The Wake

One of the most common questions I hear when I talk about zines is “what the fuck are zines?’’ They’re not necessarily books, comics, magazines or pamphlets, but they draw influence from those already defined forms of print media and expand upon them. Zines are small, usually independently produced publications held together by staples, glue and devotion. Unlike contract authors, who have their titles sitting on the shelves of Borders thanks to the sales and marketing divisions of their publishing companies, zine artists draw heavily from the Do-It-Yourself mentality of punks and take on the roles of author, editor, producer, distributor and promoter for their own zines. Profit and fame are not draws for these aspiring artists, as many zines can be found being distributed either for free or sold at their production cost. Titles are created out of the desire from the artist to share their ideas in a way that is freely accessible to their community.

Content in zines ranges from anarchist manifestos to illustrated zombie invasions, from introspective poetry to angrily lashing out at the evils of our culture with a critical sneer. The zines themselves come in shapes and sizes almost as varied as the content inside. On shelves at Arise!, Mayday Books and Extreme Noise you’re likely to find zines with screen-printed covers and tight, quality binding sitting next to a few sheets of photocopied instructions on how to make your own bike that are stapled together at one corner in a packet. But the unifying principle behind zines is that they are used to communicate the idea of the artist regardless of the principles regulating the structure of a magazine or a novel distributed by a publishing company.

I can hear the voices in your head right now saying “golly, these zine things seem like the niftiest thing in town, but I haven’t seen any down at the bowling alley or the malt shop! Where can I get my hands on some real humdingers?’’ Well, it’s a good thing you’re interested, kiddos, because there are plenty of swell places to check out in Minneapolis if you want to find zines!

The Wake interviewed Monica Anderson, zine creator, to get the gritty details of the zine publishing
process.

WAKE: Tell us about your zine and where we can find a copy of it.
ANDERSON: My zine is called Endless Escalators, and there have been four issues in the last two years or so. I guess I usually write about things that I’m hesitant to talk about or things that are way humiliating and should probably just be forgotten on my part. Sadly enough, I have been really slow about getting any of it out around town, but I gave a bunch of copies to Arise! this summer, so you can maybe still find it there until I show a little initiative and take it to everywhere else it needs to be. Currently, I think that your best bet would be to get it directly from me. I have a Myspace profile for it (myspace.com/endlessescalators), and it has all my contact information.

WAKE: What initially drew you to writing a zine?
ANDERSON: I’ve always spent a lot of time writing, and I’ve also had a lot of stories that are good for a laugh at my expense, so I decided to put a few of those together in zine form. I decided on that because I also took an interest in bookmaking one summer when I was still living in a really small town and was left to my own devices. I realized it was a really good way to share stories and not have to like, work huge novels and shop around manuscripts and whatnot. If I were to get a little technical here, I would say that I was initially drawn to zines by my love of The Early November, because in ninth grade, I wrote a little one-page zine about them, but I didn’t hand it out or anything. I just made a few copies and kept them in my room, then threw them away a couple weeks later when I
noticed how creepy it was.

WAKE: When creating a zine, one needs not only to take on the role of an author, but also to have the responsibility of production, distribution and promotion. So why did you decide to take on all the work necessary to write a zine, as opposed to using a less time consuming format like a blog or
a webcomic?
ANDERSON: I’m not against the act of publishing online, because I think it’s a great way to make your work easily accessible, but I will probably never do it. Or if I do, it won’t be without having the end product available in print form as well. I think it’s a lot more satisfying to have something you’ve done be entirely tangible. To some extent, it’s also a bizarre experience to see something you’ve spent that much time on in someone else’s hands. I also believe that releasing my work in an online format would depersonalize it, and that would definitely make it less enjoyable and possibly less believable. I think the aesthetic qualities related to having something be handmade is an asset to the overall experience of reading a zine. Personally, I like getting my hands on zines that are a little janky, because I know that mistakes in assembly happen when you’re either tired of putting things together and want to get it over with or you’re getting flustered about wanting to hand it out. So regardless, it’s proof that someone was totally into it in some way, and I definitely don’t think you can get that kind of impression from like, checking your bookmarks and reading someone’s blog.

WAKE: How did you distribute your zine initially? What effect did Microcosm have when they picked up your zine for distribution?
ANDERSON: When I first started, I would make 50 copies of an issue and pass them out to my friends. Then I would drop the remainder in places like elevators or stairwells at school, and I put a bunch in the library stacks in my hometown. I think that was mostly just me being really desperate for people to read them, and once I realized that zines about how much I hate my town probably wouldn’t be well received in said town, I stopped hiding stuff. I sold a bunch online and then got really into mail exchanges, so once that started, I traded a lot with people from other places, and we still keep up with each other. The Microcosm thing is fairly new, and I have yet to send them my order because I started school at pretty much the same time they offered to carry my second issue. I’m hoping that’ll help me branch out a little bit though. However, I guess branching out a lot would be ideal.

WAKE: There’s a strong punk influence on the zine culture, but do you think it’s possible for
a zine artist to “sell out’’ somehow?
ANDERSON:I think the possibility of ever making a large profit from making a zine is a pretty small one. I know there are a few writers who have had their work compiled into books that have been published by other sources, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily selling out because it’s basically just the same thing on a bit of a larger scale. But I think that if a person who makes zines does so with an interest in earning an amount of money past covering their printing costs, they’re not only being unrealistic, but they may also be creating things for the wrong reasons. I suppose writing things you don’t really mean but are geared to hit a certain nerve within your audience could also be considered selling out to some extent. I think that if you’re ever doing anything other than keeping yourself honest, you probably need to re-evaluate a bit, but that applies to everything and not just writing zines.

WAKE: Have you been a part of Minneapolis Zinefest?
ANDERSON: Not until this year because it was the first summer I’ve spent in Minneapolis. I was pretty terrified because I hadn’t tabled at anything before, and I was really scared that I would just sit there for eight hours and people would walk by and like, think whatever I had was boring or whatever. But it was actually a really incredible experience, and I highly recommend that everyone who is able tries to associate themselves with it in some way next year. It’s totally one of those things that you go to and don’t realize how awesome it is until you start thinking about it, because it was basically a roomful of people sharing things they had made about things they care about. A week or so before it happened, Sarah Morean, a really great local comic artist who organized Zinefest this year, sent out an email about everyone having to pay their registration fee, and she mentioned that there were people who were saving up to pay the $10 for a table. I think that’s a good indication of how much dedication gets put into thing like that, so it’s definitely an awesome thing, and I’m glad it exists here.

WAKE: Who would win in the fight, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch from Predator or Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan from Conan the Barbarian?
ANDERSON: Definitely Arnold as Conan because, as a barbarian, he has to be ruthless and savage. PLUS, Conan grew up pushing the Wheel of Pain, so on top of being way skilled in battle, he also has to still be really pissed off about that, so that should make him even MORE crazy.

WAKE: Do you have any advice for any aspiring zine artists out there?
ANDERSON: I would say don’t worry about how your end product is going to turn out and just jump into it. That sounds kind of cheesy, but that’s how I learned to do things, and so far it’s treated me well. Also, don’t worry about hurting feelings when you write about an experience with someone, because I think the horridness of a story is relative to how fun it is to read. I guess that ultimately, you should make things that you like, and if it turns out that someone else likes it, too, then you’ve lucked out. And if they don’t, whatever, because you still have something you can be proud of.

WAKE: Do you have a zine recommendation?
ANDERSON: Hark! Press, a way sweet collective based out of Minneapolis (harkpress.org). It’s some of the coolest art on the planet made by some of the nicest people.