Making Zines is Important

various PHX zines

Atomic Elbow issues

On twitter today it seemed like everyone I follow was talking about making zines (or 'zines short for fanzine or magazine depending how you feel about it). I really like reading and buying zines. I love writing for The Atomic Elbow, and the other zine work I've done. I don't often think about how much of the creative life I've lived intersects with zines, and how embedded they are in all creative communities. I'd like to do a formal piece highlighting some of the unique instances of zines crossing into the larger world someday. For now here is a link to a blogpost about How to make a microcomic in under 5 hours for less than $20, that found thanks to Kawai Shen. I don't know Shen, but their page has a lot of good content on it. DIY comics and zines have an important shared history, and you can learn a lot from both.