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"Let it Burn" Zine Process

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 I'm obsessed with the song " Burn " by k-pop artist KEY (Kim Kibum.)  I've spent hours listening to it and picking apart the things I enjoy about it: the techniques and the layering, the mixing and the vocal choices.  Naturally, I hoped to one day make a zine that communicated my feelings about the song, because zines are how I communicate. Even though I always have lots of ideas for what I want to make zines about, I won't make those zines until the right format for it finds me.  And in the fall of 2024, it was the work of two of my book production students that inspired me to finally construct a zine to talk about Burn. After talking to one student about expressing music in comics, and reviewing the work of another student who had made a fold-out zine in a new format that revealed things in different sequences, I decided I wanted to make a zine that unfolded in a way to reveal the song in the direction it felt like the song was going.  I started by listening ...
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KEY COLORS painted accordion Zine

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 Pride month!  It's June, the world is bursting with color and flowers and creatures (at least here in Maine) and I was struck with the urge to PAINT!!!  I had wanted to make KEY fashion zine for years, but never could quite figure out what approach I wanted to take.  The colorful world inspired me: make a rainbow. I had been itching to use my restocked gouache to paint for months, and wanted to use this an an exercise in drawing directly with paint: no sketches or pencils, just build form with color.  It ended up being challenging to abandon line-based drawing but was so fun and exciting, I painted for four solid days to finish it.  It was a cool process, so here's how it progressed. I started by poring over reference images and calculating the size and shape of the thing.  Always trying to be frugal, I aimed for a standard paper size and landed on 18 inches wide, then figured out how I would divide that up into eight panels- not the standard spectrum...
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Zinemaking: Flying Electric Guitar

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 With about five days left until Small Press Expo, I'm hit with inspiration (a bluesky post by a friend) that solves a problem I'd been wrestling with (I don't have anything new that's QUITE silly enough!) Which lead to the four-day marathon completion of a zine called Flying Electric Guitar: Five anime opening theme songs that absolutely did not have to slap as hard as they do. The premise is that it's my favorite 90s anime openings from anime that I didn't watch or think was particularly good.  The idea being...the greats from Utena, Escaflowne, Dragon Ball GT, etc. wouldn't make this list because those anime DESERVED the amazing opening themes they got.  Yeah, it's a little sassy.  A little mean.  But what better to direct some sass at than 30 year old media properties that we're all properly nostalgic for and embarrassed by? The process went as usual, aiming for another quarter-letter saddle stitch, using my usual tools: Paper: Midori MD grid pad...
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Zinemaking: I Like Masking, Actually

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 This month I'm making my way back to the Small Press Expo in Maryland, my first book show since 2019 (Which happened to also be SPX!) I'm always super motivated to make new zines for a new show, and I was also on the cusp of making my 100th zine!  I'd calculated that I'd made 99 zines ( list here ) and so my 100th aught to be a triumphant one. This triumph would be a quarter-letter saddle-stitched zine with a hand-stamped cover called "I Like Masking, Actually!" Some process photos follow.  It was a pretty smooth draw, using all my usual tools Paper: 5 mm blue grid notebook (Reeden Reed-Jr. Note or Kokuyo campus) Pencil: Pilot Color Eno soft blue mechanical pencil (.7 mm) Ink: Zebra disposable pocket brush pen I originally had an elaborate plan for the cover... involving a pop-up, full sized mask, but once I was done drawing the book itself, I decided I wanted to use my favorite illustration from the book as the cover image, and went with that. However, since...
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