New Zines for Expozine 2024

I have made three new zines for this years edition of Montreals rollicking zine fair.

Thematically, these are charged with the beauty and brutality we witness routinely in our world.

I’ve only made forty of each and these will be available exclusively in person at the fair.

This year I also made a little description card so folks not into chatting can have a guess about what’s going on at my table!

World Building Continues

I sat with my notes from my first world building exercise and found that scenes, dialogue, additional characters and relationships simply upped themselves and shuffled into place. it gave me a taste of what may happen if I gave myself more time to do this; if I immersed myself deeper into this.

I'm doing this world building longhand, in an Ikea rocking chair I wanted to get rid of just a few months ago. I sit in a corner of our middle room with a lamp shining down on my papers.

I type with two fingers and have been doing so for so long that it just may not be possible to learn proper typing. Writing longhand allows me to zip back and forth between notes, add to this part, let that part breed something new. Of course, I can do the same digitally but for now, it simply makes good sense to use pen and paper.

Another thing that happened recently is I made yet another new zine. This one is 44 pages covers included. It's a stream of consciousness comic strip about accessing visionary narrative realms via asemic writing. I let it sit overnight, rereading it often the next day. I made some corrections and additions a day after that and printed it up on the next day in the first edition of 20 copies. I mailed some out to some comic book friends in the hopes that my semi-fugue state has yielded something noteworthy. One never knows. It could be junk, it could have something to it.

I like the idea of the unlikely thing being a hit. Usually, the stuff I'm convinced is hot really isn't. My taste is not the deciding factor. In any case, my takeaway from this quick zine making is simply that: Do it. Finish it. Get it out there. Make another one.

The world building I've been discussing belongs to a larger project and it's a relief to have some place to drop my errant thoughts, a basket to catch these characters, names, situations that I have been collecting. While this big thing brews and inches on, I'll pound out smaller offerings, I'll commit my smaller projects to print.

Unearthing Monster Island 2

Occasionally I act as editor. In 2003 I edited a small comics zine called Monster Island. I invited a few friends and my brother John to contribute artwork for it. It was a typical ledger size folded in half.

In 2004, bolstered by the excitement of the first issue, I set out on a more ambitious project for Monster Island number 2. Around 20 artists contributed comics, artwork and essays. I also included some bits from reference books on mythology and world mysteries.
The book sported two fold-outs, one silk screened, the other copied, a dime bag full of stickers stapled in, some half pages, kids drawings, essays like I said and was generally a headache to collate.
It was an edition of 150 and I pulled it off for Expozine, Montreal's zine and small press fair.

Well, languishing in storage for the last 14 years or so were 15 remaining copies, uncollated. Just this last week I delved in, finally pulling this stack of paper out of deep freeze and put it together, complete with cardstock covers and french flaps. It was an act of will, spring cleaning and desperation. This stack had been kicking around my studio for far too long in a state of limbo and if I didn't bite the bullet and just deal with it I was afraid it would eventually get tossed away out of frustration. I saved myself a bit of heartache and just did the job, So now there are 15 copies of this thing in my shop. You are welcome to buy it, I want 15 bucks each because it was a pain AND it's vintage now I guess.

Here's the contributor list:

Young Adonis (Jesse Bochner)
Marc Bell
Helene Brosseau
Andy Brown
Jake Brown
Patrick R. Burger
Howard Chackowicz
Meaghan Garner
Francis Hitchings
Shawn Jefferies
Leyla Majeri
John Mavreas
Bernie Mireault
Marc Ngui
Joe Ollmann
Owen Plummer
Salgood Sam (Max Douglas)
Carlos Santos
Zachary Silberberg
Egerton Sykes
Sara Tonin (Jen MacIntyre)

Make a simple collage zine

Collage zines are satisfying to make for a number of reasons. They can be made quickly, they accommodate accidents and improvisation, they can use text and/or image, they can be launched from found source material.

I usually use one 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, folded over twice. I keep track of which end is up and which quarter will be the cover, back cover and centre spread. I glue and reglue, spinning the sheet around as I go. Narrative emerges when I'm quick enough to think I've spotted one.

Collage, in general, does away with any kind of blank page syndrome because you can redirect your focus on the found material, such as a few measly pages of a magazine, instead of your lofty art goals. Zines, as opposed to finished frameable art, have an ephemeral quality that is also pressure relieving. You can make 10 photocopies of your zine, leave them in the coffee shop and start working on the next one. The idea that you are making serious art should be left with the snippings you toss in the recycling box. This letting-go gesture just may be what bolsters your sense of actually making meaningful work.

I usually make a few copies of a zine and then tackle my next project.

That's it. Today's blog post, as inconsequential as it is, was sparked by me finding the above image on my desktop and thinking I can write a paragraph or two about it.

Also, try to make collage without scissors, it really brings the beast out and that direct use of hands-on paper is quite emotionally satisfying too. It also does away with preciousness and persnickety scissor habits.

Wr/Dr

Twice a week, very Tuesday and Thursday, I drop the tyke off at daycare and head for the third floor corner seat of the McGill library to pore over the Blue Book, which is my business strategy and enhanced lifestyle notebook, and to pound out an average of ten pages of minimalist comics, today I did twelve.

The Blue Book is where I've been detailing plans and thoughts for my business, Monastiraki, and my art and career in general. In blue ballpoint pen, I write down schedules, attainable goals, ambitions. All in a fairly clear and organized way, cross referencing entries and everything. I do this to warm up. I get into it. Sometimes I find some book on branding and read a page or two to bring the experience up a notch. This is new for me. My notebooks of yore have been havens for scribbles, stoner notes and doodles, all words hardly revisited let alone legible.

When that's done, I crack out a couple of mechanical pencils and my clipboard full of fresh 8.5 x 11 white sheets and start drawing minimal little heads, six per page, each with a few words, telling a simple story. I started this comic project last year and mostly spun my wheels, creating a frustrating stream of consciousness comic about the false starts of the creative process, all in real time.

Since the new year, since I've turned the corner, as they say, the comics are considerably less about humming and hawing and more about the thoughts and experiences I've been having rediscovering my path as a magician who is intent on authoring his life proactively. It's been liberating to say the least. I draw simple lines and write simple words in a way that feels like journaling and comic making. I thought today that if I were to make a zine of this stuff, which I will (for TCAF 2016), I may write as part of my bio on the back cover that the author has shown he can draw elsewhere, this is about something else.

I've often derided what I call 'Head-Coffee-Head' comics, comics that simply show the characters head in some panels, and a coffee cup or other mundane feature in other panels. Well folks, I've come a long way and I'm done for the time being busting my back on ornate guitar solos. I've searched for a way to write and draw quick stream of consciousness work and I've found it. It's one floating head and a few words in an open panel six times per page. I've got a nice stack of the stuff now and I like where it's going. Some of the pages, even when they are part of a sequence, seem to stand up on their own, like a serial, so I'm thinking hard of uploading them as a webcomic. I'll also make a series of 12 or so page zines, each with a simple cover design that repeats, kinda like King Cat.

I'm truly excited about all this stuff, Wr for writing and Dr for drawing, whether it's journal and notebook focus or simple comics. Stay tuned. I'm going to share this stuff.

Another Noisy Booklet

Lately, when I find myself at the copyshop running some graphic errand, I either fish into the recycling bins for fodder or hopelessly remix whatever images I am carrying and whip off an edition of ten of some weird little noise book. Here is one, dated the 18th of January, 2006. I end up mailing these things out to whoever I happen to be artistically enamoured with at the moment. This one seems to be composed of two drawings, overlapped and remixed, that I drew for Warren Hill's zine "2$ (Comes With Mix Tape)"