< zine:personal >
MARKTIME #71
("$2.00 cash/stamps/zine-trade" from Mark / Box 6753 / Fullerton, CA / 92834 USA.
E-mail)
This is essentially a perzine in the form of a newsletter that comes out, I gather, every few months. This issue is the year-end edition and contains a month-by-month rundown of Mark's life in 2003. Mostly it's about his job situation and newfound love, but we also get a list of 42 (!) local eateries he enjoys with brief descriptions. Mark says #72 should be out soon (if not already).
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< zines >
SUGAR NEEDLE #24
($1.00 + a stamp or "selective trades for zines or cool candy" from Corina Fastwolf / PO Box 300152 / Minneapolis, MN / 55408 USA
or Phlox Icona / 1174-2 Briarcliff Rd. / Atlanta, GA / 30306 USA)
Sugar Needle is a fun zine all about candy (well, mostly about candy) and this particular issue is chock full of treats that editors Corina and Phlox
don't recommend. "Spicy Cocktail"-flavored gum, a strange-sounding dessert-in-a-tablet ("Guilt Free"), Serbian chocolate, tongue tattoos and much more get the thumbs-down but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to resist some of this stuff if I saw it. The one thing they really do recommend is Yorkie, a candy bar from the UK, the package of which proclaims "5 Masculine Chunks of Chocolate" and "Girls - Can You Handle It?". Nestlé is apparently much more manly across the pond. As a bit of a break from all the sweet treats there's also a chat with Epoxies band member Roxy and a bit on the rejected CDs found in used record shops. The whole issue is littered with scans of candy packages, drawings and hand-coloring (and, hey, glitter too!). It's fun stuff.
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< mail art >
(Malok / Box 41 / Waukau, WI / 54980 USA)
I also wanted to mention that I recently got a few interesting collage items in the mail from Malok, the postcard above being my favorite. I'm not sure what's available or if there's any price attached but, if you lean toward this sort of thing, I'd recommend sending something you made yourself and seeing what happens.
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< comics/x >
RECRIMINATIONS
($1.00 from Chris Gumprich / Arctic Star Studios / PO Box 34002, RPO Fort Richmond / Winnipeg, Manitoba / R3T 5T5 / CANADA. Web:
www.arcticstarstudios.com)
This is a short, moody comic by Chris Gumprich and Emma Klingbeil about betrayal and a failed relationship. It's a bar-aftermath sequence that's smokey, emotional and just a little pathetic (such is love). The art (by Klingbeil) is done in black and gray tones but I can't tell how it was drawn. Conte crayon? Wacom tablet? I'm not sure, but I can tell you that the interior art isn't run through the same grainy filter (?) as the cover and looks better for it. If relationship drama about people who can't get their shit together (i.e., humans) is your bag, check it out.
[ Link to this review ]
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< zines >
PRISON MUSIC
($1.00 from Megan / PO Box 184 / Yoncalla, OR / 97499 USA. Produced by John Adams 768543 / Rt. 1, Box 150 / Tennessee Colony, TX / 75884 USA)
Review by Randy Osborne
A pair of Texas prison inmates, John Adams (#768543) and Hector Martinez (#1006536), smuggled this jail zine into the “free” world with help from non-inmate Megan, who makes the 14-pager available to readers interested in finding out – among other things – just how bad confinement can be. It can be very bad.
“You may think it wrong to steal or break the law when you’re forced through these gates the first time, but you will feel a criminal upon your release,” writes John, in the course of detailing of rotten lockup conditions. Not the sort of remark parole boards look fondly upon, but John seems more about honesty than about saving his “two-time loser” (his phrase) ass from the squalor in which he finds himself.
Which brings up something else. I’m a big fan of prison zines, but one maddening quality most share is that the writer stays coy about what he’s in for. Would I quit reading if he said murder? No. But omitting from a prison zine – which tends to be about life behind bars – the set of circumstances that put the writer there in the first place seems a glaring hole in the story. This especially so since one point of the zine often is the way luck is largely what separates ordinary people from those in the clink.
Prison Music warns that “until you’ve been crushed by society, don’t be too quick to think you’d test better or more ethically.”
But that’s a general point. Even with its misspellings, its jailhouse ruminations on the merit of Christianity (to which many convicts have converted, about which others are skeptical, in slammers across the land forever), its quote about “America the Hypocrite,” and its inmate sarcasm (“contrary to what society believes, I am human”),
Prison Music is a quick, sorrowful, worthwhile read. You can’t run your eyes over the Adams passage that begins, “The agony comes in the aftermath of dreams …” without feeling a pang. Be glad you are on this side.
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