Let’s say your parents are taking you on a road trip to Bend, Oregon. School is out and the weeks of summer are yours to enjoy until September and the dreaded beginning of 4th grade. While your parents are in the front seat pouring over Lonely Planet and AAA maps, you will be sequestered in the back with a copy of Laura Walker’s, Welcome to Bend.

You will marvel at the pretty drawings and cartoonish goings on of this Oregonian township. Before arriving, you will ask your parents to do laps of the famed roundabouts and request a viewing of Oregon’s many geological wonders. You will dish on Bend lore and current events: the pregnant man; the taco shop that fronted as a meth’ lab; and the psychotic llamas roaming town. They, in turn, will marvel at your knowledge of a place you’ve never even visited.

Too young for hormones but congenitally moody, you will roll your eyes in disgust and return to your reading because you are a scion of playground cool. By 5th grade, you will be smoking French cigarettes and reading Bukowski, but for now it’s Welcome to Bend.

-Matthew Monte

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Woah bro-seph, Trip-out City! The strength here is really in the design. Excellent choice of art for a zine. Not too shabby with the “Deep Dish Apple Pie” recipe on the fourth page, too. Screwy little comics, and monochrome art plaster the pages for an interesting Willy Wonka ride for the eyes. After about five minutes though, it becomes a little too abstract and I start reading Winston Churchill’s biography. But hey, whats this? A CD? This was a super pleasant surprise. A mixtape just for me! Thank you As I would Say. This is really a great little number. I’d recommend it to anyone. Especially someone who wants to get turned on to cooky and fun mixtapes. Hurrah!

-Nikolaus Bartunek

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If you can get past the title, the grammatical errors (Miss Potter has been wronged by schooling AND spell check) and nearly 100 astonishingly disorganized pages, Carissa Potter’s first writing effort should satisfy you.

Let me explain: Miss Potter is a frustrated pro-choice Christian-raised graduate student with a misconceived Impostor Complex. She lies to her therapist, plots the death of her sister, and fucks in front of the neighbors on whom she spies.  This is the stuff of fantastic writing, but Potter’s “collection of short stories” (it’s really an autobiography) is not.

I’ll Think Of You… is littered with malapropisms, misnomers and jarring non-sequiturs that are structurally confusing.  She experiments with footnotes -although I’m not entirely certain she understands their function- and makes bizarre references to ‘shoe elfs’ [SIC].  Most egregious is her juvenile effort (initially I thought she was a teenager) to recount self-discovery in a ‘writerly’ fashion when she should really just focus on writing what she thinks.

There are exceptions. “Band-Aid”, a more honest effort, has some truly touching moments. And despite instances of serious self-sabotage -“Not to be stereotypical, but he looked like a middle-eastern plane-bomber…[He] blanketed my nights in soft romanticizes [SIC] about falling for someone you knew nothing about”- there are others that couldn’t be more hilariously accurate.  She also shows more than a bit of gumption with the inclusion of her rejection letters, a decision that nearly saves her from the sanctimony that plagues the zine’s first 80 or so pages.

I’ll Think Of You… can be appreciated only as a case study:  We can learn from Carissa not through her literary ‘insights’, but by instead studying the actions that she admits to so readily.  Given the context, we can surely learn a thing or two from her confusion

-Lindsey Piscitell

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Manda’s first zine is, in her words, “a monument to that which I hate.” What she happens to hate so much are her breasts, the size of which have given her no end of problems since puberty turned on the growth switch. How big, you ask? She perfectly fills out a G cup (and has the pictures to prove it). For all you boys reading this with your jaws on the floor, this is not something women consider a blessing; imagine the stress on your back having to lug those puppies around 24 hours a day. If you can’t imagine, Manda spares no detail explaining how her cup size has negatively affected her life.

Unfortunately, the content of ManDuh Land came across less informative and more like a poorly organized rant. Also—and maybe this is what bothered me the most about it—she has an extremely negative image of herself that she feels would somehow miraculously be fixed if she were to have a breast reduction. I am admittedly very opinionated about the way American society pressures women, and it’s really heartbreaking to me that she believes a physical alteration will solve all of her problems (the back pain, of course, but there are clearly more mental wounds there that a knife isn’t going to take care of). Her message would have been much clearer if she employed more of an objective viewpoint. Self-publishing is an awesome tool, but in this case I feel like it was a bit of an over-share.

-Kelly Dalbeck

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Every once in awhile I’ll get something in the mail and upon glimpsing through its first few pages it becomes readily apparent this is someone who loves zines. Not only that, but after a good reading it’s clear that this is also someone who loves making zines, and that kind of enthusiasm is what really shines in this quarter-sized pocket of fun.

The first half is primarily composed of show reviews at local venues in Northern Washington Sate. Unlike a lot of zines covering their regional music scene we’re given a look at a wide array of different bands, with genres covering everything from Cambodian psych-pop to crappy black metal and folk-ska bands. The author has a casual, laidback writing style that feels like you’re shooting the breeze with one of your best buds, and by the time he’s done you kind of wish you were there in-person, if for nothing else than the epic drinking stories you’d have to share.

In the second half of the zine we follow along to Seattle’s hostel scene and check out the local vegan eateries. There’s also great piece about the fundamentals of the postal-driven “mailart” platform happening all around country, breaking down how it works and how to get involved. To top it off we’re given what I believe to be the first ever “Jail Review,” which is exactly what it sounds like—a rate-and-grade of one contributor’s forty-eight hour stint in Perry County lockup, complete with an overview of the evening’s dinner menu (it was hotdogs and mac n’ cheese, just in case you’re ever headed there yourself).

As if all of the above isn’t incentive enough to pick this up, the art and design from cover to cover flies off the page, filled with illuminating collages and a gritty eye for detail that would make any Xerox jockey salivate. When all is said and done I’m sure it took more than a few toner cartridges to put this little guy together, but sometimes the power of a pair of scissors and a gluestick is all you need.

-Sean Logic

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In a world gone mad, the flow of every day life is left to rot and decay. Corrupt police officers roam the streets enforcing the tyranical decrees of “The Man”. Watch where you step, because you’ll be thrown in jail for free thought! No, this isn’t a dystopian sci-fi novel, this is every day American life as illustrated, and commentated by Ken Dahl, in his comic collection Welcome To The Dahl House.

Spanning his various characters and ideas, Ken Dahl paints edgy and strange modern day tales about the ass-backwardsness of American life. Old Punks, Super Hero Dogs, and the strange wierdo Gordon, narrate their way through tales of arrest, sex, and death. From an art standpoint I really love the cooky cartoon feel, mixed with a nice smooth artistic style. In terms of story there are some laughs and some shocks, but I became a bit tired with the repetive “our-country-is-ruined-and-here-is-all-the-corruption” rant. It only became uncomfortable as I constantly felt like Mr. Dahl was sitting the fence between groovin’ Hippie Sign Holding Protester, and Ranting Anarchist Bomber Militant. Over all though, I give it my three thumbs up (The third thumb is from all the radiation the Government dumped in my yard as a child, those bastards).

-Nikolaus Bartunek

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Remember sitting in geometry class in 7th grade, learning about the Pythagorean Theory, and wondering to yourself, “When the hell am I ever gonna ever need to know this?” Well guess what, you weren’t the only one—turns out your teacher was standing up there pondering the same damn thing.

This is just but one of the many observations and anecdotes author Jeff Valure, a middle school math teacher himself, discusses in the premier issue of this zine. The pages are filled with stories of obnoxious parents and restless students, but most captivating of all however would have to be the author’s own personal efforts to try and combat the ills of our country’s fledgling educational system. He admits forthright “Idealism was going to be hard.” But despite the disparities, he hopes to impart on his class that “you don’t always have to buy into the game.”

In what could of easily turned into a bitchfest about pet peeves on the job or rants about government reform, we’re instead given an honest look at what many educators are thinking but are perhaps too nervous to speak out on. Undoubtedly an original project, Valure brings some startling insights to the forefront, and after a good read-through it’ll have you thinking twice about just what they’re teaching your kid over in homeroom.

-Sean Logic

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I don’t know anything about Alabama. History, of course, but I’ve never actually visited. Hello Alabama makes me want to declare a life goal to avoid it like the plague. The author, Courtney, moved there from North Carolina (hey, another place I know virtually nothing about) to attend grad school and…well, her own words are better than mine: “I regret it most days…this is just one Alabama disaster story.”

Like I said, I’m out of the loop on this one, so I’m not sure how Tuscaloosa compares to the rest of the state as far as culture goes. Regardless, Courtney’s personal accounts of the right wing ignorance and oblivious racism left a very sour taste in my mouth. When you live someplace like San Francisco it’s easy to forget that the progressive ideals we embrace are not universal. Courtney recalls at one point being told by her partner to remove her pro-choice bumper sticker from her car for fear of their personal safety. Another story of a middle-aged man not comprehending (or just playing stupid about) the offensiveness of Uncle Remus was particularly cringe-worthy.

After reading through most of the zine I was left wondering if there was any upside to living in Alabama (Skynyrd couldn’t have it totally wrong, could they?). Luckily she threw in a list of beautiful things on the last page. Hang in there, baby.

-Kelly Dalbeck

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I’m A Silly Bitch is ninety percent words with a minimal amount of pictures, but that’s okay because writer Force of Nature’s thoughts are provocative and insightful. Sure, many of his opinions might offend a lot of people (and he most likely will), but he provides a disclaimer on the first page.

Many of his stories and rants range from a lurid tale with a disorganized schizophrenia to the types of douchebags out there in the world. Force of Nature says there are a few from the emasculating frat boys to Christian homophobes to Republicans (but not all of them). He mostly provides observational insights with bullshit lairs to a few cheap vulgar laughs.

One of my favorites was an anecdote on caring about the environment. Moral of the story? He’s only eco-friendly because his dream is to fuck a hipster girl. He also provides a cliché lesson of honesty with strange tales of pissing near a police station to contraband cigars. Finally, he adds his final wishes before he dies with a cool soundtrack that replicates the Garden State soundtrack. But another reason to pick it up? The title: I’m A Silly Bitch. I’ll gladly passed it to a friend to read.

-Chris Huqueriza

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I’m not gonna lie, this one scared me a bit. I’m not sure if it’s a good scared, or a bad scared, but there was fear involved. To be fair, this is some seriously creative art, and I found myself more interested in the minimalism of the artwork than the hidden mystic meaning in the characters design and social workings. From what I can gather, this zine/comic is a surrealist , alternate universe adventure, the main characters being the post-modern version of “Peanuts”. The Dimatic Dou Club is a mind-fuck at its greatest peek.

The strengths to this comic are set in two very solid ways: The art is high quality for being monochromatic, and Mr. Lawson has created a comic with no text or dialogue. These two strengths, together, help focus in on the art, and keep your eyes glued to the page, and in turn your brain.Although I’d be completely lying if I said that I sit around at home and read this kind of stuff all the time, even in its bizarre existence, I think I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with this comic. As strange as it sounds, I think this man could be brilliant at illustrating bedtime stories.

-Nikolaus Bartunek

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