Blame Wes Fenlon. Our features editor casually floated the idea "Hey, why don't we do an indie zine?"
For those who aren't familiar: zines are small-circulation hobbyist publications, often photocopied, black-and-white, and distributed free or for a token amount. I thought it sounded like a perfect fit for the Indie section (opens in new tab), which, like zines, is motivated by a scrappy love of things that not enough people care about.
And that's why I spent over a month trying to evoke the lo-fi qualities of zines remembered from the 1990s, only working with MS Paint instead of a library photocopier. Thanks are due to the artists who contributed (Brianna Lei (opens in new tab), Nathalie Lawhead (opens in new tab), Sam McKenzie (opens in new tab), and Michael Fitzhywel (opens in new tab)), as well as the writers who either wrote something bespoke or whose existing articles were repurposed.
You can read the pdf in the embed below, but in the true spirit of the zine, why not print it out, staple it together (poorly), and read it on real paper? You can download it here (opens in new tab).
