#zine reviews

[sm-selenographer]

Happens all the time, I’m tempted to pick up a new-to-me zine based only on the cover photo, a scant description, or its thrumming electricity zapping my hand, only later to find an unexpected personal connection. Such is the case for Moonshot #2, SM’s paean to her ancestral home, specifically her ancestral house, in a working-class Pittsburgh neighborhood. “Growing Up in Carrick,” SM lets forth in a stream of vivid prose poetry worthy of Dylan Thomas, evoking the pageant of sounds, feelings, and images of her upbringing: heat lightning in the close Pittsburgh summer; the aging linoleum and unfinished drywall of a Craftsman-style house; the sentience of wallpaper faces and framed puzzles. Childhood recalled as if projected in Super 8. Coming-of-age moments, significant in retrospect. SM’s family moves to another neighborhood; in her early 20s, she moves back in, with roommates; the house sits vacant for years. The city, the neighborhood, and the author change inexorably through the years, yet something essential remains, drawing her back to the house that witnessed many of her former iterations; that anchors ur-feelings of longing and belonging, A close friend of mine grew up in Carrick, and so I spent time there during college, on the 51C bus winding down Brownsville Road; picnicking at my friend’s parents’ house on Hazeldell Street; painfully underage, getting kicked out of an old-man dive called Doug’s Den. I don’t have the same depth of familial ties to the neighborhood that SM does, but reading Moonshot #2 still reminds me that we’re constantly leaving a wake of echoes, shedding shadows of past lives everywhere we go, and these imprints are often bound up in the buildings we love and that love us. This minizine has a hand-stitched binding, two color photos, and comes with a link to a field-recorded mini soundtrack that fits the mood and location of the piece. Available in Pittsburgh from Tangent Distro or directly from the author at selenographer.info

Oh man, I nearly cried in the breakroom when I read this review, what a mood-booster! :D Hopefully I will have time to stop by Tangent Distro when I'm in Pittsburgh next month! :D

[youngharridan]

I've been reading the zines distributed by Librarians and Archivists with Palestine all morning and can particularly recommend A Care-Centered Guide to Digitally Archiving Palestine. There's heaps more to dig into there, just wanted to share because it makes me really happy to see this work being done in my industry.

[tsukuyomizine]

I got my zine yesterday and just had to drop in to say how impressed I was with it! It is packaged SO beautifully I didnt even want to finish opening it!!! You did a phenominal job! 🥰🥰🥰

Ahh thank you!! I'm so glad you got it safely and enjoyed opening it! 🥺 Zines are special so it should be an experience even to open them!

We really hope you enjoy all the amazing fics & art! TYSM for supporting the project <3

[orangezeppelin]

New video coming tomorrow, I'll be reviewing the latest issue of Feral Comics AND working on the coloring page included on the package!

(You can find Feral Publication on insta with the @ in the pic, and also on Youtube! This comic takes submissions and the channel also does zine reviews so you can send zines in to be showcased!)

[schibborasso]

eye magazine

[gamenburger]

Alright. It's here.

REVIEW OF THE KILLER is a (mainly spoiler free) zine review featuring commentary, analysis, comics, and various evil activities. It released on my itch.io page and will be free for anyone to download, as well as a convenient reader embedded in the page itself. It is releasing alongside the steam version of Anthology Of The Killer by @myfriendpokey.

It is available to print in both a4 and letterhead format, in color and B&W. All of these will be available in 600 or 300 PPI (as disgustingly high as Itch will allow) as well as regular old, web and storage friendly formats. I recommend vibrant pink and canary paper for greyscale copies. It is free to distribute as you please.

If you have liked any of the art I've done so far, please share this anywhere and everywhere you feel charitable to do so.

I hope you enjoy. I am always hoping you enjoy.

[titaniumions]

how bad can she possibly be ...

[zygon-commander]

If you wanna get to know John Constantine but don't know where to start, then this guide is for you! Get all the meat of the story without having to read the filler issue where he remembers turning into a horny werewolf.

I made this zine ages ago but completely forgot to upload it here until I was Hellblazer thirst posting tonight and suddenly remembered.

I had a super fun time putting it together so I hope there are some nerds on here who enjoy it!! Feel free to leave recs as well

(The quiz is serious btw, I wanna know)

[monstermag]

Review: Electric Bones (2019-present)

by Hazel + Bell

Audience: Adult (18+) Genre: Sci-Fi Monsters: Robots Main Pairing: Human x Robot (m/m) Content Warnings: sex, violence

Summary: Enter a world of rogue robots and bratty rich kids, Electric Bones. Aboard a deep space cruise ship, Lucian encounters the last face he ever wanted to see: the robot who lost him dream job, Ezra. Except, Ezra doesn't recognize him at all. For now.

Review:  Electric Bones is a solid slow burn and is chock full of gorgeous artwork, charming characters, and an intriguing plot. Our protagonists won't be romantic partners anytime soon, but the chemistry between Ezra and Lucian is already tangible (mostly in the form of Lucian really wanting to sleep with Ezra).

I have already sent Ezra's many cute outfits to a friend of mine because he is always dressed to impress, and his intelligence is equally tangible. Despite Lucian ending up in an endless loop of misfortune by his own hands, it's clear that he has his own skills and resources in hand to get the job done. The central mysteries - Ezra's past, who blew up Echo Station, what Lucian intends to do with his life, and more - really help maintain interest and the way they intersect is endlessly engaging.

Recommended?: Definitely. The world is interesting, the characters have ever-evolving depth, and how often can I say the artwork is gorgeous!

Note: Electric Bones is an on-going series, and this reviewer last read Page 130. There are many way to read Electric Bones, but we recommend their Patreon first and foremost!! But you can also check it out on their website, Webtoon, and Tapas. We wouldn't typically point out sources, but independent artists have got to support fellow independent artists.

What should we review next?

Let us know! We're interested in everything monsterfucker; books, TV shows, video games, short stories, anything!

You can still submit your work for M❤️NSTER Fall 2024!

We accept NSFW and SFW content, fan content, and content you have already posted. Find the right link for you on this post. Submission window closes September 15th!

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[panstarry]

spreads from last semester’s zine 🎇 punks of color in the scene, issue 2

click here to read issue 1

[deadeyedfae]

Look I got a review on Dead Eyed Ivy! ShiftyMagpie on Instagram was my first customer outside of my little town (I had the zine up on Etsy but there is a printing mistake so it's been removed 😭) but look what they had to say about it 💜💜💜

[rizwalda]

one of my two pieces for @eamesie That's Cinema!: A Dimension 20 Movie Poster Redraw Zine - created as part of @d20zinejam 2024 get this zine and 67 others in a bundle and help support humanitarian aid for the people of Palestinee

& there is a really cool letterboxd list to go along with it 🎞️

[youngharridan]

This is kind of a funny one. I'm going through my old zines at the moment as I'm thinking of doing some kind of bigger archiving/cataloguing project later this year. I'm going to throw away or give away a lot of things but first I need to just go through everything and remember what I've even got.

So this zine is a republished Susan Stryker piece. I love when people do this, take something that they really love and try to share it with more people. I think it was from the shortlived Sydney/East coast trans women distro Bitch Please, as there is a little stamp of theirs on the back. It was probably free or by donation. What struck me is that this is so hard read, the font is teeny tiny, and also it doesn't utilise the space very well, there are three blank pages in the second half of the zine. So I'm thinking of taking the same piece and making it into a zine with bigger font that doesn't have any blank pages! Maybe this is a crazy thing to do with something that I was thinking of giving away or recycling, but I think it would be fun. Kind of in the same vein as my Zahra Stardust zine but without my own personal writing in it at all. Will experiment and report back.

[desirepathzine]

Pentiment: Now Look What You Have Created

A note: THIS ESSAY WILL INCLUDE SPOILERS FOR PENTIMENT. I highly recommend you experience the story however suits you best before reading this.

Pentiment is a tricky little video game. On the surface, it is a beautifully crafted point-and-click mystery game set in medieval Bavaria over a period of twenty five years, revolving around a series of mysterious deaths that traveling artist Andreas witnesses, and in turn must judge the town based on his (and your) observations. But it presents concepts and moral quandaries that I find video games of its nature often refuse to acknowledge.

Games sometimes have trouble placing weight on the decisions that any given player makes. Permanence in choices can close off large swaths of a game that so many people worked so hard to bring to life. Save scumming and cloud saves can help get around this concept, but Pentiment asks you to make some extremely hard choices, oftentimes without the most solid of evidence that you might expect from a mystery game.

And not only do you have to see through the carrying out of your judgements, you must watch the wide branching consequences of these decisions over the entire period of the game. And in a story that lasts over two decades, those consequences feel weighty. Further more, you never discover if you "guessed correctly". The game never tells you who actually committed the murders. It simply asks you to make a judgement.

That is not to say that it does not give you a variety of motivations. You must be convicted in your own beliefs, your own judgements. And you will see the bloody results of those judgements. Much has been made of how Pentiment makes you watch the execution of whoever you accuse of the crimes in its first act. It's one of the most brutal moments in a largely beautiful and pastoral game. It's one thing to cross of somebody's name in a list of characters. It's another to watch them speak their last words in the town square before their beheading. You have to look. And it feels so strange, because in most video games, you get a CORRECT or INCORRECT prompt when you make a decision like those in Pentiment, or a character will lecture you, or there is some in-universe way to tell you "hey good job" or "you messed up". There is a right and wrong answer. Pentiment does not give you such a privilege. You only have your reasoning. There is no amount of story you can uncover that will reassure you more than your initial investigation.

Of course, you later find out that Father Thomas, the local priest, has been manipulating the town to advance the Church's agenda, using what he hears in confession to blackmail and agitate townspeople, as well as manipulating Sister Amalie, the anchoress of the church who is plagued with ecstatic visions. But as ever, you can discover motivations and reasoning, but not THE CORRECT ANSWER or even THE TRUTH. Just your intuition.

Pentiment also prompts you to consider what happens to this town after the game itself is over. Video games only exist as you play them, and usually do not task you with considering what you have wrought after your time in their world is done. You save the day, solve a puzzle, destroy some great evil, and then credits will roll. Not here. The core of the third act, with a surprise protagonist change, revolves around creating a mural that chronicles the history of Tassing, a town you have now spent quite a bit of time investigating, both its known and approved history from the church, and the wilder corners of its history that are starting to be erased. It's up to you what to focus on, what to leave for Tassing to remember forever in its town hall, amidst pressure from the church to present their approved vision. The final sequence of the game is a long and detailed pan over the mural that you crafted with your decisions (set to music featuring Desire Path fave Kristin Hayter).

This is hardly a surprise from the excellent folks at Obsidian, responsible for some of the greatest role-playing and choice based games of our modern era. There are so many incredible touches to the game that completely transport you (the script that the characters 'speak' in changes based on their level of education and background. They will occasionally misspell words that are then corrected and when they are angry, ink blots will dot their speech bubbles). This was clearly a labor of love that accomplishes so much and charts new territory.

I completed a playthrough in February of this year and think about the game at least once a week, whether it be someone else I could have accused of murder, a sweet conversation with a townsperson, or the delightful characters populating the illuminated menus (I am especially fond of a silly cat illustration). It is well worth the journey, but be prepared to sit with your choices, and to see what kind of Tassing you create, for better or worse.

[orangezeppelin]

New zine review video up, today we're looking at Feral Comics #18! You can check the video description for more info, this zine takes submissions (and pays you!) AND you can send in zines to be reviewed on his own Youtube channel.

[oleandrsstudio]

Happy Halloween! For Halloween, I like to review zines with a focus on herbs/plants. This week's #zine #review is of "Dandelion: Migration is Beautiful," written by Celeste Inez Mathilda and published by Liminal Spaces!

I admire how dandelions grow everywhere. I’ve heard of dandelion wine. Behind that, I’ve never really thought about the plant.

This zine examines dandelions from an herbalist perspective. It shares the nutritional benefits of dandelions and how to use each part (flowers, leaves, roots) in different recipes.

I liked how this zine presents dandelions as a symbol of ascended boundaries: weed/medicinal plant, food/medicine, male/female.

After reading this, I wanted a cup of dandelion tea.

#solarpunk #solarpunkzine #howtozine #zinereview