I love you, Spaceship

3 new book covers for Aleph and the Brazilian market. These are for John Scalzi's "Zoe's Tale", "The Human Division", and "The End of All Things".

Graha x Clive

hi! sorry, real quick:

grab a piece of paper and fold it in half like a book

write "im indifferent to zines" on the cover

write "i've never been able to buy one" on the first page

write "and i'll never be in one" on the second page

write "just want to be a hater today" on the back

the first zine idea i found was in a book i checked out from the library (id never remember what it was. it was about cartooning i think and had a section about chibi style lol) that had a little section on taking one sheet of paper, marking it into eighths, cutting a line in the center of the page and folding it over for a quick eight pages. like this

And then I thought, hey I have a piece of paper by my desk I should at least follow that diagram and fold it, that way I’m halfway there even if it’s blank and sits on my desk for months, and then 5 minutes later I had this:

Now I’m just holding this little thing I’ve made in my hands and I love it so much

I aready said this isn't a semantic thing, but you if you really want to go there: 'zine' is a shortening of fanzine or magazine and the concept of a 'fanzine' itself is directly derived from a style of independently published magazine that has roots at least as far back as the Harlem Renaissance and arguably the political pamphleteering of the french and american revolutions. but the actual point I was making is that the entire ethos of zine making originates in an effort to broaden access to publication, and we are losing that.

am I saying nobody ever slapped a $20 cover price on a zine before the 2020s? no! am I saying no influential underground publication has ever made the crossing into fully fledged magazine? no! am I saying I will come to your house and punch your teeth in personally if you use the word zine in a way I find objectionable? no! I'm saying the trajectory of commercialisation, professionalisation and lost knowledge is not only stripping foundational meaning from the form but directly harms the viability of low-overhead zine production. just look through the notes of this post for dozens of people saying they'd never heard of the homemade zine before this post, that they'd been burned by high production 'zine' projects and soured on the whole concept as a result. no equivocation: this shit is killing the medium.

but hey, maybe the $15 zine is the norm and I'm just pearl clutching because I don't like genshin impact or whatever. let's look at the cover prices of some historically important zines at launch:

oh sorry, my bad, these aren't 'fanzines' let's try again

mm but of course the very first fanzines ever published would be cheap and amateur, the form was still being figured out. what about the one everyone on tumblr loves to call the birth of fandom:

well fine, but what about zines that deal with serious social issues? that involve research, outreach, even risk on the part of the creators?

believe it or not (or refuse to believe it) but the history of zines is not the history of bag-getters. accessibility has always been the lifeblood of the form, and that includes financial accessibility.

A piece I did for the Wild Hunt zine (twi: @/ZenosZine)

Dad: Why are you recording us eating cake?

Mom: Because I have a question for you.

Mom: Why...did I overhear Riley telling Mason that I was foaming at the mouth when I was having Bailey?

Dad: What?

Mom: Tonight before bed (laughs) I had to stop Riley (laughs) because she was telling our four-year-old that "mom was foaming at the mouth when she-"

Dad: (laughing very hard)

Mom: She was-

Dad: (continues laughing very hard)

Mom (trying not to laugh): Riley...okay. our six-year-old was telling our four- (starts laughing)

Mom: That moms foam at the mouth when having babies. And I need to understand why they think I was foaming at the mouth

Dad: (laughing)

Dad: Rabies

Mom: You told them I had rabies?

Dad (while laughing): I thought she asked about rabies! She- (resumes laughing)

Mom: (unintelligible) sit down!

Mom: Get on with it. Dude.

Dad: She said "does it hurt when you have rabies?"

(Both laughing)

Dad: Did she say "babies?" (Laughs) I thought she asked about rabies!

(Both laughing)

Dad (while laughing): I told her, basically, that it really really hurts when you have rabies. And you start foaming at the mouth

(Both laughing)

Dad: She said "Babies?"

Mom: She said "when moms have babies...they foam at the mouth"

(Both laughing)