Word: zine
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Cometbus is a case in point. A hand-collated zine with a cult following, it recounts the travels, incidents and imaginings of Aaron, an American drifter who wanders the contemporary landscape in search of adventure, both ordinary and profound. With more than 30 issues published in 12 years, Cometbus is considered a classic in this subterranean world. Like many zines, it is filled with words. Issue No. 30, for instance, is 82 pages of pure print, sometimes crawling off the page. It contains this paean to punk love: "Punk rock love is . . . looking at her tattoos while she's asleep...
...titles have been produced in the U.S., and Friedman says the cottage industry is growing at an annual rate of 20%. Doug Biggert, who oversees the supply of some 500 titles at 102 of the Tower record, video and book stores, says the chain sells 4,000 zines a month. The supply always changes, of course. Dozens of new titles pop up and fold each month and focus on everything from the benign to the outre. 8-Track Mind, for instance, extols the aural experience of listening to eight-track tapes. ANSWER Me!, on the other hand, claims...
...vast majority of zines, however, settle for the slightly irreverent. Some have literary aspirations, others revel in white-trash culture; some have , a weirdly tight focus, others purposefully ramble. Diseased Pariah News uses gallows humor to lampoon the daily trauma of living with AIDS; Processed World ridicules the consumer culture of Popeye's chicken shacks and Subway sandwich shops; the I Hate Brenda Newsletter lambastes former Beverly Hills, 90210 star Shannen Doherty for everything from her pancake-white makeup to her recital of the Pledge of Allegiance at the 1992 Republican Convention. Dirt Rag is a service zine for dirt...
Whether discussing food or crepe-sole shoes, the point is always to take the personal public, while preserving an intimate audience. That's why the thing most feared by a zine publisher is fame, even the notorious kind. Greta, for instance, is the publisher of Mudslap, but Greta is an alias, and she puts out her zine as she hitches rides in the boxcars of America's railway system. "I don't want anyone to know too much about it -- 'cause if they do, then people will think they're Jack London or Steinbeck. They'll go freight hopping...
...would never buy it, and that they felt confused by its message. FTH is ultimately just a collection of pornographic shocks, most of which are badly written, interspersed with serious pieces on gay rights and abortion. Sold by subscription and in bookstores and newsstands across the country, the growing zine has a circulation of 5,000 and remains optimistic. Although the impression caused by the pieces is ambiguous, underlying each work is the reaffirmation of the fact that "we are flesh. We are blood. And we can play with...