Let’s Make a Messy Zine!
The Why and How To Remain a DIY Kid at Heart
If you’re of certain age, you probably grew up with magazines. Until the past decade or so, glossies were as an essential part of modern culture—inspiring the aspirational pipe dreams of those with otherwise limited access to the diversity, art, fashion, and culture at-large beyond New York City, where most of these publications were being produced. And if you didn’t fit into those—which, let’s face it, many of us still don’t—you might have unwittingly found yourself picking up a crappy little alt zine.
Pre-internet, magazines served a greater purpose than an aesthetic for coffee tables: they were ritual. Magazines represented something to look forward to every month, showing up in your mailbox, at the doctor’s office, or on the shelves at the grocery store, bookstores, and the local public library, reading cover-to-cover, and mostly likely cutting up all your favorite images (or using a Xerox machine to make copies) for self-made collages and scrapbooks. We wouldn’t have BuzzFeed listicles and the proliferation of memes without all of those quizzes, Proustian questionnaires, and other digestible pieces of content found in magazines.
This ritual has become practically non-existent for younger generations who are now accustomed to receiving trends digitally on-demand and has long since been leading to a larger problem. Every time a magazine folds, another piece of my heart breaks. Too many journalists are still getting laid off, which means journalism isn’t doing well. When journalism isn’t doing well, it means democracy isn’t doing well—no matter what the beat is.
I wouldn’t have had the amazing life I have now without magazines to inspire me—including going to art school and journalism school to pursue it professionally. While I don’t exactly have the fantasy life that I envisioned for myself 25 years ago of being this extremely cool and wealthy managing editor, I recognize a scarier reality where the return of alt pocket zines signals a return of controlled language.
During my junior year of college, I studied at Charles University in Prague. The whole thing was somewhat accidental but also completely fitting: I wanted a reason to study abroad and happened to choose the coolest program by default. My French and Spanish skills were too weak for an immersion program, and I had just left my art program, leaving limited options aside from advanced literature courses in England or this really quirky study abroad program in the Czech Republic. Obviously, I chose the latter.
At the time, Czechia was still called the Czech Republic* after dissolving the name Czechoslovakia and its territories around the end of 1992—a title it had carried since the Austro-Hungarian empire through Nazi occupation and well into Soviet reign (*the country since reverted back to Czech Republic in 2022 according to the AP Stylebook, underscoring my opinion that for better or worse, change is inevitable and history is doomed to repeat itself).
Still a little fresh into its new post-Communist era, it revealed a bold, optimistic country filled with complex layers of lived history, shifting borders, and stories beneath the surface—all somehow relatively untouched from surviving the destruction of centuries of war surrounding it. This was the home of outside thinkers, philosophers, and artists—Kafka and Kundera, the father of Art Nouveau, Alphonse Mucha, Cubist pioneer, Frank Kupka, and an entire catalog of New Wave cinema—and it was going to my study abroad fantasy. How lucky was I?
Among my classes—contemporary Central EU politics, Czech language, an advanced modern Czech art and architecture course—I signed up for a course called “Underground Czech Art and Culture During The Soviet Bloc.” It was taught by this incredible professor who played in a ‘70s experimental punk feminist band channeling the vibe of the Mo-Dettes, Kleenex, and The Slits. I was in heaven.
Most of the underground art being made at this time was anti-Communist—something that is probably hard for young leftists to stomach given this weird recent fetishization of radical activism that keeps trying to redefine social theory while cherry-picking history in the most reckless manner. This is the always problem with labels, of course.
During this era of Soviet oppression, the state controlled media and the decimation of information, leading to the creation of clandestine zine culture throughout Russia and its satellite territories like Czechoslovakia, known as samizdat. Not only were these smart ways to spread information, but they also looked cool because they were so messy. The aesthetic was rooted in its imperfection, often copied by hand, and that’s what made it so deliciously DIY punk.
Eventually, these zines played a major role in the Velvet Revolution, leading to open borders that allowed students like myself to visit. (Today, they’re just dealing with the same issues we’re dealing with collectively as a globally connected society).
Jews, who are famously non-conformist assimilationists, also had a samizdat subculture at the time given that religion had been outlawed. This lead to the proliferation of Jewish consciousness, in which Jews were reminded that they were blindly sitting on centuries of incredible history, art, philosophy, and religion that had been repeatedly erased and discriminated against under varying degrees of social oppression and persecution. (This is where a lot of Jews get touchy about the subject of self-determination, particularly if their unique strain of collective ancestral trauma stems from any one of these eras).
Meanwhile, I grew up in the ‘90s in the United States, as a fourth-generation American Jew. Not only did I not have any of these problems, but my earliest years were shaped by pop culture and a magical world of Walt Disney where a brighter future was one where everyone from around the world was dancing and celebrating their differences—not a racist theme park boat ride sponsored by Siemens. Currently, we seem to be raising the next generation without hope or optimism while inserting the harsh realities of the world at an earlier age with carefully selected language (thanks, Ms. Rachel).
On one hand, the idea of thinking differently and radically as a punk mostly felt like an aesthetic novelty than indoctrination. I had my own troubles at home, but the most radical thing about me was that I was outspoken that women should have basic human rights—something we still have not achieved universally and seems to be getting worse by the day. I guess I’m old fashioned and out of touch that I think patriarchy is still the problem and everyone continues to suffer from internalized misogyny as a result.
Feminists were never popular, but maybe that’s why I liked them: I wasn’t popular either. One of my first internships was at Venus Zine, a now-defunct women’s music magazine—first of its kind—that centered women and created opportunities for those trying to thrive within male-dominated creative industries. Founder Amy Schroeder famously hand-stapled early zines in her college dorm before turning it into an internationally distributed publication featuring legends like Missy Elliott and Kathleen Hanna on the cover. When it folded, it was deeply disappointing for everyone, and there’s never been anything like it since.
Sure, anyone with a generous bank account at their disposal can now get a magazine published on demand—even a really good one. But it takes a certain amount of grit to glue and hand staple that shit yourself. Recently, it dawned on me that many younger people can’t even correctly pronounce the word “zine”—short for “magazine,” something that would suggest it is pronounced “zeen” instead of “Zeihn,” with a capital ‘Z’ like many young people now are calling it for some reason—let alone understand what this culture meant to people, and that many folks my own age and up could maybe use a little reminder about the importance of factoring in craft time just for fun (and even rebellion).
Recently, the news has been pretty awful here. Chronic ICE deportation raids are tearing up thousands of families as Trump calls in the National Guard; Georgia's law H.B. 481, also known as the LIFE Act, is being used as an excuse to keep 30-year-old Atlanta nurse Adriana Smith on life support against the will of her family even though she has been brain dead for four months now because she was nine weeks pregnant when admitted to the hospital; and anti-trans legislature is becoming more extreme by the day in states coast-to-coast.
Censorship issues have become increasingly complex, from book bans to abstract censorship restrictions. There is so much information to keep up with, it would seem like there’s a tremendous need for individuals to continue this work. And yet, journalism is now treated as hobbyism and civil volunteer work.
Zine culture is alive and well, and continuing to grow in response to social disorder. Young girls and aging women alike need to believe their voices still matter, and I hope they can find that in zines where they may not find it elsewhere. After all, even in a post-#MeToo world, everyone still hates women—almost as much as they hate Jews. (Ideally it would be cool if they’d hate both of us less because it’s pretty confusing to figure out exactly why people hate you when it could be so many reasons).
Learning how to refine my work as an artist and writer often came at the expense of holding myself back from just making art or being creative for the fuck of it. Optics and algorithms now drive our tastes and culture, making it even harder to justify “why bother?” about creating things that no one else is going to see. But there is a practical answer: it feels good. It just requires motivation, like any other habit.
As a craft hoarder, I love to keep supplies handy for those moments when the mood strikes to start multi-medium projects on the fly—and that moment happened to be this past weekend. As I started cutting out images and glueing them haphazardly to my notebook, I noticed all the blank spaces ripe for words, triggering memories of this layered process and how it all started for me. Was I influenced or was it a calling? Why limit memories to a time capsule I made when I was 15 when I could continue this as an ongoing journal and creative practice? More importantly: I think I need to tell everyone else because this is actually quite fun and making me feel good!
Letting yourself play without pushing towards some grand end goal is a good way to reignite your creative spirit and generate the larger ideas that get you to places you never dreamed of. That’s how this newsletter came about—evidenced by messy chaos that fueled the first few years.
You don’t need to solve the world’s problems or have all the answers, but it’s a simple way to encourage yourself and others to try. It’s easy to get bogged down by the things you can’t control, but it’s powerful to remember how capable you are to do more than you give yourself credit for. Making a zine is therapeutic at a minimum and revolutionary at best. Don’t aim for perfection, just aim to do something.
Apparently February was zine month, but obviously I didn’t know/participate. Since you can do it anytime, there’s no better time than the present to get started. Here’s how.
Get Yr Zine
To make your own your pocket zine, where’s what you’ll need to do:
Get inspired: Seek inspiration from those in the know as you find your own voice and vision. (Just make sure to stay in your lane as ripping off work isn’t cool). Here are a few to check out:
Pinche Chica Chic: Stumbled upon this stunning conceptual feminist fashion/humor zine at Librería Urbe, a hole-in-the-wall indie bookstore in Mexico City. Even if you don’t speak Spanish—maybe especially if you don’t—you should pick up this zine. Having to teach yourself Spanish to read it would make it that much more special, like you’re giving yourself the autodidact gift of advanced education learning another language while enjoying some really beautiful art and design—including a laminate insert featuring line drawings of lingerie.
Queering the Burbs: Joe Erbentraut of Queering the Burbs, a Substack “about what to do when you find yourself in a place that wasn’t built for you,” has put out their second zine on Big Cartel. Happy Pride!
Above the Fold: Leah Mennies took her newsletter to print, using Risograph to create a gorgeous and insightful dumpling-themed zine that just earned its first James Beard Foundation Award nomination this year!
The Make Your Own Zine Zine: PocketThoughts has an arsenal of cool zines, but I love this Make Your Own Zine zine that has a makeshift Artist’s Way vibe with practical advice and prompts to help aspiring zine makers to get started.
Plants Against Patriarchy: This is still The Weed Witch, after all, so a metaphysical shop zine from the Skyentology about radical herbalism and feminism seems pretty appropriate to mention here.
Get your supplies: A glue stick or two, a notebook or few sheets of paper to fold and staple at the seam, some scissors, a pile of old magazines, pens, pencils, markers, glitter, stickers. Optional: ModPodge with some sponges or throwaway paintbrushes (if you’d like to seal the layer in a book). If using individual pages, make a slight crease in the center of the page but don’t staple until the end so it’s easier to use a copy machine or scanner.
Get cutting and doodling: Start by finding visuals that jump out at you, which is a lot easier than trying to find a specific image like a needle in a haystack. Yes, you could print out just the right images, but that takes away the joy of getting creative with what you already have—even if that means drawing the doodle by hand.
Get creative: I’m a big fan of pasting as I go, but feel free to make a stockpile of visuals or words and arrange them. I like to start with the images because sometimes it helps inspire the words, but you could always cut up the words to fit in like poetry or write them by hand (even if it requires editing some messy editing on the page).
Get gluing: If you haven’t already (I usually glue as I go), paste your images on the page, filling in with words as you see fit. If you’re using a notebook, you can seal the images with ModPodge towards the end for a nice finish, or going the hand-stapled route, make sure to scan and copy your pages before binding. Don’t forget to save your files somewhere safe!
Stay Curiously Messy: Start Small, Support Small
While I love all the cool, beautifully produced, small press collectible zines, you’re more likely to find those precious $5 up-and-comers at your favorite local indie bookshop, comic store, or on Etsy. They’re a reminder that you don’t need to go big or spend a lot of money to try something different, and that’s good advice worth pocketing.
Have any zine you’ve made yourself or think everyone should know about? Drop into the comments to share your stuff!
More From Pipe Dreams By The Weed Witch
Archetypes, Algorithms, and Other Lies We’ve Lived
In Praise of Gen-X Women (and Other Gen-X People)
#3: Surprise! You're still living in a dystopian nightmare!
Dia De Los Espooky Mujeres: A Travel Guide to Weed Witches and Curanderas in Mexico
Long live zines! Final Gravity (https://www.beantobarstool.com/final-gravity-zine) is an ostensibly beer-focused zine, but it's really about the humans who make, drink, and live around beer. One of my favorite new publications of the past few years!
Hip-hop hooray for zines!