Cometbus #54- Touring Asia with Green Day
Like many people, I was surprised and confused when I first saw the cover of the new issue of Cometbus. Aaron Cometbus on tour with Green Day now? Luckily, he too had reservations about joining his old friends on the road again after 20 years.
Scranton Zine Fest 2011
The date for the first Scranton Zine Fest has been announced. Will Dwight Schrute be in attendance?
Zine Podcast Released About Fanzines Book by Teal Triggs
What happens when an author writes a book about zines and gets a lot of things wrong? Listen to this podcast and you’ll find out!
Washington D.C. Zine Fest Date Announced
The date of the (possibly?) first Washington D.C. Zine Fest has been announced.
Zine World #30 Out Now!
Zine World is easily the best and most comprehensive zine about zines around right now. Each issue is packed with news, reviews, and very well written articles.
Cometbus #54- Touring Asia with Green Day
Like many people, I was surprised and confused when I first saw the cover of the new issue of Cometbus. Aaron Cometbus on tour with Green Day now? Luckily, he too had reservations about joining his old friends on the road again after 20 years. He explores a lot of these internal dilemmas in the 96 page zine. He paints a beautiful picture of friends reuniting and having a blast despite going in different directions in life. Throughout the issue, there are also many flashbacks to the first couple tours Aaron did with Green Day, most of them including their old drummer Al. He talks about the tour in a great way that anyone can relate to, even if you’ve never been on tour with a band before. He notes how far the band has come, but does it in a non-judgmental way despite his personal beliefs and ideals.
I really like this zine for two reasons. One, I love the way Aaron Cometbus writes. The way he tells a story is incredible, which is why i’m very excited to see him speak/read at the Chicago Zine Fest. Anytime he releases a new issue, I run out to buy it as soon as I can
My second reason is that given how popular Green Day is, this issue will be read by many people who normally don’t read zines. A lot of Green Day fans are also young kids who are looking for something new and exciting to get into. I really like the thought of this zine introducing a lot of people into the zine community.
You can buy Cometbus #54 at Last Gasp for $4.00: www.lastgasp.com/d/37405/
Scranton Zine Fest 2011
Zine fest season is upon us! With Chicago Zine Fest this weekend, it marks the beginning of this year of zine fests/symposiums. One thing that is really awesome is more zine fests keep on starting every year. DC Zine Fest was announced a few months ago, and now another new event peeks it’s head up. On June 11, 2011 will be the Scranton Zine Fest in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Fans of the US version of The Office will recognize the town as the fictional setting for the television show. While Michael Scott might not make an appearance at the first Scranton Zine Fest, there have already been a couple confirmed tablers including Wooden Shoe Books.
To keep up to date on Scranton Zine Fest 2011, be sure to bookmark their website: scrantonzinefest.com/
Zine Podcast Released About Fanzines Book by Teal Triggs
Alex Wrekk and myself, Derek Neuland, are the hosts of Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast. We have just released a new episode, and it is all about the book Fanzines by Teal Triggs that was published last fall. Many people were not asked permission to include images of their zines in the book until the book was already going to press. Also, there are many factual errors in the book that the author or publisher has not publicly admitted to. This episode was really fun to record/edit because we formatted it like an episode of This American Life.
Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast #3: In this Episode of Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast, Derek Neuland and Alex Wrekk discuss the book Fanzines by Teal Triggs and several issues surrounding it including copyright and etiquette as they interview Ramsey Beyer (illustrator and List zine) Amber Forrester (www.hello-amber.com/) and Jerianne Thompson (librarian and editor of Zine World).
You can download it here: nobodycareszine.libsyn.com/nobody-cares-about-your-stupid-zine-podcast-3 or if you are an itunes user, you can download it in itunes here: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/nobody-cares-aboout-your-stupid/id307205846
If you want to learn more about this, definitely check out fanzinesbytealtriggs.weebly.com/
Washington D.C. Zine Fest Date Announced
The date of the (possibly?) first Washington D.C. Zine Fest has been announced. It will take place on July 30th, 2011 at St. Stephens Church, 1525 Newton Street NW. To keep up on their future announcements, be sure to bookmark dczinefest.wordpress.com/ .
Last month, the organizers of the D.C. Zine Fest posted a list of the top 10 reasons there should be a zine fest in D.C. The list can be found here, or below for ease:
- D.C. is geographically accessible! Philly? NYC? Richmond? Baltimore? Frederick? Silver Spring? You know you want to come visit.
- D.C. is filled with intellectual types who want to come to a meeting and melding of minds. Yes, we want to meld your mind.
- D.C. is a historic epicenter of punk and riot grrrl life. There used to even be an infoshop somewhere here… let’s rediscover that heritage, or at least all come out of the woodwork to hang out with each other.
- D.C. (well, Bethesda) is the home of the Small Press Expo, which isn’t super friendly to super small press. So this would be like a small small press expo. Where we don’t charge you to come look at stuff. (What do all the people who go to SPX do when they’re not at SPX? Why is SPX in D.C. if we don’t have some secret underground society of awesome self-publishing artists, writers, and comic book nerds?)
- The economy is screwed, we’re all un- or under- employed, might as well make some zines!
- Some of us travel all over the place to zinefests, and we’re lazy and want y’all to come here for once.
- D.C. doesn’t have statehood, and we’re taxed without representation. We don’t have a voice in the government, but we have a voice in zines!
- This will give you an excuse to make that zine of excerpts from your 7th grade diary that you’ve been planning on making for the past 5 years (yes we want to hear about your crush on Jordan Knight, we also think he’s dreamy).
- Has there ever been a zine fest in D.C.? No seriously, we don’t know and we’d like to.
- Because every time we mention the possibility in public, people get excited.
Interview with Liz Prince
But if one wanted to try to emulate my awes-nificence, they could probably get close by drinking a lot of coffee and damaging their brains with pop punk. Mix with a penchant for riding a bike even though it makes you smell really bad and you’re more than halfway there, I’d say.
Liz: At the time I think my favourite band was probably They Might Be Giants, which is kind of punk, but not really. I didn’t really get into punk music in a way that defined me until Green Day released Dookie. Although my Dad was a stereophile and a music reviewer, I didn’t really pay attention to music in a serious way, but after I saw the video for Basket Case at my friend’s house when her older brother was watching MTV.
Liz: I definitely prefer comic conventions; meeting fans and other artists, and getting to see my friends who draw comics, it’s where I feel the most at home, even though most of the time the conventions are in a city I don’t live in. I’m actually not too fond of Music fests, I prefer single shows. I don’t know if I even really like going to shows that much anymore unless it’s a band I’m really interested in seeing: a show used to be a big social event for me, but that’s fallen out of favor, because I realized that I’d rather hang out with my friends in a venue where we can have conversations without having to shout over a band that’s playing. Yeah, that’s right, I guess I’m officially OLD.
So I will admit that it’s a little antithetical that I have traveled so much in the last year to see bands: I went to Chicago last January to see the Riverdales, in May I went to Chaos in Tejas, mostly to see Marked Men and hang out with some friends who live in Austin, I went back to Austin to see Descendents in November, and in December I went to Jersey to see one of the Ergs! reunion shows. Last month I traveled to Philly to see Good Luck, and ended up going to DC to see them again the next night. I haven’t been to a show in Boston since… November maybe? But tonight I’m going to see Night Birds and Government Warning. I’m not a total shut-in over here.
I’m usually surprised when I get recognized, because I don’t think my drawing of myself looks THAT much like me, and I myself am horrible at recognizing noteworthy people: a month ago I was in Brooklyn at a pizza place with some friends, and the actor Justin Theroux ended up being at the table next to ours. I wouldn’t have noticed, but my friend Zac pointed it out, and I was plotting, if he ever walked by me, that I would stop him and ask if he was Justin Theroux, and if he said “yes” I would just look back down at my food and give an unenthused “cool” and if he said “no” I do the same thing but say “too bad”. He never walked by, so I guess I’ll have to use that on some other celebrity, if I’m ever in the same room as one again.
Liz: This could be a retardedly long list, so I’ll just say ones that I think it could fit for:
Lemuria
the Copyrights
House Boat
the Creeps
Mean Jeans
If the Parasites put out a new record I would shit my pants if I got to do art for it.
Basically, if you’re in a band and you think you fit in with my musical tastes, I would most likely be totally stoked to do art for you.
Liz: I was pretty surprised when I went to the Small Press Expo last year and I got a lot people being concerned that I hadn’t had a new If You Make It comic for a month or so: I didn’t realize that a lot of COMICS fans followed those, as opposed to just people who either found out about the strips through my website/twitter/facebook/what have you, or people who just check out IYMI regularly. Unfortunately, I’ve had to take a break from drawing an IYMI strip for the last month or so, because I had a lot of other anthology/freelance deadlines at the beginning of the year. And now that it’s almost March and the spring convention season is starting again, it might be another month or so before I return to IYMI.
I am considering going to Chaos again this year, even though I’m not such a music fest fan, and as far as music fests go, Chaos is mostly out of my area of interest, but Marked Men are playing again, and Dillinger Four will be there, F.Y.P. is playing a reunion show, and I just like having excuses to go to Austin. Two of my best friends live there, and the food is amazing, there are cool places to go swimming, and I heard a new pinball arcade opened up, so what’s not to love?
Liz: The 3rd issue of I Swallowed the Key to My Heart should be out by May or June, and hopefully the 4th will be out in the Fall. I will have stories in a few anthologies, including the 12th issue of Not My Small Diary. I’m also going to put together an ALONE FOREVER collection, because so many people have demanded it, and I might do a reprint of my highschool comics collection I Was a Teenage Comic Nerd. I also made a set of 4 buttons that I will have a conventions and in my webstore.
Liz: If you’re considering writing me an email based on my ALONE FOREVER series about how you think I should get into the dating game, please chop your hands off before you push send and make me really angry. Thanks.