Zine Rewind! Into the Zine Vault

Let's go through my zines from ten years ago

It’s International Zine Month, and there are a few ways to celebrate. One of the ways is by following Alex Wrekk’s fantastic International Zine Month list

Today is the second day of International Zine Month, which means it’s time to dig out our favorite zines and share them. Personally, I wanted to go back and look at the zines I made ten years ago exactly, as I was preparing to table at my very first zine fest that fateful summer of 2015 and had a burst of creativity to have new zines for it. While I made zines before 2015, I actually gave the originals to the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, OR and they have been lost to time there or might still be floating around, I have no clue. It was kind of a dumb decision to just rid myself of these early, teenage zines of mine, but at the same time I kind of love that they are mysteriously floating out there out of my control. All I have are the vague memories of making them.

First up from 2015, we have Grown Up Chuckie Finster.

I, being a millennial, grew up loving the cartoon Rugrats, and it had a lot of influence on my style of drawing I developed. I’m also the same age as the Rugrats babies, technically, so I had given some thought to how they would be at my age at the time in our early 20’s. I drew some “Grown Up Rugrats” drawings that I’d shared to Tumblr that gained some popularity, thanks in part to the Tumblr Fuck Yeah 1990’s who commissioned me to draw a few things for them.

I created the Grown Up Chuckie Finster zine similar to how I created most of my zines in 2015: I sat down with some paper and a pen and just went for it, coming up with the story and drawings as I went. The cover has a digital drawing that I made on my Samsung tablet at the time, it amazes me now that I use an iPad and Procreate for pretty much every zine I make that I was even able to draw on that old tablet back then.

Grown Up Chuckie Finster had a very limited print run, and now it lives only in the archives. But it tells about 25 year old Chuckie’s struggles as a young adult, especially when faced with changing dynamics in his childhood friend group.

Next up: The Hipster Alphabet

In 2012 I picked up some blank coasters for some art contest. I never ended up entering the art contest, but I used the blank coasters to start an art project: The Hipster Alphabet. I drew a new one each day for about a month, using my affection for alliteration to satirize the then-current-but-kind-of-dying-out hipster culture.

It was super fun to create, and the response was really good as well. I even used the project in my photography college classes, taking my drawings and bringing them to life through posed photos of my friends and family dressed up to match the way I’d sketched out the initial comics.

For the zine I recreated the drawings I’d done on the coasters specifically for the zine, using a simple pen and paper.

The Hipster Alphabet is now a fun little time capsule to look back on every so often, but it shall live in the archives for good.

Palpatine Zine was created during my extremely brief time working at Pita Pit in Portland, OR during the 2 1/2 months I lived there in 2014. My coworker would speak in the Star Wars character Palpatine’s voice and say rhyming words with the infamous “Do It” line. So naturally, I had to turn that into comics which turned into a zine. I created this one all digitally on my old ass Samsung tablet.

Palpatine Zine has a sequel, Number 2 It. Both zines, while super fun, live in the archive and are out of print.

2015 also marked the birth of Cool Dog. Cool Dog, my beloved long-time character who embodies the simple stupidity of 90’s cartoon dogs, has majorly evolved over the years. What began as a doodle I drew to pass the time behind the counter at my job at a comic book store turned into an off the cuff zine I sat down and drew with no real thought to it, other than “What would this dog that’s too cool for his own good do?”

The conclusion to that question became: Well, he would die. That was the punchline for a majority of the Cool Dog comics that came to be. Not really knowing how else to end these comics, they would end with a tombstone that read RIP Cool Dog. Yet Cool Dog has lived on for the past decade, and I still have more stories in mind for him.

Let’s look back on the first iteration of the Cool Dog zine, shall we?

Right off the bat, the drawing of Cool Dog on the cover is so funny for me to look at now. I have ten more years of drawing experience, however I kind of love this haphazard pen drawing of Cool Dog with this long ass snout. The proportions are wild.

The first issue of Cool Dog was pure punk rock: all hand drawn, no plan, no penciling, just sat down and let it ooze from my brain onto the page.

Here’s another couple of issues of Cool Dog, for fun:

Cool Dog issue 5 is a personal favorite, it’s where Cool Dog got to have more of a story rather than some random chaos happen within 4 or so panels. In it Cool Dog becomes a K9 police dog simply to gain access to confiscated drugs, only after attempting to get a job as a seeing eye dog to earn money to buy drugs before realizing it’s an unpaid gig. And of course, he knows that All Cats Are Beautiful. He’s Cool Dog.

Another favorite of mine: Cool Dog in Air Bud: the Reboot. Cool Dog is discovered by a Hollywood talent scout to star in the reboot of Air Bud. Cool Dog falls into the celebrity lifestyle of girls, drugs, partying, however it comes at the cost of having less time for his best friend and his old life pre-stardom. When he’s confronted with a puppy that he sired during his partying, he makes the very easy decision to leave LA and go back to his old life and friend, pretending nothing ever happened (this is an important plot point for the current storyline of Cool Dog!)

All of these older Cool Dog zines are sealed in the vault, the only available Cool Dog zines are a couple of minizines I made this year and Cool Dog Goes to Dog Court, which is a bit of a reboot of the entire Cool Dog series and features his “origin story” as well as sets up a new storyline to follow as I take Cool Dog into the next decade. Cool Dog is far more thought out now, I also draw it all digitally rather than with a pen and paper.

A zine series of mine that is nearing 10 years, and is the namesake for this Substack, is Miq’s Mix. What started as a literal cassette mixtape and companion zine has turned into a series of music related zines including a comic perzine about my memories growing up with music, attending concerts, and working with my dad’s backstage catering company. The name Miq’s Mix even comes from a mixed CD that my dad made me as a kid.

Miq’s Mix vol. 1 featured a block printed cover of a linocut cassette tape stamp I carved and then drew over with a black fine tipped pen, and was handsewn on the binding. It was an extremely limited run of 10 copies since each one came with an accompanying cassette tape of crudely recorded songs from a playlist I made of songs I was really into at the time. The zine featured illustrations to go with each song on the tape/playlist.

This format has continued throughout several of my Miq’s Mix zines, my personal favorite issue is the second one. I had more fun with it and made it pretty silly and goofy, including fake band trivia. It also looks really pretty with my colored pencil drawings. I need to get back to that style, going through this zine made me feel warm and fuzzy!

Alright, back into the vault. Huff (turns huge bank vault door to lock shut, the large metal clank of the lock bolt echoing through our bones). (Dusts off hands) Welp, those were my old zines that lead to where I’m still at today with my zine making. Ever evolving, and challenging myself to get more and more creative with my art. I love to peek into the vault and see how I’ve changed over these years but have also stayed true to what has always piqued my interest.

Here’s to decades and decades more of zines!