The Zine Report May 2024

The Zine Report for May 2024 featured an interview with Billy McCall and Jordan See. They discussed Billy's recent appearance on the Long Arm Stapler podcast and the concept of podcast seasons. They also talked about their zine-making processes and upcoming zine festivals, including the Southern Oregon Zine Fest and the Chicago Zine Fest. Billy also announced his new novel, "Chicago Joe and the Ancient Pages," a zine-themed adventure mystery. They mentioned other events like the Zine Not Dead Fest and the San Francisco Zine Fest. Welcome to the Zine Report. This is the Zine Report for May 2024. I am here with Billy McCall. Hello, and I'm here with Jordan See. How's it going, Billy? I'm good. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. It's really warm here and very exciting. I was asked to come on the Long Arm Stapler podcast with Mayra, and they asked me all kinds of stuff about my work and zines, and it was an interesting opportunity. Is it a one-on-one interview? It is. Yeah. Yeah. How long is that podcast? It's... I'd say 40 minutes. 40 minutes. Okay. Okay. So, good, healthy conversation? Yeah. Yeah. We talked about a lot of different stuff. It was really great. It was actually the longest I'd been able to talk to Mayra, because we only see each other at fests. Yeah. So, it was great to have a really awesome, decent conversation. They're in their fourth season now, so the podcast has been going for a while. Yeah. I've listened to a few, but I kind of forgot about it, so I need to go back and catch up on all the ones that I've missed, so we'll have to be sure to put a link so everyone listening to this podcast can go listen to your long, extended interview podcast. That would be awesome. They've also got a lot of other great guests so far this season, so I highly recommend. They took a bit of a break, but are very stoked to be coming back in full effect. Yeah. You said fourth season. I don't know what that means. Is there a podcast season, or is that specifically they do a certain season, or does everyone do a season? It is a common podcast feature. It's often thought of like a season of a TV series, where there's a chunk of time where people will post their podcasts on the regular, and then they'll take a break, and then they consider the time after this break to be the next season. It's not like television in that it's not predictable how many episodes will be in that season, but most podcasts have seasons. I know of a few that just count down, like this is their 200th episode, and they don't go by seasons. They just take breaks from time to time, but they don't do it that way, but a lot of podcasts do. Yeah. So you've got to give the creator a chance to take a break, and also build up anticipation with all the listeners. Very cool. Have you been making any zines? I did start work on a new style of folding a zine. It's longer accordion fold, but the pages are much smaller, and I used some inspiration from another one that had been like that, where I painted on the entire page to begin with, and then cut it down and folded it, and now I'm laying little bits on it as collage. Nice. Yeah. So it's like I'm backing my way into an idea for the zine. I'm constructing the visual, and then I'm going to see what it says to me. Yeah. That's awesome. I don't do zines that way, so that's really different. I always write a million words, and then I'm like, shit, I've got to think of some cool way to lay this out to make it look good. Yeah, that's how I usually do it, too. I don't always do the words first, though. Right, right. I guess I've been trying to do more artistic zines. That's good. Yeah. So what are you doing? I haven't really put out any new zines. I just finished my newsletter. Probably everyone listening to this knows I do a newsletter called Desert Sun that I put out once a month. Tomorrow's Memorial Day, so I got it all done and written, all nailed down on Tuesday. So that's good. The one little zine I did in the last month, I have a lot of people that kind of follow me and support me, and a lot of them support me through Patreon, such as yourself. So I did a little zine called People Think I'm Weird, and I just mailed that out to my Patreon supporters. So I did 69 copies. I have, I think, 52 Patreon followers, so I made a couple extras just to give to other friends and family and stuff. But I mailed that all out last week, so that was kind of fun. Limited edition, not going to be sold on Etsy or in stores. It's kind of nice to do, because I'm like, oh, it's like a little bit of effort to put this together. But then when I realized, oh, but I'm not selling it anywhere, so I don't have to write a review for it. I don't have to send it to distros or Quimby's or anything. I can just make a few copies, and it was actually like, oh, that's like really easy compared to how I usually put out a zine where I'm doing like hundreds of copies and stuff. So it was just a nice little zine to put out and give to my friends. I almost hate to say how incredibly good it is, because it's so limited run. Yeah. I'm very sad for the folks that aren't going to get to read it. You're very kind. You're very kind. Thank you. I want to make one other little announcement. Since back in January, I've been working on a new novel, and I haven't really talked about what it is or what it's about. But now's a good time. If any, I'm going to tell the title, talk a little bit about what the novel is, because I think I'm going to announce it and do a little video on Thursday anyway, talking about it. But the novel that I've been working on, that I've been editing, is called Chicago Joe, and the Ancient Pages. Ooh. It's like an adventure mystery novel. The inspiration was watching a bunch of Indiana Jones movies in one week. My partner and I were like, what if he was searching for a zine instead of an ancient artifact? So then I came up with the title, Chicago Joe and the Ancient Pages. Then I started writing the next day. The whole thing is basically this guy named Chicago Joe that is searching for a long-lost issue of Fact Sheet 5. It's very zine-oriented. It's super silly. There's a little bit of romance. There's booby traps and hidden passageways, and you have to decipher codes and get the clues. So it's like that type of story. I'm still editing it, but that's the title of it, and we're working on some illustrations and stuff. I hope to have it out by the fall. That title is dynamite. Yeah. I love it. So more on that to come, but there you go, a little teaser. It's called Chicago Joe. Excellent. I cannot wait. Upcoming events. Let's talk about zinefests. Yes. Got a bit of a list here. These are all zines that are happening starting June 1st, which is Saturday. So that's the Southern Oregon Zine Fest in Ashland, Oregon. I went back and forth over where I was going to go, and I just decided I don't have it in me this year, but it's one I want to go to desperately. The next one that I have on the list is the Zine Not Dead Fest, June 15th in Chicago. The Summer Hearts Zine Fest is also June 15th in Decatur, Georgia. And then there's also an East Village Zine Fair June 15th in New York City. I wonder if Anne Halliday will be there. I'm sure she probably will be. She better be. Yeah, although she's in the middle of a show, so she might forget that. Shout out to Anne Halliday. Yeah. Always busy, always doing cool shit. The Duvall Comic and Zine Fest will also be June 15th in Jacksonville, Florida. Kansas City will have a Zine Con on June 22nd and 23rd in Kansas City, Missouri. And then down in L.A. is the L.A. Zine Fest June 23rd. And I was at the one last year. That was a major one for them because it was the first in-person they'd had since COVID, and it was a remarkable Zine Fest, very action-packed. So many people were vendors there, and I'm actually really glad I got there close to the time it opened because eventually there was a line out the door to come in. And everybody was there. It was great. All kinds of folks that I've seen and people I've never yet met. So it's a good one. If you can make the trek to L.A. I've been to the Portland Zine Symposium, and I've been to the Chicago Zine Fest a few times. And back in the day, the Chicago one was really huge, and the Portland Zine Symposium was really big. But I always hear L.A. is, like, the biggest. All right. So, yeah, those are the ones I've heard about. What have you heard about? Yeah, I had a couple of those, too, but here's a couple others. I'm jumping ahead to August. On August 31st, in Cincinnati, there's a Zine Fest called Zine Cenati, which I'd never heard of before. But my buddy, East Coast Ed, from the Word Distribution, he told me about it. And last year he and I went to the Phoenix Zine Fest. We met up, and he's, like, one of my best buds. And so we were like, you know, once a year we should meet up in a different city at a different Zine Fest. And so he gave me, like, a list of three or four, like, what about this, this, this. And the one that we settled on was Zine Cenati. So he and I both applied, and we're both going to be going to that. So I'm very excited. I've only been to Cincinnati once, so this will be my second visit. I've never done a Zine thing there. So if anyone out there is in the Midwest region and you want something to do, August 31st is Zine Cenati. September 1st, the very next day, is the San Francisco Zine Fest in San Francisco. Most of the stuff you can find just by looking up ZineCenati.com, sfzinefest.org for the San Francisco one. If you could make Cincinnati and then San Francisco, that would be very impressive. Activize Saturday, then Sunday. Or the next option, August 31st and September 1st is the Paper Planes Zine Fest, which is in Lawrence, Kansas. So Lawrence, Kansas is having a Zine Fest two days in a row. I've never been to that one. I've always heard that's really good. And then off in the distant future is the Chicago Zine Fest, October 5th. I couldn't decide if I wanted to try to go to that, and then by the time I decided I was going to try to go to it, they had already closed their, like, applications. So if you're trying to, you know, table at that, you're too late. Applications are closed. But October 5th if you want to attend the Chicago Zine Fest. I can personally vouch for the San Francisco Zine Fest. I've gone a couple of years. It is magnificent. I got to meet V. Vale, which I didn't even realize he was local. But he does the research and has done the research series, and he's pretty remarkable. Oh, cool. Yeah, so many people there. And they do screen printing. There's a local activist screen printing group that comes out and does gorgeous screen printing with whatever you happen to bring. And they have ‑‑ usually they have a risograph machine. Nice. For everybody to just gaze upon lovingly. That's the best. All right. And what have you been reading? A million things as always. The new Razor Cake came out a couple, I think, last week, and it was really good, as it always is. I forgot to mention this earlier. I got in copies of the Unsolved Mysteries Zine that I talked about in the last one. I'm officially now distroing that. So if anyone wants the Unsolved Mysteries Zine, it's going to go up on my website this week. One of the big ones I read this week, though, someone named Lucinda Williams mailed me a zine called Bookshelf Warrior. And I've seen a bunch of reviews of this in Geography.net. So it was kind of in my mind, like, oh, I should check that out sometime. She mailed me, I think, every issue. She's got six different issues. So I read all those. She has her own personal, you know, library in her house, you know, big bookshelf. I can't remember. She calls it, like, the library museum or something. Bookshelf Warrior Library Museum, which is just the name of her collection of books. But every issue she just reviews her own books. But there's different themes. So, like, one issue is all of her different Christmas-themed books that she owns. One was a zine all about books that have lists in them, lists of zines, books with lists, books about lists. So each issue kind of has a theme. If you like book reviews, you need to find Bookshelf Warrior. Pretty good. That sounds fantastic. How about you? You've also been reading a million things. Oh, a million things. I, like, finished a graphic novel all in one self-swoop this morning. But I do have a couple of things I want to talk about. And these are from – written by folks I know. So that makes me happy to show them off. I've got this one person who is actually the branch manager of a local library branch here by me. And she's been – she was actually the first librarian I connected with to start up SoCo Zine Club. We kind of got it started before she moved off to a different branch. But she still comes to every single zine club meeting, and she's amazing. But she's got this collection of these mini zines that are all about self-care in really remarkable ways. And I've started carrying them on my Etsy. Nice. And they're gorgeous. They're full of color. They're mini zines, so they're, you know, pocket-sized. They're really fun to read. There's one on finding conflict confidence. Like when you're in conflict with someone, how to, you know, feel like you can bring yourself to the table and represent what's happening and find a way to feel heard and trust your emotions, active listening, good stuff like that. There's another one called I See Red, and it's about red flags that you might see in a relationship, which is always a good thing to remember to look for. There's one called Narcissistic Personality Style that teaches about what narcissistic personality style is, how to recognize the symptoms, and then how to become resistant to that. Yeah. And then the last one is called Unbothered, and it is about how to lower your reaction to negativity. It's not one of those be positive all the time things. It's more of choosing your battles, dropping down your body response to those stressful negative things. Choosing where to put your energy. Right. And it's so valuable right now where there is so much that can trigger us all, make us blindingly angry, and it feels like there's nothing we can do about it. This is the time to really be as unbothered as we can be to save our own energy levels. Yeah. So, yeah, her name is Rosalie. Oh, that's a good collection of stuff. Yeah, it's great. You can find those on my Etsy store, and I'll put a link to that. And the other things I've been reading, there's this zine-ster kind of in the South Bay that I correspond with a bit. And the thing I love is that he writes a zine about the Church of the Subgenius, which has been in a special place in my heart for decades. Yeah, yeah. And for those who haven't yet learned about this lovely religion, it is kind of an art avant-garde absurdist performance entity that's been going since the late 70s. And it revolves around a created power source, I suppose, named J.R. Bob Dobbs. And the great thing that I always loved about anything subgenius-related is that anything that's written usually is just chock-a-block with strange and unusual stories, really, really great collage, and lots of utterly absurd things, which is my very, very favorite. So these are called The Vault of Slack. And the next zine I'm going to write is Reverend Xenofact. And these seem to be collaboration zines. They are 8 1⁄2 by 11 size. The first one was just paper. The second one has a really nice swanky cover on it. And I will post Reverend Xenofact's email address, and I'm sure he would be happy to send it out. I'm looking for something that's, like, kooky-crazy. You need something to believe in. Yeah. And it really pokes fun at religion. It pokes fun at kind of mob mentality. But at the same time, it's super fun irreverence. I've read some of the subgenius stuff over the years, but mostly when I think of the subgenius, I think of just, like, all the visuals they put out, like these snarky postcards and posters, which is, like, clever collage and, like, cool screen-printed images. And, like, I always think of just the visuals of it, which I always love. Yeah. Very psychedelic. Yeah. I suppose to illustrate the style, two really big proponents of it were Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo and Paul Rubens of Pee Wee's Playhouse. Yeah. So it's got its share of big fancy. Of dedicated weirdos. That's right. So if you like those folks, you're going to love Subgenius. Very cool. I think that wraps it up for Episode 3. I think it does. So great to talk to you. You too. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Send one of us a message if you want to say hello, and if you have any zine events coming up that we should know about, let us know. That's right. So go read zines. Yep. Bye.