$2, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2", photocopied, 16 pgs. 

If this zine were a person, I imagine it would be a confused, paranoid, older man with a huge beard. He’d ramble on and on in a hushed, scratchy voice about his distrust of researchers, the government, doctors, and even fellow mountain men. He would gesture wildly while talking about plans for solar cooking and buying land in depressed rural areas. Of course, his favorite topic is an endless list of herbal cures and random medical facts, although when asked for sources or to elaborate, he usually remained blank and moved on to the next topic. He seems to be quite obsessed with cancer, claiming that seemingly harmless products like sunscreen and French fries are probable causes for the disease. A mysterious black salve is mentioned a few times; apparently, there’s some debate in certain communities regarding whether or not it can cure cancer. In summary, hanging out with this zine (your fearless reviewer even read the pages that were typed in 4 or 6 pt. font) was pretty goddamn tedious. –Lauren Trout

$1, 4" x 5", photocopied, 16 pgs. 

A buck is a relative amount of money: a drop in the bucket if you’re saving up to buy a car; a flood if you’re looking for change under the couch to buy a pack of cigarettes. A financial consultant I am not; but I think that if you have a dollar to spare, it would be well spent on this zine. What else would you do with it? Buy a pack of bubblegum? Well, this zine holds equal value to a pack of bubblegum. It’s twenty sticks of gum or fourteen adorable comics. Bubblegum is cheap enough to share with other people; Candy or Medicine has a cute snowman joke that I can’t wait to show to the fifth graders I work with tomorrow. –Lauren Trout (www.candyormedicine.com)

By Nicole J. Georges, 192 pgs.

On the surface, this zine anthology is a huge collection of illustrated journal entries spanning six years of Nicole's life. She writes about her work, her lovers, places she's lived, funny things her friends have said, and her beloved dog, Beija. But there's something deeper here; there's a theme of almost childlike sincerity. The way she draws herself in a hat with bear ears and her friends surrounded by little hearts, the way she doesn't gloss over embarassing or unflattering situations, and the fact that she expresses her feeling when she's going through rough times instead of pretending it's no big deal make this zine very down to earth and relatable. A new Invincible Summer anthology, picking up where this one left off, just came out in April 2008, and you can be sure that I'm going to track down a copy. -Lauren Trout (Microcosm Publishing, 222 S. Rogers St., Bloomington, IN 47404)

$10 for a year subscription, 8 1/2" x 11", photocopied, 20 pgs. 

Let me explain the way the project works to the best of my understanding: in exchange for sending the editor $30, you will get a page of writings and drawings, which have been photocopied onto a colored piece of paper and folded into fourths, mailed to you weekly for a year. Or, for $10 a year, four of the weekly papers will be folded up together and mailed to you every month. This is a very creative idea, but how I loathe the presentation. In issue #42 for example, there is a page and a half of recipes, a page with some thoughts about Phil Collins, and a page of chicken scratch handwriting about two subscribers who live next door to each other. Basically, a piece of paper divided into sections by different contributors, on topics that are totally unrelated. Even though about half of the content is interesting or funny, it’s hard to get into this because it’s all so random. The criticism I hear most often about my own writing is that I don’t give enough background or context. I always thought, "Well, who cares? People don’t need to know about who I am to appreciate my writing." Ah, but now I understand that I have been wrong. If you don’t know whose life you’re reading about, it’s tough to come up with a reason for why you’re reading it at all. I’d say this is worth spending $10 for the monthly subscription if you a) know the people who write it, b) have a lonely mailbox, or c) are too attention-deficit to read normal-length zines. –Lauren Trout (Nose Knows, 2401 Burgundy #25, New Orleans, LA 70117)

$4 ppd., 5 1/2" x 8 1/2", photocopied w/ color cover, 56 pgs.

Seeing as how both of the zines that make up this split are about prison life and are edited by the same guy, it would make more sense to me if all this material was compiled in just one of the zines. Despite the confusing format, this split is pretty rad. Orga(ni)sm features personal horror stories and straight facts dealing with the Japanese legal and prison systems, which take the cultural standards of conformity and subordination to extremes. Call and Response publishes firsthand accounts of prison conditions and some broader information related to the problems that plague the prison system in America. This split is remarkable to me because it manages to avoid articles full of anti-prison rhetoric and news about the handful of American political prisoners who have received national attention—topics that have been covered to death in prison-themed literature. This is a great personal zine of well-written contributions from different people who happen to be incarcerated or are interested in sharing information about the prison system. –Lauren Trout (jb64jp@yahoo.co.jp)

$3 or trade, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2", photocopied, 48 pgs. 

At first, I dismissed this zine as pretentious and unlovable after flipping through and noting all of the archaic vocabulary used in these poems and short stories that were written in a style that was popular one hundred years ago. I first imagined the editor as a guy who lives in Boston and has a trendy wardrobe of dark clothes and writes mainly to try and impress college students at coffee shops. But after I put on the cool mix CD of jazzy and folky pop from Hip Kid records that came with it, I took a second look at the zine and had a change of heart. I instead imagined the editor writing on his rooftop in the evenings after work and wishing he had been born a century earlier and could get the chance to show his work to one of the great English writers of the past. The careful illustrations and cut-and-paste layout seem to match the zine’s tone perfectly, which leads me to believe that a sincere amount of time and love were put into this project. Still, one story in here needs to be called out as entirely not awesome. The gist of it is that two white men are sitting with a black man on a bus and "They all had a conversation they found funny and they all had something in common for 17 minutes," like black and white people talking to each other is supposed to be a big deal or something. The author then has one of his characters make a joke "about all Mexicans being good at drywall." Maybe this story isn’t set in 2008, but I don’t give a shit about context; there’s plenty of casual racist sentiment in mainstream literature and it should be understood that it has no place in an underground DIY publication. While I think that this zine has a cool, bohemian feel to it and that the mix CD is great, I don’t want to wholeheartedly recommend this zine and make the editor think that it is okay to publish stories with such hateful implications. –Lauren Trout (Samf147@yahoo.com)