Queer Zines and Queer Zines 2
Edited by AA Bronson and Philip Aarons
Printed Matter, Incorporated
271 pages, $25. (vol. 1)
264 pages, $25. (vol. 2)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED in 2008 to accompany an exhibit in New York, Queer Zines has been re-issued in an expanded edition. Updates and corrections have been made to the original book, and a wholly new second volume provides a wealth of new zine descriptions along with fifteen short essays—by writers Scott Treleaven, K8 Hardy, Steve Lafreniere, and Bruce LaBruce, among others—on the queer zine phenomenon. Writing of the original publication, the editors note: “Like the material it represented, Queer Zines set out to be visually arresting, intellectually provocative, and unashamedly sexy.” This new, two-volume edition is all of that, and more.
Self-published, quickly and inexpensively produced—often with appropriated texts and graphics—and flourishing ephemerally outside the cultural mainstream, the zine is a modern version of its often subversive and incendiary forebear, the pamphlet. (Think Thomas Paine with a photocopier.) As such, it can be devoted to whatever topic or obsession its maker desires to explore. And though Darin Klein is doubtless correct when he argues in his essay that “the question of what makes a zine queer should be left open,” he also provides a decidedly poetic definition of zines, queer or otherwise: “perfect-bound or loose-leaf love notes, commercially printed or photocopied smoke signals, stapled or sewn declarations of independence, laser- or ink-jet printed missives…” Given the range of the nearly 250 zines described in these volumes—salacious, impolitic, frivolous, committed, defiant—there seems to be a zine for everyone, and it’s easy to see why the archivist Chris Wilde compares their makers to those who were at Stonewall, adding: “Queer zinesters are people of color, gender-fuckers, economically disadvantaged, young, old, disabled.” The do-it-yourself queer publications documented here span a full four decades. What follows is a sampling. Published in the 1970s, John Jack Baylin’s Fanzini is among the earliest of the zines documented here. A ribald riff on the classic fanzine, it was dedicated to the celebration of all things John Dowd, a notorious New York City leatherman of that era. With pages that frequently featured collages (many by Dowd himself) combining Disney characters with Tom of Finland types, “Fanzini ends,” its entry states, “as Punk begins, in 1976.” The emergence of punk rock is important in the evolution of gay zines, since it was largely a reaction to the “vibrant strain of homophobia in the hardcore [punk]movement” that inspired Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones to launch their seminal zine J. D.s in 1985, which subsequently inspired the homocore movement. Their impish wrath was also a reaction to an emerging gay orthodoxy in the 1980s. As Jones states, “We were just as eager to provoke the gays and lesbians as we were the punks.” Provocation and pro-sex defiance were also a mainstay of Diseased Pariah News, a zine published throughout the ’90s as a reaction to “HIV+ people being portrayed as reviled, frail, humorless eunuchs.” (One feature was titled “Get fat, don’t die.”) In contrast to this decidedly militant embrace of identity, a more fluid and questioning approach was also emerging, exemplified by LTTR, a zine issued in the early 2000s by “a collective of gender-queer lesbian- and female-identifying people” striving to “rethink issues of identity and authorship.” In a similar vein, Estella Miyuki Baker’s recent International Queer Art + Activism Zine, which is based on her fifteen-month trip around the world, explores “the art making of queer communities in eight countries.” As for current zines, ample evidence is presented to support Bronson and Aarons’ view that “contemporary queer zines continue to be as wide ranging in intent, form, spirit and purpose as ever.” The comprehensive bibliography provided for each entry makes these books an important resource, and the artful presentation of the many excerpts and original graphics brings each zine to life. Alex Gartenfeld’s witty descriptions are also worth mentioning. Of the zine Teen Meat he quips: “Vegetarians should pass on this zine for boys who like boys in bands who eat fast food.” Reflecting on his years as a zinester, Scott Treleaven of This is the Salivation Army fame, writes: “It was part of a permission factory, a network that supported, shielded, and encouraged some of the most intimate explorations.” As this expanded edition of Queer Zines beautifully documents, such permissive explorations in the queer/gender-fuck/trans/what-have-you cultural margins have a long and vital history, one that continues to this day.
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Richard Johns, the author of 2000 Poems and Hollywood Beach, lives in the Chicago area.
