Zine Reviews vol. 1! Star Clipper, St. Louis!

St. Louis zines, pt. 1

This weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting Star Clipper, a delightfully contemporary comic shop in northwest St. Louis. Star Clipper is clean, organized, and dare I say, trendy!--it exudes a vibe that says, “Reading comics is cool, yo!” Which, duh, of course it is. Best of all, Star Clipper had a huge shelf full of independently published comics. Here’s what I bought! 

Miss Lonely Hearts by Gabrielle Gamboa  

Nathaniel West’s 1933 comic-novella follows the adventures of an flacid advice columnist. While his impoverished readers desperately need solutions to their dismal problems, Miss Lonelyhearts (a pseudonym) can only offer trite platitudes and bullshit. It’s probably the funniest book to come out of the Depression. And thankfully, Gabrielle Gamboa’s adaptation uses the language of comics to retell the story in a fresh way. Gamboa draws the life of Miss Lonelyhearts in soft, textured grey tones; while the lives of the advice seekers are illustrated as popular Depression-era newspaper comic strips characters. I don’t want to spoil every character who makes an appearance, but...the opening pages show Olive Oil complaining about her sexually abusive husband who refuses to stop raping her, Popeye of course! It’s weird/great! Not only does the graphic adaptation let readers see West’s text anew, but it illuminates the strange relationships of classic cartoons. I love this comic and am ordering the second issue from Gamboa’s etsy, where you can buy the first and second issues! 

Brain Dump, Leon Beyond

The facts in Leon Beyond’s Strange and Amazing Facts reveals the thin line between fact and nonsense. While the strip promises to be trivia, I don't know how one would verify facts like 1) Spartans slept on skulls, 2) the first jet-ski was just a modified snowmobile, 3) hoboes used to live in the Amoco gas sign 4) 3.5 million ping-pong balls are lost every year. Besides wack-facts, there's specific references to oddities of Saint Louis--an undoubtedly eclectic city. The strip's humor roots in blurring the truth: sorta like John Hodgman meets Charles Fort. But what separates Amazing Facts & Beyond as a comic is the visual representation. The layouts are brimming with information, playing with space composition and reading direction in every strip. The characters, which remind me of a simplified John K (Ren & Stimpy), are delightfully absurd. Plus, some strips play strange visual games like, "Find the differences between these two pictures!" or quiz questions with answers in mirror-writing. The strip is jam-packed with creativity. Perhaps Leon is an eccentric genius...

Or maybe, Leon Beyond isn’t even a real person! Research reveals he's the collaboration of two cartoonists, Dan Zettwoch and Kevin H. Leon Beyond used to be published in The Riverfront Times, a St. Louis alt-weekly but unfortunately, the last strip posted on the Leon blog makes me think Leon is over (or maybe dead). But good news! You can buy all the zine collections for a mere $15! And, It looks like a nice hardcover omnibus is coming out...eventually? Trivia-rific! 

Everythingness by Neil Jam

This cutie comic juxtaposes a chibi-esque manga style with the profundities of existencial angst...kinda! Neil Jam's 32 page strip collection is good, strange fun. You get birds, a ghost gel (?) and silly metafiction, and well timed jokes with a delightfully irreverence (God's on the cover). I really dig the aesthetic of the drawings. The thick marker line makes the characters look really adorable, yet still animated and distinguishable. I only wished there was a narrative or grander world connecting the strips--but hey, that could be in the next volume! Also, hat-hop to Hic Hoc Publishing for printing a really professional looking comic.  

After Hours

One of the nicest looking, black & white zines I ever did see. After Hours is the brainchild of Matt Questionmark and Lauren B. Matt writes cantankerous poetry--the harshness of Bukowski with the mysterious sage-ness of Ginsberg (albeit, these are the only poets I've ever read). These writings are complemented by Lauren's amazing black and white illustrations: including, surreal landscapes, strange bodies, women in pensive passion, and a really determined boy with dog. You can look at a lot of these drawings on the After Hours Tumblr. Both Lauren and Matt are from Saint Louis, culminating in my suspicious that there's a really cool self-publishing culture in STL. This zine looks great and hopefully they print a second run! 

P.S. I also found this free periodical, The Saint Louis Globe Democrat It's a super kitschy reprint newspaper that writes about historical themed stories and reprints old news copy. The issue I found was about Fredric Wertham, the wacko psychiatrist who testified against EC Comics to the Supreme Court. This paper doesn't even have a website, but if you're in Missouri you MUST find one because it is very weird.

MORE REVIEWS NEXT WEEK!