Relaunching Your Fanzine

A new Fanzine Podcast episode speaks with 3 ex-editors doing just that

Most fanzines are not designed to be permanent: their editors grow up, get "proper" jobs, start families, or just grow bored and want to move on. But occasionally, years down the line, fanzine editors come back around and decide to have another go at it. For this episode, we welcome back from Episode 17 Alison B, whose Confessions of an Ex-Zine Editor, dedicated to exorcising the addictive demons created through her original zine Bubblegum Slut, has resulted in a Guest Ex-Editor 'zine, for which she cajoled and convinced 14 other ex-editors to resurrect their zines, if only for 2-3 pages. Two of those ex-editors, Jøsh Saitz of Negative Capability, and Clint Evans of Peppermint Iguana, are now at work on new print issue after years away, and they join Alison, and host Tony Fletcher, in discussing why they would want to go through it all over again. You can listen from the show’s home page, from the audio file embedded above, or from those major platforms that make embedding possible here on Substack:

Many of you may not know these fanzines, as they have all come about since the 1990s. So let me give them a major shout-out. Alison’s Confessions of an Ex-Zine Editor is a meta masterpiece. She set about it as a form of catharsis, after coming back to old diaries kept in the year when she got sober, which had necessitated quitting her old zine Bubblegum Slut and everything about the lifestyle it had generated. Confessions, which recently produced its fifth issue out of what Alison intends to be a six-zine finite project, mixes old diaries with some interview catch-ups, guest features, and some wonderful postmodernist spoofs. For example, because she no longer receives promo CDs in the mail, she reviews what she does get in the mail: pizza promo cards and the like. (“Some commentators have questioned how Caprinos can follow their splashy debut 7”, ‘Free Pizza!’, a runaway hit”) All her Confessions come with full-colour cover illustrations and a back-cover colour collage, and she glues a fur heart onto every individual copy. Buy Confessions here. Read Alison’s blog about influential zines here.

Negative Capability is/was another unique publication. Named after John Keats’ belief that the mind can contain two opposing thoughts at the same time without going mad, Jøsh used it to vent his anger at the world every time he got fired or laid off… which appears to have been quite often, judging by the five previous issues. Along with multi-page rants that were always extremely well-written, Jøsh included articles with titles like “How To Put On A Tit Show,” “Lit. Majors Can Kiss My Ass” and “My Best Friend Was a Junkie,” as well as a horror-show multiple page interview/multi-day encounter with the sleazy NYC porn hustler Al Goldstein. And yet readers clearly felt a bond, given that the print run rose to 4,000 copies.

That bond might have been generated in part because, alongside all the crazed NYC-lifestyle stuff, there unfolded his relationship with his partner - they themselves bonded over Britpop in general, Blur in particular - and their subsequent engagement, marriage and parenthood. Having been employed as Dad for recent years, and escaped New York for Connecticut, Jøsh felt the lack of anger in his new suburban life equated to a lack of Negative Capability, but he is coming back for at least one more round imminently. Meantime, you can access the archives via pdf here.

Peppermint Iguana emanated from the South Wales Valleys, where Clint Evans found himself part of the festival-and-anarchy-styled music scene - bands like Tofu Love Frogs, Ozric Tentacles and Zion Train - but didn’t start publishing a zine about it until he was in his 30s. After seven print issues, which probably peaked when he inadvertently published an article by an undercover Special Branches officer who’d infiltrated the Cardiff Anarchist Network, Clint took the zine online instead: he writes regularly, including about his travels abroad following the Wales national football team, and hosts a radio show that regularly features music from said travels, at peppermintiguana.co.uk. After meeting Alison at a zine fair, he too contributed to her Guest Ex-Editor and is now promising to put the mag back in print.

Guest Ex-Editor - with a colour-it-yourself cover that Alison believes typifies the “Adult Activity Book” definition of oldsters putting out zines - also features contributions from a couple of former Fanzine Podcasts guests, Alan Rider of Adventures in Reality (Ep. 12), and Jane Appleby of Pretty But Schizo [Ep. 17], along with the likes of Golf Sale (which has since formally resurrected and published two new issues), Beat Motel, Splizz Zine, Cheeseslut and more. That cover, btw, is itself a zine resurrection, designed in 2011 by Andy Tilley as a rough for an unpublished Bubblegum Slut.

If you don’t actually know me, have just stumbled across Wordsmith and wonder what authority I have to host this show, I took used to run a zine. We even put a book together a few years back (you can buy it from here). And in case you’re asking: I don’t feel the need to get back into the print zine game, but I look on my Substack as I did on my website of two decades back - as a continuation of my desire (“driven purely by ego” as I admit on this episode) to write and communicate about all sorts of pop culture and occasional politics.

Finally, I feel it necessary to give Alison one further shout-out. Part of Confessions’ catharsis was her realization that she had taken refuge in her sobriety by reading about other peoples’ trainwreck lives, in book form - you know, Prozac Nation, How To Murder Your Life and the like - and sure enough, her occasional reviews have now resulted in a dedicated zine, Trainwreck Book Club, the cover of which comes with a couple of googly eyes attached to a Thomas the Tank Engine. Truly tanktastic.

Other zines mentioned in this episode: Black Velvet, Abaxis, Artcore, Lunchtime For Wild Youth, Meal Deal Zine, Festival A, Golf Sale, Pretty But Schizo, Adventures In Reality, Pint Sized Punk, Myth & Lore, Mondo Grebo and no doubt more.

Future episodes should feature V. Vale of Search & Destroy/reSEARCH, Gez Lowry of Rising Free, and Tony D. of Kill Your Pet Puppy. But, much as I love digging into the zine archives, I’m equally happy featuring current contenders. If there’s a zine editor out there who you figure would make a good guest - and they don’t have to be doing a music zine, nor is there any ageism here down or upwards! - please let me know, via comments or DMs.

As always, love to know what you think of the show. Happy listening. And… be creative.