The DiTKO! Zine Library

Oh No / Oh My (A Collection of Emails) by Kseniya Yarosh
Catalog Number (M-KY01-ON01)

Anonymity is one of the tools that has always been available to zine writers, but it has seen far less use in the 21st century. The internet having become a far more potent place to anonymously release ideas or content . Which has lead many modern zine writers to instead cultivate their specific identity as a way to enhance the more personal reach zines can have. In a world where identities can be created and shed with ease online, what happens when a person with a fixed identity encounters a group of people whose identities are more liquid?

Yarosh examine this dissonance in Oh No / Oh My by publishing a series of emails she received in response to Craigslist W4M ads she posted between 2005 and 2008. And while the identities of the responders are frequently redacted, one begins to question how real the projected personas actually are. Which emails to Yarosh are sincere,”do not suicide please!!!” And which are merely performance of what the responder believes that Yarosh wants to hear? Are the responders not aware of how unappealing they are presenting themselves in their email? Such as the mohawked “Paul” whose favorite song (“Boys Don’t Cry” by The Cure) just came on and if your wondering if he’s on the dope, “the answer of course, is yes”. Or are they so convinced of their own self worth, “I saw a movie at the angelika once. the screen sucked. I think I’m an interesting stranger.” to the point of delusion?

Many of men responding pay no attention to the details outline in Yarosh’s personal ads. Multiple times she states that she is looking for someone “between the ages of 19-26.”. Still, she receives a response from a man that claim to be “a quite young 55 but please do not let that scare you.”, an email written in all caps and bereft of periods that ends “OH, AND BY THE WAY, I AM 35,” and a man who claims to be “on the upside of 40,” and send a picture of his son Andrew instead of himself.  Several replies seem less a conversation and more a soap box for the responders issues with women. “Have I imposed an awful question. Have I gone against your plans,” asks one responder. One potential suitor’s only requirement is that Yarosh not, “be predictable. If I know what your going to say next, I don’t need to hear you say it.” Multiple responders discuss their relationship woes, “we were all in some open relationship that i was always totally uncomfortable with,” writes one in his introductory email. One cuts to the chase and make his entire response, “nasty nose.”

Does the less personal connection of the internet inherently imply that the connections made there need be less personal? In one of her W4M ads, Yarosh explicitly states, “Like many decent-looking 20-something gals, I could get a lay, should I really want one; the point is that it’s not my goal.” And while Yarosh is consistent in her message that, “I am not looking to_hook_up but I am seeking some interesting company in exchange for the same,” This does little to stop the blatant sexual responses, “im a good fun guy… maybe i can become your slave / lover,” she receives. Other replies function as a laundry list of details the responders believe will sway Yarosh or any other woman they send a likely identical list to. Who could resist the charms of “Bill”, who claims he is “romantic, erotic, love to tease & be teased & make a woman see colors she never knew existed,” especially when he lets Yarosh know he is ” very well endowed… 8 1/2” when hard as a rock.”? Or Chris, who not only has, “good hygiene, grooming and manners,” but is also, “Not pushy, or a user.”

When our bachelors are not trying to overwhelm Yarosh with their stunning personalities, “I HAVE GREAT FAMILY VALUES, I LOVE TO LAUGH AND BE FUNNY,” they make moves to seduce her with their romantic charm. But the romantic gestures all fall into the trap of being a man’s idea of what a woman would construe as romance, as learned from television and movies. It is difficult not to superiorly snicker  at the men who send cell phone pictures of a single rose, or the poet who sends reams of poetry about how “She makes me smile, And she understands.” We see a slight variation on the sensitive lover trope in guise of the tortured artist archetype. One young man writes, “I continuously write screenplays. None that I think warrant acknowledgment… I drink smoke and do bad things that will most likely kill be by the time im 37.” While another Byron-esque suitor writes, “I act / appear as a double sized wide eyed kid, think maybe not growing up is the most grown up thing someone can do, but have too passed through pain, fathomed darkness for 5 years… Don’t let the wicked keep you down.” Not interesting enough for you? There is also the ironic cool of the “tall nerd” who is into “mustaches, monkeys, midgets,” but very against “girls in andre the giant shirts.”

Yarosh prefaces the zine by saying that the “it is not my goal to mock or ridicule, but rather to illustrate some don’ts of online correspondence in an amusing way.” But despite her intentions a majority of the zine seems to do just the opposite. The men are all trying overly hard in a way that comes off as insincere and self serving. They ignore the interesting parts of Yarosh’s personality; quirky, intelligent zine writer  in her 20’s seeking an equal who is “boyish but mature, intelligent but social, sweet but with enough edge to make a dark joke.” Instead focusing only on the fact that she is female and thus a potentially obtainable object. They are the “Oh No’s” from the title. Which leaves the “Oh My’s unaccounted for.

The few fellows who don’t set off creep alarms are by and large the younger men. Those who respond to Yarosh and tell her, “i think that you are really awesome, soely based on what i just read on craigslist.” Or those who, “like your tasteful and understated use of html bold.” The responders who engage with Yarosh’s identity as outlined in her W4M ads instead of primarily blasting their own identity as if it where a resume or a carnival barker’s spiel are the ones that best endear themselves to the reader. These are also the boys who respond in ways that appropriately match the things Yarosh is looking for in a potential match. In words that almost echo the initial W4M ad, Paul responds “I’m looking for someone I can click with, talk and not talk with, do things with, someone who has things to say and values the things I have to say.”

So for all the “don’ts” of online dating seen in this ‘zine, the most prevalent “do” seems to be presenting yourself as full human being instead of a commercial product and treating the recipient of your advances as equal parts complete human being.

- Robin Enrico

Shame Parade by Brandon Elston
Catalog Number (M-BE01-SP01)

As mentioned clearly on the front cover, Shame Parade is an “Adults Only” comic. Not just for it graphic depictions of sex, but for its honest depictions of sex and the social dynamics that surround sex. The zine being composed of several vignettes depicting the sordid lives of a few long standing couples: parodies of characters from Little Lulu and Popeye as well as characters of Marcy and Peter (the pig) who are featured on the cover. All of them examining they ways in which their romance has failed in a darkly comic manner. Case in point, Tubby in the Little Lulu parody can’t get it up without “a few bong rips” and the ogre like Harry kills and cannibalizes his nagging, Olive Oyl knock off wife Hazel in “Newlyweds Never Change.” The artwork duplicating the comics being parodied or in the case of Marcy and Peter, staying within the look of the newspaper comic strips, but making it all significantly sweatier, hairier and more snaggletoothed.

Much of Shame Parade focuses on the dynamic between Peter and Marcy as an slightly older married couple stuck in a routine marriage. The first vignette has Peter noticing a photograph of  younger Marcy during sex and ends with her giving him a hand job while he admits, “We’re getting old.” They are both aware of the general crumminess of their marriage, but also aware that any other alternative is probably no better. They grin and bear it. This is best reflected in the scene where Peter smokes a cigar and muses out the window at how he knows that every night his wife will come home wanting to, “eat, drink, and fuck!” And while he says, “But I don’t complain! I go on!” he also admits that the piece of cake his wife brought home for “her little man,” has conditioned him to be a “fucking house-boy!” Of course, being that this is a cartoon, Peter tries to jump out the window to escape his now feral wife; only to be caught by the ankles, dragged back inside and whilst taking his wife from behind, lets the audience know, “I know my place, I’m a slave.”

Peter can’t escape, not when his wife psychoanalyzing him with her new-found grad school education (that he is paying for). Or when watching a movie where a distraught wife shoots her leaving husband, he can only exclaim to an empty movie theater, “Marcy better not try that shit on me!” This sense of diminished hope weighs heavy throughout the comic especially in the final section where Peter is depicted chiseling out a statue of a topless woman riding a horse. Speaking directly to the audience he asks, “have you ever noticed how, sometimes, things work themselves out?” The wording and the imagery is crucial here; the statue he carves is anything but polished, betraying the haphazard way things have worked themselves out. In art, romance and life Peter (and ourselves) must deal with all the “false starts and frustrations… guilt over idle time,” as well as the things we have “very little control over.” But in making his sculpture, he has at least found some “completion, satisfaction… a little pride,” and most of all “hope.” Neither the statue nor his marriage meet any sort of ideal, but they are at least something, they are at least his.

Elston ends the comic with a quote from writer James Agee, “I know I am making the choice most dangerous to an artist, in valuing life above art.” And Peter certainly seems to be walk a tight rope between a content life and artistic satisfaction; he hugs his wife in a moment of terror and his statue (an idealized version of his wife?) in a moment of triumph. But perhaps the message here is that neither is mutually exclusive. That while contentment might stifle the artistic drive, neither it nor art alone can hold back the darkness and feelings of hopelessness forever. Both choices are a struggle, as all things in life are, but there is something to be found in both if we look for it, and maybe that is just good enough.

- Robin Enrico

The Legend of Rebob Mountain / The Day I Killed Jesus by Julia Wertz
Catalog Number: (M-JW01-LR01)

For much of the last decade Julia Wertz has been writing and drawing hilarious autobiographical comics where she rarely casts herself in a flattering light. Some of the highest notes of her work have been those self effacing comics where she reveals in being “the worst”. Of special interest though are the stories she tells about her childhood, because just like in her work about her adult life she is unflinching in showing her flaws. However, as the holding of ridiculous beliefs and behaving like an idiot are a more universally shared experience of childhood, we are allowed to not only laugh at but also see ourselves in Julia’s youthful antics.


The Legend of Rebob Mountain / The Day I Killed Jesus is a split zine containing the two titular stories. “The Day I Killed Jesus” being told via Wertz’s standard comic format while “The Legend of Rebob Mountain” takes the form of an illustrated essay. Both are stories of a six year old Wertz and her relationship with imaginary creatures: the flying, pet stealing, child eating monkey’s of Rebob Mountain, and the “unseen guest” at Julia’s tea party, Jesus Christ.  And while it is certainly easy to laugh as young Julia constantly  takes count of her “10 cats, all who lived outdoors” because the disappearance of even one would be proof of the existence of the whispered of flying monkeys of Rebob Mountain. Or when she serves too much pilfered tylenol to her tea party guests (Rainbow Bright, Smurf, and Jesus) and then panics that she has killed them and will be kicked out of “vacation bible school for sure!” We can also empathize. No one can ever truly forget the dumb and embarrassing things they did when they were a child. Nightmarish show and tell’s or school plays becoming the stuff upon which the therapy industry is built.
 
The strength of Wertz’s work about her childhood is that while her stories are told from an adult voice, the children in her stories never act like miniature grown ups, they remain children. The way her brother mispronounces oregano when he says he is going to go put “aregano in the fish tank”. Or in the panels of a Julia standing in her room as a prim and poised host to her imaginary tea party and saying, “Well, isn’t this a pleasant evening!” Or looking at the M.A.S.H game in Julia’s notebook that lists potential future jobs as “teacher, trash man, ballerina, zoo keeper.” The children are dummies, but then all children (including ourselves) are dummies. So we are right there with Julia as she pulls the covers up to her chin worrying that after having “killed” Jesus, “millions of people all over the world were futilely sending up their hopes and dreams to a dead savior.” Those intense feelings of guilt for things that no one person, least not a six year old, is responsible for are unique to childhood.

Both stories are looking at this way in which children handle the terrors of youth. Even when the children aren’t so clueless; Julia’s childhood playmates dies of cancer and the children know their parents aren’t entirely being truthful when they say “Aidan has gone to a better place.” There is still pathos when she writes that the children, “waited for Aidan to climb up the rope ladder of one of our tree forts… to tell us it was all a joke, that Rebobs didn’t exist and ha ha, he got us good right?” They’re still learning to cope with death, their fears of loss taking the form of winged monkeys. As adults, we can see this process of maturation happening in the children. But we should also question whether we as adults actually have learned to cope with things like guilt, and loss, and death.

Wertz’s art here is pretty consistent with the style she has locked into over the last several years. The lines are clean and crisp if occasionally sparse. The compositions and settings are simple but often have nice minor touches such as the Ewoks, Pogo Ball and other assorted toys strewn about Julia’s childhood room. An especially strong punch line is delivered when Julia reads the warning label on the back of the the Tylenol bottle she has just served her tea party guests (double helpings for Jesus), and we see a wide shot of her peaking through her fingers at a face down on the table Rainbow Brite and a Smurf who has fallen off his chair onto his back. Julia renders her childhood self as pigtailed, doe eyed, pudgy faced and noodle armed; but this is perfect for conveying the emotional realm she is dealing here. The character is an exaggeration that conveys the reality of the exaggerated emotions children feel. And the light style is our cue to laugh at the proceedings.

- Robin Enrico

SCUZZI by John Pham
Catalog Number: (M-JP03-S01)

In 1962 Andy Warhol produced “Campbell’s Soup Cans”, reproducing the image of the iconic soup can 32 times and deemed it art. Thus solidifying the concept of re-appropriating an image from the commercial world and turning it into art. John Pham’s Scuzzi works in a similar manner but appropriates the form of commercial video game magazines from the early 80s. The form and the content of this zine owe much to Warhol, as the entirely risographed zine warps and distorts the colors and images in a way that resembles his Marilyn Diptych.

The content is provided with out context and on a surface level exists as nostalgia binge. Remember how crazy the 80’s where? Can you believe they made a Frankie goes to Hollywood game AND a Gilligan’s Planet cartoon?Yo, check out Satan with a glowing pentagram on his head in this ad for Sega’s Crackdown! Oh my God! Robocop peeing in a urinal! It’s tumblr in the form of high production value zine. And Scuzzi is certainly entertaining on that level.

But when reading the zine in the context of Pham’s other work there seem to be an implicit commentary going on in the zine. If the point of this zine were only to poke knowing fun at the past, then it would not include pages of reproductions of “90 IF INKEY$=”” THEN 90” BASIC coding language. Nor would it feature a 2 page spread of British programers from the C64 era, such as Ian Stewart, founder of Gremlin Interactive. Or the page of Jeff Minter working on what appears to be Mutant Camels in his studio. Even the reproductions of old gaming magazine reviews of Bad Dudes and Wonder Boy are all part of a larger theme that seems to be at play here. That an actual person literally wrote, “This isn’t Bad Dudes, but it isn’t Bad Duds either”. For as much as computer games of the 80s were a mass market consumer product, all of this product was created by human hands. All of these games were written about and reviewed by human minds.

As much as it may represent one of the supreme bastardizations of a piece of culture; a small group of human beings actually made a video game out of the film Platoon. Images of both the marketing for and a review of this game are featured in this zine. Human beings had to sit there long into the night and code all those lines of machine language to create this game. Then had to recode it for the multiple systems available at the time. Some hapless video game reviewers had to write copy about Platoon the video game in an attempt to inform consumers about its virtues (or lack thereof). While a graphic designer somewhere must have created the packaging and advertisement for the game and another had to do the magazine layout for the review.

The majority of the creative output in video games quickly becomes resigned to the dust bin of history, and so does all of that human effort. Pham’s zine makes a small stab at retaining the memory of that once Herculean effort. He is perhaps seeking to place this output in a higher art context via the risograph reproductions. Trying legitimize these creative efforts in the eyes of those who might look down upon the medium. The picture of Jeff Minter is perhaps the biggest clue to this intention. Minter’s work in video games spans almost the entire history of gaming and has often been done alone and with little corporate influence. Minter functioning as the John Cassavetes (look to Pham’s excellent but long out of print Substitute Life for his thoughts on Cassevetes) of his medium. But all of those early programer’s who braved the strange new world of code and the wild west of software publishing in the early 80’s are reflected in one of the zine’s final images. A man multiplying himself into larger greater version of himself haloed by light.

This greater version of self comes because they were able to spread their ideas. To each other and to consumers. One page reproduced in Scuzzi gives us the programing code for “The Driedel Game” made by Stephanie Snyder in 1983. In much the same way that Punk Rock and Zines are all about doing it yourself. So was this early form of game making. The user at home could type in “520 CLS (5): PRINT#133, “IT’S YOUR TURN, “N$(P1);:PRINT#259, “PRESS 8 TO SPIN THE DREIDL”;:PRINT#298, “OE E TO END”;” along with many other lines of code and be on their way to recreating Snyder’s game. These lines of code would be spread through the magazines at the time to give other ametuer programs the power to make their own game. An idea that seemingly disappeared for over two decades and is only now coming back through the work of groups like Baby Castles and individuals like Anna Anthropy.

Pham’s zine a call back to those strange days of computer and video game in the early 80’s; both the madness and the magic. And like Wahrol, his reproductions give us the chance to have a dialogue with that iconic imagery in a new and interesting way.

- Robin Enrico

“Duh Studge” in Real Rap #1 and 2 by Benjamin Urkowitz
Catalog Number: (S-BU01-RR01/02)


“Duh Studge” in Real Rap is currently a two issue series by Benjamin Urkowitz presented in the small in size, short in page count Oily Comics format. To give a proper sense of the work Urkowitz is doing with this series, both issues will be discussed as a whole.

Real Rap is the story of its titular character Duh Studge (most likely pronounced “The Stooge”), a Michelin Man lookalike who is also “Brooklyn’s Favorite White Boi”. Real Rap presents the reader with brief  (rarely more than a page or two) snap shots of incidents in Duh Studge’s life that paint him as sort of holy fool of old school hip hop. Duh Studge proceeds from the belief that “Nu-skool” hip hop is devoid of “realness,” and that he has the power to bring back the “realness” because his “computer’s got a microphone and everything.”  Of course Duh Studge is beyond deluded in his goal, as the first page ends with the image of Duh Studge rapping away in front of his computer while the narrator explaining that Studge is laying down “some of the wackest rhymes of all time & thinks they’re dope.”

Duh Studge would be a character worthy of mockery were it not for the the slow burn of details Urkowitz gives us about the sad state of Studge’s life. Studge lives alone save for his cat (that he believes is actually 2 cats), and the cookie jar containing his mom’s ashes. In giving the reader a guided tour of his apartment, Studge points to the jar and says, “sometimes I’ll talk to it like she kin hear. An it’s pretty much jus the same from if she was still alive.” Other incidents recounted include when Studge walks into a tree and believes he has been mugged or when at 17, “Studge losses his virginity to a kind & benevolent woman who takes his wallet & immediately regrets the $2.29 & Chuck E. Cheese gift card she played the fat idiot for.” In perhaps the most tragic and well executed segment, over the course of six panels Studge is seemingly befriended by mustachioed baseball fan on the subway who convinces him to give him some change from the ATM. Of course, after handing the man a twenty and asking him, “So uh wha’s your name wanna catch duh game later or?” the man has disappeared.

If there is any hope for Studge it is his “closest (and only?)friend” Nast-e Nick-e. She is a underground rapper who has “achieved notoriety for her pornographic grooves and lyrics,” while her “sex-positive outlook and quasi-masculine appearance has earned her a modest LGBT following.” In all  of the scenes in which she appears she serves as a voice of reason to Studge’s foolish belief that he will soon be rich and famous enough to stop having to work at “the subway station and stop usin’ mom’s old money.” She criticizes his use of beats from “illestbeatz.com”, or his rapping about how he has a “bitch in erry town.” when she doubts he “even got ONE bitch!” She gives him advice on his flow, grimacing when he raps, “I kill errybody what mess wit me, I scare ‘em real hard an make ‘em pee”. Sadly Studge ignores her advice on how to work on his flow, and goes back to listening to “I got myself a forty. I’ve got myself a shorty.” Other instances, such as when Studge claims “erry day I’m hustlin’” is an example of “real” rap, only continue to reenforce Studge’s hopelessness.

The sad sham of Studge’s life could be seen as a tragedy where it not for Urkowitz’s hyper cartoonist art work. Studge himself shambles and sweats around the page like a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in a varsity jacket and baseball hat. He has no nose, dots eyes and a donut for a mouth. For all his failures, its hard not to laugh at Studge and his obliviousness. Another notable flourish is Nast-e Nick-e making sine waves of her arms as she explains flow to Studge. The line work on both the characters and scenery is sparse but never feels empty. When Studge is tricked into returning to the apartment of a couple looking for a third participant in a sexual encounter, all the saccharine baby / family photos placed in the background hammer home the utter awkwardness of this scene for Studge. While a night scene where Studge hurriedly ties his shoes features a lovely abstract background of white shapes on black to render the look of city lights in the darkness.

- Robin Enrico

I was super honored to have a small selection of zines available for reading in the “zine nook” during the Women in D.I.Y. panel / show / public meeting last night at the Silent Barn. Working bar I was able to see a few super cool people reading and enjoying zines in between sets. Thank you to everyone who helped make this event so awesome.

- Robin Enrico

Deafula #4 by Kerri Radley
Catalog Number: (M-KR01-DF04)

Disclosure: This is the first zine I have ever personally sought out a copy of, for the purposes of adding it to the Ditko Zine Library. Having obtained a copy for myself at the Brooklyn Zine Fest, I was so impressed that I felt it was important to make this zine available from the collection. Deafula is an autobiographical series (currently up to issue 5), created by Kerri Radley, that is striking not only for its representation of a little heard minority voice, but for the profound ability of that voice to come through the page and relate Radley’s experience to the reader. Radley is legally deaf, and each issue documents her experience as a deaf person from a different angle. The fourth issue focusing on Radley’s working life; how being deaf has shaped both her ability to find work and to function as a worker, and what it even means to be an actively employed deaf person.

Radley immediately engages with the audience and their potential preconceived notions of deafness by posing the questions the reader themselves might be asking. The first being, “but wait. you’re deaf! don’t you get a nice disability check every month from our lovely government?”. Her response of “Nope.” setting much of the tone of the rest of the zine. Radley is very direct and unflinching in her discussion of the constant no-win situations that her disability places her in. While she would qualify for both SSI (Supplemental Security Income) and SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) benefits due to her disability, “in america, you can’t work and receive disability at the same time.” She is thus forced to chose between working or receiving benefits. And from Radley’s perspective, SSDI does not serves as much of safety net, “it should be - except for the fact that the SSA is notorious for denying claims. a sort of official source claims a 60% first claim denial rate - other sources put it closer to 90%.” Regardless of this choice, it is Bradley’s position that, “i’m an independent person who can take care of herself. i want to work, you know? i want to earn my own living.” that forms the readers opinion of her moving forward. She consistently voices her frustration at wanting to be an active participant in society and yet still meets resistance.
 
Those of us who are not disabled might be surprised at the obstacles Bradley faces in her efforts to become employed and may even cite the existence of the Americans with Disabilities Act as a safe guard put in place to prevent just this sort of thing. Bradley say that although employers must provide “reasonable accommodations”, it is the flexibility of the word “reasonable” that becomes a point of contention. If she obtains a job that requires the use of a phone she can, “ask for access to relay services, but i can’t ask to not use the phone at all.” Going into any job interview aware that there is a task the non-deaf person takes for granted that many jobs casually require is enough to, “give me pause. as soon as they know i can’t use the telephone, how is that going to affect their decision to hire me?” Again, in her frustrations Bradley gives the non-deaf reader the best entry point to her experience. We have all been rejected from a potential job fearing that it was because of some part of our character that we perceive as a failing, and left feeling, “i want to be hired based on my merits alone. i want it not to be a big fucking deal.”

But where as the individual with the character flaw maybe able to hide their defect for an extended period of time, Radley’s deafness must be addressed almost immediately. She spend a good time in this ‘zine deliberating on when the EXACTLY is the right time to tell her potential employer that she is deaf. Knowing from experience where she was hired without revealing her disability (she can read lips) until afterward, “i could see the manager’s face drop in a kind of oh-shit way. she was fucked.” Radley must weight whether to tell the potential employer in her cover letter, before the interview, mid interview, at the end of the interview, or on her first day of work. Radley settles on at the end of the interview saying it minimizes the “amount of ‘awkward now i know you’re deaf’ time at least.”

In her working experience, while Bradley has had jobs that are unaffected by her deafness (working at a factory assembling DVD cases). Any retail position she has held has been made difficult by her inability to be paged over the intercom or from coworkers / customers being angry at her for being deaf. The ugliness of a customer telling Bradley to her face that, “that i shouldn’t be working in customer service if i was deaf and they should get someone up front who wasn’t crippled,” can’t help but hit a sour chord. Although we may not be able to completely understand the discrimination Bradley faces in being deaf, she sums her experience up succinctly at the end of the zine saying, “it’s hard to explain how it feels when the discrimination happens. it can make you feel powerless, so helpless, like yr fate rests in this person’s hands. you feel tiny and ineffectual, when yr power is taken away, its hard to know what to do next.” For Bradley, “the risk is real, the prejudice is real, the discrimination is real.”

While Deafula #4 deals with this very real subject of discrimination in a straight forward manner textually; special consideration should be given to the incredible design on display in this zine. Not only the striking cover, but also the constantly shifting (though never confusing) layout of the text on each page. The entire zine has touches of visual flair, such as segments of text alternating between word processor, type writer and hand written, the reoccurring bat symbol that refreshes the Deafula / Dracula image in our mind, and photographs of menacing telephone wires seemingly closing in on the reader. While almost  every page has a different design aesthetic, the clearness of the voice and the gravity of the subject manner allows it to all hang together and become more than the sum of its parts.

- Robin Enrico

Roxie #5 by Stephanie Mannheim
Catalog Number: (M-SM01-R05)

The latest in Stephanie Mannheim’s long running Roxie series; Roxie #5 continues the story of debaucherous rockstar Roxie Rayge and her band of misfits. This issue being the second in a three part series where the action revolves around Roxie and her band playing a benefit show at the Hollywood Bowl. Roxie’s motivations here being anything but altruistic as she is not only being paid in year’s supply of cigarettes, but also want to further her rivalry with uptight former bandmate Princeton Hamilton Westchester III.

We pick up the action with Roxie, guitarist Sleazo, bassist Hairiette and their scary drummer plotting to sabotage Princeton by smashing all of his band’s instruments. But what makes Mannheim’s comic interesting is that this instrument smashing scheme serves to set up the action much the same way a football game or a visit to opera might a Marx Brother’s film. Roxie and company are perpetual bunglers and incapable of working together if it conflicts with their own personal interests. Minutes after hatching their plan, Sleazo begins making out with the bassist of the band whose instruments she is supposed to smash. Roxie catches her, confronts her, and they begin fist fighting. Both Sleazo and the scary drummer then reject Roxie’s plan, leaving her slip on a chessy burglar’s mask, chloroform a porn watching security guard, misdirect Princeton, and then smash up as well as defecate on his instruments.

While the smashing of the instruments might serves as the “Seinfeld’s Van” of the issue. All of the other characters in the large ensemble cast are given a role to play. Beset upon (because she’s a bassist ) Hairiette is left to distract equal uncool band manager Sophie.  But Sophie is busy hanging out with the drummer from Princeton’s band, learning how to become cool enough to win the Roxie’s approval (even though she is consistently at odds with her). This issue also sees the return of the wannabe musician / janitor who had a blow up with Roxie in the previous issue. So we know that when sex crazed Sleazo is headed to the janitor’s closet with her latest conquest, the zig zagging plot lines will of course intersect with comedic consequences.

Mannheim crafts this sitcom about irredeemable characters not only through her plotting, but also through her art work. The Roxie series is filled with characters distorting their faces and limbs to yell at each other. Eyes go in opposite directions, teeth become fangs,  heads triple in size, and every character seems to be perpetually profusely sweeting. This issue also features a good two panel ultra close up of tongues licking each other during an impromptu make out session. The wretched behavior of the characters and their gross contortions would probably be gruesome if they weren’t all so darn cute. Much of the enjoyment in the art is derived from watching these goofy, awkward, tiny lowercase “u” for a boob (a reoccurring Mannheim trope) cartoon gals do all the terrible things they do. We (like many of the characters in this comic’s universe) are always charmed into forgiving Roxie and company’s antics.

- Robin Enrico

Subjected to by Tia Doran
Catalog Number: (M-TD01-ST01)

If comics have any unique power, it is their ability to render the impossible, to make the invisible into the visible, the surreal into the real. Tia Doran’s mini comic Subjected to, deals heavily in the surreal realm. Presenting us with four stories of characters subjected to forces (natural and supernatural) beyond their control.

The book ending stories, “Waning” and “Yielding” are both stories of a couples facing rising flood waters. In both the waters rise above the roof of their houses and threaten to drown the couples. But it is also here that the stories diverge. In “Yielding” the male partner seeing his female counterpart sink beneath the tide, decides to join her in oblivion. While in “Waning”, the vaguely human couple is able to float to safety on their conjoined bed for a while, it eventually becomes split in two. And for all their efforts to repair this split, the couple finally chooses to float of in their own separate directions. We are never told the motivations for either couple’s decisions as the actions in “Yielding”  are told without dialogue, and in “Waning” the dialogue is presented in an alien language that reveals far less than its character’s body language does. Even the meaning we are supposed to take away are unclear. Is it better to drown together, or to survive apart?

These strange moral questions continue in the comic’s second story “Potency”. Here the story’s protagonist Jordan (a facsimile of 1000 Band Names author Jordan Michael) is given the ability to “telepathically project other people’s dreams onto a wall.” His gift is immensely popular but comes at the price of him growing a third hand, a third eye and other appendages. When his friends discover that both the powers and the new growths are the result of Jordan’s possession by a demon, they exorcise said demon and place it in the body of Jordan’s cat, “Mr. Subpoena”. Thus ending Jordan lucrative dream projection business. The story ends without telling us if Jordan regrets this decision.

The ending of the third story “Visitor” is similarly vague. Even more so as the story is the most dreamlike of the four and takes place entirely in the first person (a rarity for comics). The whole of the action being a mysterious woman trying to enter the protagonists house during an ice storm and ask for help. The protagonist rebuff the strange woman, who admonishes the protagonist saying, “You’ll be sorry.” We are never told why the strange woman needs help or why the protagonist is afraid to let her in. Why is the protagonist on their knees when speaking to the mysterious woman? Why does the protagonist hear music or animal noises outside when the woman does not? We will never know.

All of this strangeness is aided by Doran’s style in drawing this comic. She has a very clean line with good sense of anatomy and functional grasp of setting. Her light shading in grey tone is highly developed and at times approaches a pleasing water colored look. The images and compositions can be at times flat or de-energized but they serve the narrative she is telling. Doran’s stories are not cartoonish (even if they are fantastical) so they don’t really require intense cartooning. This works to great effect in “Yielding” as it allows the reader to experience the actions in the same calm tone its protagonist do. Of special note is her character designs for the alien couple of “Waning”, without eyes or often times mouths, they are still able to convey a great of emotions. And this reduction of a heterosexual couple to not a specific man and woman, but the general sense of man and woman allows for a much large point of identification for the reader.

This is one of Doran’s first comics but she is already making some highly advanced work within the medium. Subjected to and her other mini comic Vanishing Twin are both in the Ditko! Zine library and well worth a read for anyone interested in an emerging comics talent.

- Robin Enrico

Hey, 4-Eyes! Issue One, Edited by Robyn Chapman
Catalog Number: (M-VA002-HE01)

One of the best parts about the zine as a medium is that it allows the creator or creators to dig as deeply into any subject as they so desire. In some cases this takes the form of political discussion or of personal introspection. But in the case of Hey, 4-Eyes! Issue One, the subject of discussion and introspection is glasses. The wearing of glasses, the culture of glasses, how glasses inform our opinions of the wearer. The theme of the zine being a reflection of editor, Robyn Chapman’s interests and status as glasses wearer.

With this talk of “interests”, you are probably wondering if  Hey, 4-Eyes! is actually  a glasses “fetish” magazine in the pretense of a well crafted art zine. Chapman directly address this concern early on  (and later in the zine in a comic where she discusses her love of “those Sissy Boys” with glasses) and gives what seems to be her mission statement for the zine: “Hey, 4-Eyes! is a zine about eyeglasses. It’s made by and for people who appreciate glasses and all content relates to glasses in some way.” And in fact the first article in the zine is an examination of the anatomy and more mechanical aspects of glasses as written by Chapman. While a a bit on the dry side, it serves as a good introduction to the rest of the content. The glasses wearer is allowed to contemplate the object which has become almost a part of their body due to its familiarity, and the non-glasses wearer is given the framework to discuss an object they have almost no interaction with.

The fetishism question is returned to rather quickly during Chapman’s interview with Marc and Julia Calvary (both glasses wearers), creator of / photographer for, and occasional subject of the zine Cherrypepper respectively. The rare erotic zine, Cherrypepper is “comprised of purely black and white photos of five models, either pictured nude or semi-nude… Cherrypepper girls aren’t you typical models—they are natural beauties of varying body types.” Chapman says she was drawn to the zine because of the image of Julia (modeling under the pseudonym “Prague”) and her “thick plastic frames, encircled in dark hair cut in a classic bob and augmented by a single plastic barrette.” The photos of Prague included with the article feature her wearing said glasses, bob haircut and nothing else above her waist. Marc Calvary in addressing his own attraction to bespectacled women says, “I like glasses. I always have. My earliest school crushes were always on girls in glasses. One of the first girls I ever liked, in kindergarten, had a lazy eye. She had to wear a pair of glasses with a patch over one side. My wife had the same problem when she was a little girl.” But it is Prague herself who deals with the potential power that glasses have as erotic costume, “the wearing of glasses becomes a conscious and highly personal choice, to create a face— for fashion, for fetishism, to project and image from the inside.”

This idea of glasses as costuming (in a non-erotic context) is also addressed in Alec Longstreth’s autobiographical comic contribution to the issue. Alec relates the story of how he has come to wearing glasses frames (sans lenses) since he was 13 years old. The frames serving to bring him closer in appearance to his teenage idol Rivers Cuomo, but also serving as a form of mask that could alleviate the strain of difficult social interaction. As glasses without lenses are clearly costuming, it creates the paradox of the object Longstreth is using as defense mechanism becoming a potential source of embarrassment. Is Longstreth a “poser” (as he gets called out on in one panel) for wearing glasses even though he does need them? Are people correct in judging him as a “nerd” (another panel) simply because of his costume glasses? Does our read of Alec’s 2004 confession that he wears glasses without frames change if we know that in 2009 his eyesight had changed enough to require him to wear glasses?

The use of glasses as costuming or to project an image is perhaps an issue of such division because it ignores some of the practical realities of wearing glasses that are addressed in Jonathan Bennet’s autobiographical comic “I’m Going Blind!”. Wearing glasses is not the same as NEEDING glasses to see at all. So the non-glasses wearer cannot truly understand Bennet’s inability to read the eye chart. Nor can they understand the terror and feelings of uselessness he must feel when his glasses fall down a New York City sewer drain and he must wait for his wife to fish them out with a wire hanger. Or his sigh of acceptance at having to wash his glasses after they fall in the toilet. Those who do wear glasses can most likely relate to these experiences and Bennet’s overwhelming preoccupation with keeping his glasses from being “dropped, lost, crushed, etc…”

Even if the wearer does need the glasses, the coding of the style of glasses is still a multilayered thing. Chapman herself at the time of creating the zine expresses a preference for the “glamour and class” of the cateye frame. But these are the same sort of frames commonly associated with vintage librarians, or with modern gals who dress like vintage librarians, the kind of lady who might also be a Cherrypepper model on occasion. These are the eyewear of the retro thrift store zinester girl, but not glasses of the “fake geek girl”. Or are they? Already we are sinking into a morass of semiotics, and this is just a single style of glasses. This issue of the meanings behind a pair of glasses is continued in an article where Chapman gives stand-up comic Liam McEneany a “Glasses Makeover!” Simple variations in style come with huge connotations. The first pair seen as “something my grandfather would have worn,” with the second being “too mousy” and the third pair being “too Bono from U2.” McEneany finally settling on a pair that projects the image of the guy who would say, “Hey! Radiohead’s in town!” How far is the Radiohead listener from the person who perks up at the “sweet music of the Doctor Who theme” or the director of the “experimental German improv group” at this point in time anyway?

With all these questions raised, we can leave with at least one constant. The Sol Moscot Opticians sign on 14th st. and 6th ave. in New York is exactly the same now as it was in 2004 when it was included in this zine as part of a photo survey of “Optometrist Signs of Lower Manhattan,” photographed by Chapman. While other excellent signs, such as the the neon glasses seen in a picture of the Mou Cheong Vision Center in New York’s Chinatown have been lost to the ages. The Sol Moscot sign remains.

Hey, 4-Eyes! Issue One (along with Issues 2 and 3) is still available through Robyn Chapman’s online store and at the Ditko Zine Library.

- Robin Enrico