Zine Reviews: Column Theme Ideas

Here are suggestions from the zine reviewers list of potential column themes. Please add your own and/or comment on those already here. Also comment if you would like to edit a particular themed column.

  • zines by genre (e.g. personal zines, DIY zines, mamazines)
  • transgender zines
  • zines by teens
  • zines for teens
  • zines by people of color
  • punk zines
  • queer zines
  • women’s issues (e.g. health, self-defense, feminism)
  • metazines (e.g. review zines)
  • travel
  • minicomics [maybe not technically zines, but i think there’s a lot of potential here — there’s so many great self-published autobio comics these days, and highlighting these would also demonstrate that there’s more to comics than “graphic novels & manga”]
  • work/job
  • “weird & wonderful” (or something like that, that’s a little cheesy, but I’m thinking it might be nice to do a grab-bag column that highlights all those zines that don’t fit nicely into the categories we’ve already mentioned)
  • Zine library zines
  • cooking zines
  • comic zines
  • zines with interactive qualities (choose your own adventure, coloring books, popups, scavenger hunts, etc)
  • infoshop/collective zines (like the long haul infoshop zine or the Hard Times Cafe zine)
  • DIY/craft zines
  • Under the women’s issues category, there is so much just focusing around menstration, tampons, make your own menstrual pads, that this could be its own subcategory
  • History zines
  • Art zines
  • Zines exclusively left places for lucky people to find, not sold through distros
  • Bus riding/public transport zines
  • Zines that come with freebies (gum, trading card, sticker, tattoo, bubble test)
  • Zines that turned into magazines or even books
  • international zines
  • science zines (please please please choose this I have a couple of great ideas!)
  • daddyzines
  • travel zines (like travel memoirs or whatever, not like the zine version of Frommer’s)
  • zines from/about X town city state or other location
  • zines about sex
  • zines for children
  • zines by children
  • books about zines (anthologies, how-to-make-zines books, etc.)
  • Pet zines (about or on animal health)
  • Zines about religion
  • poetry/fiction/literary zines
  • lifestyle zines (e.g. pro-firearm, sustenance and survival, bicycling, dwelling portably)
  • mental health
  • zine distros
  • split zines

10 thoughts on “Zine Reviews: Column Theme Ideas

  1. hi, i think you’ve got a pretty good list of themes here to start with. I may also be a good idea to start thinking about the criteria for the reviews. For example, some zines get printed over and over while others do not. As a rule, should the zines reviewed be available for purchase from a distro, at the time in which the review publication has been written?

    This leads me to another thought. I wonder if we should partner with some distros to get extra copies made of the zines that we are reviewing. So that there will be some available for purchase…

    What do you think?

  2. Hey Stephanie,

    I’ll get to your first comment in a whole ‘nother post, where I’ll share the responses I got from the pool of zine reviewers to a similar question.

    As to partnering with distros, I’m a little hesitant because even though they’re zine vendors, they’re still vendors–some of them more than others. I do think, though, that it would be a good idea to inform zine publishers when their zine is about to be reviewed so that they can be ready for that onslaught of orders that’s sure to come. (You think? It’s funny; I hadn’t really thought of it from the zine publisher’s side. I was mostly thinking about legitimizing zines and spreading the gospel of zines in libraries, but, duh!, this could really impact individual zinesters!)

  3. oh yeah. putting the power into the hands of the zine publisher is probably more of the way to look at it. They would, afterall, be the ones to publish more booklets for the distros or authorize the reproduction.

  4. Hee hee–Katie, you say that because you’re a writer.

    What about the hate most zinesters (and one or two zine librarians I know) have for litzines? 😛

  5. To anyone to whom it wasn’t clear, I didn’t intend to diss literary zines in my last comment, and certainly wasn’t intentionally maligning Katie or her distro.

    I was just trying to tease her about the fact that lots of zine folk rag on literary zines.

    I apologize for causing any lit zine fans and creators pain or anger.

  6. Good start – I’d also point out that while they are rare(!) there are a few pro-firearm zines on the market (I picked one up at the pdx pride this year), as well as sustenance and survival zines. One zine in particular I’m aware of deals with bicycling as a main theme of life and another deals with dwelling portabltly… So maybe lifestyle zines might be something to offer as well.

    Mommazines, of course need a place to dwell, as do zines that deal with mental health issues, and reviewzines.

    Caroline

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