We’ve got zines, zines, ZINES baby! My dream for WWACommendations — fill it with zines! November is a bit of sequel to October, because Paulina got y’all ready for some Koreangry content so that I could jump in talk all about her work. Continuing along the theme of WWAC folks supporting each other, Kat sent Kayleigh some zines from SPX and she’s got some choice reviews for those of you who love bumbling vampires. As a previous recipient of SPX zines via Kat, I need to shout out that Kat is a superstar. (Shockingly, I requested weird Garfield zines!) If you’re really here for nicely bound graphic novels there’s no need to worry, because Carrie and Emily have some young adult comics just for you. And finally, Masha has made me remember that I love manga naming conventions and thing we should name everything the way they name manga. I won’t spoil it.
Alenka Figa: Like Paulina, I was lucky to meet the artist known as Koreangry! I met her earlier this year at CAKE (the Chicago Alternative Comics festival) and am a bit ashamed to admit that I am still reading through my CAKE haul, so I’ve only just finished the zines I bought from her. Koreangry’s comics work is unique; she creates dioramas and displays using a stand-in doll for herself (Koreangry the character) and photographs her in handcrafted backgrounds or places her against 2D images. The end result is usually paneled comics, but because the images are of actual 3-dimensional dioramas there is a lot of depth and detail that is just mind blowing.
The Koreangry zine covers are all mock magazine covers similar to Cosmopolitan, so when buying zines I went with three covers that just looked fun. I ended up with issues six, ten and eleven — eleven being her most recent zine, which isn’t listed online currently. As promised in the title, these zines express a lot of the artist’s anger about myriad topics, such as living as an undocumented and, later, a formerly undocumented immigrant under American capitalism and experiencing racism and misogyny. However, the zines also contain prose from other Korean writers, which I did not expect! It’s very cool to see Koreangry create space for other creators, and the inclusion of other writers creates a sense of community. These zines dip into so many tumultuous and difficult emotions, which I really appreciate. Koreangry doesn’t shy away from discussions that sometimes even result in her apologizing or sharing new information about a topic she’s just coming to understand, as she does in issue 11 when she explains how Korean American adoptees can be deported. It’s comforting to have proof, on the page, that while her zines express her own explosive emotions she’s also got an artist community.
Carrie McClain: Wendy Xu Supremacy! I recently reread Mooncakes (written by co-creator Suzanne Walker) and bought myself another copy of Tide Song (I gave away my first copy) just in time to read Xu’s latest graphic novel: The Infinity Particle. Delving into the science fiction genre for this story, Xu introduces us to young aspiring scientist Clementine Chong as she travels to Mars in the near future when civilization is thriving and not just surviving. Clem is a dedicated student and lover of science and is off to study in the lab of one of her heroes: Dr. Marcela Lin. Clem soon meets Dr. Lin’s assistant Kye, who she soon learns isn’t running on any standard operating system. He’s an incredibly lifelike and gorgeous AI model who is more than what meets the eye, of course.
Perhaps the most surprising and in depth elements of The Infinity Particle were the parallels of motherhood and ownership between children and creations — that doesn’t get written about thoughtfully enough. Xu carefully threads together a heartwarming yet complicated and engaging narrative on the messy parts of mothers, families, the legacies they want to leave behind and how children can and are often harmed in these quests. Xu’s work here strikes me as incredibly hopeful which is what I needed to read in a time where society is feeling the pressure over an unnecessary dependence on AI, extreme climate change, and gross hyper-surveillance by our governments as we wear out our own voices attempting to get genocides on all corners of the planet from continuing.
A plus is seeing Xu’s artwork that I love in this muted color scheme that gives me big risograph vibes. I was also happy to see in this book as well: her trademark ability to give us a lovable supporting cast and cute sidekick and animal-like characters. I am the captain of the fan club for Clem’s faithful AI friend and assistant SENA. The Infinity Particle is a stunning graphic novel that moved me with themes of autonomy and the failures and blessings of being human that I’ll be sure to reread. I love Clem and Kye’s story as well: falling in love against the backdrop of discovery, building connections and choosing not to be a part of exploitative systems of oppression.
Emily Lauer: Oh, I also recently read The Infinity Particle! I liked it, too. The art is so immersive. I just read Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang, with art by LeUyen Pham and it’s adorable. I was already an enormous fan of Gene Luen Yang’s work and LeUyen Pham’s art so I went in with high expectations. The story starts with Val, a Vietnamese American high schooler who has a complicated relationship with Valentine’s Day. She is introduced to dragon dancing at a Lunar New Year celebration, and a sweet high school romance story intersects with various aspects of her family issues, friendships, and learning different styles of dragon dancing. While some aspects of the plot require a lot of suspension of disbelief, overall the story is fun and engaging throughout, and both Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham are adept at making imperfect characters lovable. Lunar New Year Love Story is aimed at the oldest readership I’ve seen for LeUyen Pham’s art and it does not disappoint. Just as her work on the Real Friends series is clearly for older readers than is her work for The Princess in Black series, so too is this appropriate for an older age range. I would definitely recommend this book to any high school age readers who like romance.
Kayleigh Hearn: After ten years of faithful pilgrimages to the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center, I regrettably missed the 2023 Small Press Expo due to a severe case of being seven months pregnant. Thankfully, WWAC’s own Kat Overland was kind enough to send me an SPX care package featuring books, prints, and a handful of zines. Ah, the sweet scent of Xerox! One of the great delights of SPX is connecting, however briefly, with artists and creatives who share your passions and curiosities – so I was ecstatic to score three zines about one of my favorite tv shows, What We Do in The Shadows.
3 Vampires 1 House: A What We Do in The Shadows Zine by @minacoleta is a sweet little black-and-white zine spotlighting the vampire fashions of Nadja, Laszlo, and Nandor (his “Not you, Guillermo” is implied). “Fashion,” in this case, meaning everything from Nadja and Laszlo’s matching gothic ensembles to Nandor’s traffic cone “wizard” hat and the giant Scabby the Rat balloon that Nadja’s human ghost once possessed. (I love this show.) The artwork has a sketchy fluidity perfectly suited for the actors’ elastic, comedic expressions; every illustration is a delight.
Jade F. Lee’s Guillermo De la Fanzine and Nandor: A Relentless Fanzine are two zines as inseparable as their characters. Pocket-sized and printed on colorful paper (Nandor is neon green, Guillermo is goldenrod), each zine features fun, charming illustrations of the vampire and his beloved slayer/bodyguard, like Guillermo hosting a cooking show with Sam the cat familiar, or Nandor reminding us to “Always stretch before turning the Euphrates red with blood!” I love this show, I love these characters, and I love seeing how different artists interpret them. Seek these zines out!
Kat Overland: I have been trying out Bluesky as a way to get my Twitter fix without having to actually go to Twitter, and thus have had to put together a brand new following list which led to a bunch of new artists to explore the works of! And this led me to SE Case’s Rigsby WI, a webcomic (also on Webtoon) about…a bunch of teens living in Rigsby, Wisconsin, in the early aughties. That is also the time I went to high school, so there’s a pleasant sense of nostalgia in Case’s fashion choices and interiors, even though the setting has way more nature than my suburban youth. Jeordie is the center of the comic, the kind of kid who can hang with various friend groups but always feels like an outsider, and he’s dealing with a lot — race, girlfriend who thinks his music sucks, basketball, and more. Case does a great job with expressions, and I love the various ways her characters change and grow over time. Chapter two packs an especially emotional punch, focusing on Anna and her home life, which is mostly a secret from her more affluent friends. The chapter is grayscale other than Anna’s red hair, underlining the way she feels disconnected not only from her peers but from the wider town as well. Three chapters are complete, but chapter three is currently being posted on Webtoon if that’s where you go to read.
Masha Zhdanova: I watched a bit of a drama based on this manga, and then somehow read all 11 volumes of The Full-Time Wife Escapist by Tsunami Umino in two days because I lost control of my life. It’s a josei manga about a 25 year old woman who went to grad school and can’t get a job (relatable) so she ends up becoming a housekeeper for her dad’s coworker, and then they enter into a contractual marriage where he pays her to live with him and do housework for him, and eventually they fall in love obviously because that’s how these things go. It actually has some incredibly nuanced and interesting things to say about marriage, labor, and the nature of work, and even has LGBT characters? Who get to have relationships and lives and plot relevance beyond being comic relief or background texture? The art is a little stiff and simplistic and there is a lot of text but you get used to it really quickly and for anyone in their late twenties or older it’s going to really resonate. I also really like the subplot with the main character’s aunt, who’s in her fifties, and the love interest’s coworker who’s a lot younger than her at 29, and the deep and caring friendship they slowly build over the course of the story. It’s so good!! Aaa!!! Available from Kodansha and on Azuki.
