I convinced Dana to attend Milwaukee Zine Fest with me in 2023. I was supposed to be involved in the event in 2019, but I was in Miami, and then I had too much anxiety in 2022 to attend, which I regretted after I heard from all the friends I knew who attended.
Having never been to a previous MZF I walked into the library and saw maybe two dozen zinemakers at tables and thought “Oh, what a nice little event!” and then we went upstairs, and around the corner, and down the hall, and around and around. I had no idea it was such a large event! I do love the library, and it’s a venue that makes sense, but… personally, it was just too packed with people. Part of me saying that may be my post-pandemic anxiety, but I can also see the event being in a larger venue with better flow. Turner Hall or The Pritzlaff Building come to mind. Anyway, it was awesome to see zine publishing thriving!
So yes, Milwaukee Zine Fest was awesome, much larger than I expected, and I guess people travel from far and wide to attend! All good stuff. I love it. Personal Publishing. Excellent.
And now, indulge me, as I talk about… myself.
My first experience with zines was in the mid 1980s. I’m wondering if I found out about them from Thrasher Magazine, because honestly I can’t seem to recall what else would have introduced me to them at the time. I remember Geek Attack and Killer Dork Sessions, which were sort of skate zines, but also tended to cover other things, sometimes personal stuff, sometimes music, usually punk.
I grew up loving magazines, and printing, and publishing. Hell, my first real job out of school was working for a magazine printer in magazine publishing! But wait, I’m skipping ahead!
So yeah, I loved print, I love magazines, and I also loved art and design, so seeing these zines, from people like me, made me realize I could make my own zine! And I did. The first issue must have come out in either 1985 or 1986 I think. It was pretty small, maybe just a few sheets folded in half. I printed it on the copier in the school library. I think it was like 10 cents per copy and I probably made like 10 or 12 copies and gave them to friends… The other skater punks in school. I don’t know if I mailed any out yet. I may have, as it was common to send zines to other zine publishers.
I kept going though, and it grew in size and quality. I tried to print a bunch at a friends house because his dad had a copier, but I don’t think that worked. Eventually I must have discovered Kinkos… Oh yeah, it didn’t take long to discover the Secrets of Kinkos which somehow involved getting, well, a lot of free copies. We had a few methods, from social engineering, to mechanical engineering, to what can only be described as counterfeiting Kinkos copy cards using Kinkos own copiers… to get free copies. It was wild.
So by now I’m not in high school anymore, but in college studying graphic design, and I took zine making seriously in many ways. Mostly the art and design aspect, as well as production. I was sending them via mail and getting plenty of other zines by mail. I was selling them (and giving them away) at punk and hardcore shows. And I loved it.
The funny thing is, I was probably rushing through assignments for some of my design classes so I could work on my zine. Ironic, I guess, right? I will interject here to say that 25 years later seeing design students at UWM doing zines as part of their coursework was… weird, funny, and slightly painful. They were doing for the class the thing I was doing instead of my work for class! I felt… vindicated but also cheated.
Back to the old days! Between 1990 and 1994 I did my own zine, Psychotherapy, but I also put out Warm Cereal which was done completely using desktop publishing software, as opposed to the handwritten and cut & paste style of my other zines. The name Warm Cereal was a riff on Serial Worm which was a computer designed zine Zak has made for (high) school. It was a fun experiment in the early 1990s before everyone had access to a computer.
Zak and I did a split issue as well, called “Psycho Reality” and I photocopied and then screen printed a bunch of covers for the first run. I just remember cardstock covers drying all over the basement of my parent’s house at the time. (Which wasn’t exactly strange. Sometimes there would be dozens of band t-shirts drying in the basement back then.) Oh, I was also contributing to other zines as well, pretty much anytime someone asked.
There was a gap where I did not publish Psychotherapy, and I think during a year gap I did a one-sheeter called Rattle Snake Press with the other side done by Kelly (called Snakebite). It was a fun one, with 12 issues in one year, roughly one per month. It was mostly thoughts and opinions on life and the scene or whatever. Kelly probably had better subject matter than I did. She seemed to know more people, and had a good perspective on being a woman in a male-dominated scene. (Punk & hardcore music.)
By 1994/1995 I was doing a lot more computer graphics and some of them would get printed on paper, but I sort of went all digital with what I was doing, which at the time seemed like the thing to do. I am pleased to say that I’ve returned to paper and printing in 2023 and I like it… quite a bit!
Note: I wrote 98% of this post in the spring of 2023 and then forgot to publish it until January 2024. I figured at least two people might enjoy reading it.
