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My Zinefest purchases. Fine books all.
Well, your humble reporter has taken a stroll through Zinefest 2009 today, and come back laden with comics and mini-comics of all sorts, having spent fifty of his American Dollars in the process. Money well spent, in my opinion.
I tried to pick up at least one thing from every comics person at the fest, though this was not easy. The line between a zine and a comic is exceedingly fine, almost nonexistent at times--is free-form verse integrated into a collage a comic, or not? I’m just going to ignore the existential questions posed by the various bits of self-published, low-budget, low-tech art that may be one thing and the other simultaneously, and just review a few choice pieces.
JP Coovert had a fine selection of his minicomics series Simple Routines, which he’s been doing for several years now. They’re similar in format to James Kochalka or Jeffrey Brown’s works: small, black-and-white, generally four-panel strips observing the minutiae of a life. The real prize is a larger work of his, Press Start, where he falls into a video-game world to save his wife--whom he’s been neglecting by playing video games. His art is crisp and clean, with a fine cartoony sensibility, and I look forward to picking up more of his work.
I picked up a few random issues of Aaron Poliwoda’s series Low Blow. It’s of the “rawly observed semi-autobiographical” genre so common in self-published comics, but his intertwining stories and excellent writing make it stand out from the crowd. I particularly enjoyed issue #7, which is a strange and wonderful work involving professional wrestling, a character’s sexual obsession with women cutting their hair, and the cult of hyper-masculinity. Now if only Poliwoda would put together a website…
I’m kind of shocked at how long it took me to hear about Will Dinski. I grabbed several pieces from him, but one that immediately stood out was Errand Service, a six-page comic about the strange and inexplicable errands a woman is asked by her clients to perform. It’s a lovely little piece, packaged in a miniature screenprinted delivery envelope.
Finally, The Pure Bones, which was the senior project of Anna Bongiovanni for her degree from MCAD, is a fascinating meditation on purity, acceptance, and growing up that makes me hungry for more. Bongiovanni shows off a range of styles and a wealth of design knowledge in a small but beautiful package, and I can’t wait for more.
This is just a small sampling of the many fine works from the many fine artists at the show. If you’re going, I recommend looking for anything by members of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, especially Ryan Dow’s rough-but-honest work, anything by the participants in the Ghost Comics anthology, like Tuesday Bassen’s wonderfully strange prints or Toby Jones’ humorous pieces, or anything from members of the 2D Cloud studio.
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