some subcultural authenticity into their advertising.  These pieces by other authors add some variety to the book and help it to become an example of the collaborative, community-minded orientation of zine publishing that Biel has tried to create.  Biel and Brent’s text is actually a book of many voices, and its most interesting aspect, to me, is when its discussion how zine-making also often means participating in a community of zine producers.

Make a Zine! is also filled with a large number of cute illustrations from a number of artists in a variety of styles(credits are listed before the table of contents, with a personal introduction from one of the authors).  These images also contribute to the book’s community orientation.  The variety of illustrations turns Make a Zine into a narrow survey of zine graphics without distorting its status as a how-to guide.  The book ends with a number of appendices that list a number of zine resources, including the Toronto Zine Library and local comic shop, The Beguiling.  These listings provide potential zinesters in many urban areas with the tools to familiarize themselves with zine culture.  These listings are up-to-date as of 2008 and indicate that, despite the rise of the internet, zines still thrive as a craft.