Benjamin Zastrow
Poster art by Liz Anna Kozik.
Camy Matthay stumbled upon zines years ago at the Madison Public Library when she checked out the self-published magazine, Surf’s Up. Written by a local author, the zine was part childhood memoir and part personal reflection on womanhood, illustrated with handmade collages and written on a manual typewriter. Inside, she found a hand-drawn map of Tenney Park, with the best ice-skating spots identified.
“I remember being utterly charmed,” Matthay says. “After that moment I was totally hooked.”
Soon after, Matthay started making zines herself, focusing on collections of images unified under unusual themes — photos of people burning, images of the sky, collections of flying houses and portraits of famous pigs. She got involved with Madison Infoshop, a volunteer-run activist collective with a large zine library, and later the Madison Zinefest, which was founded in 2004. Now, she’s part of a team organizing Madison Print & Resist Zinefest, an evolution of the original event that launched in 2013. This year’s event is April 28 on the second floor of the Central Library. The event will draw more than 50 zinemakers, comic artists, printmakers and radical activists from Madison and around the nation.
Frequently associated with punk subculture of the 1970s and ’80s, the first zines can be traced back to the 1930s, when editors of science fiction magazines began publishing correspondence with fans and critics. As access to copying and publishing equipment expanded, zines became an essential part of DIY music and political activism, as they provided people with a fast and inexpensive way to disseminate information. “It really comes out of the anarchist ethos [of] voluntary participation, mutual aid and the sharing economy,” Matthay says of zine culture. “I think it appeals to people because there are so few marketplaces for people who are far more interested in sharing experiences and information rather than making a profit.”
There are a number of zine-focused festivals around the country, but organizers say the Madison community stands out, thanks to the city’s history of radical activism, academic influence from UW-Madison and the presence of legendary comic artist Lynda Barry. Zinefest organizer KC Councilor, a doctoral candidate in communication arts at UW-Madison, is a member of the Applied Comics Kitchen (ACK!), a group of students who studied under Barry. He only began drawing a few years ago but has already published a book-length graphic novel, Between You and Me: Transitional Comics, which details his experience as a transgender man.
“Comics are a powerful way to communicate really complicated stuff to a broad audience really quickly,” says Councilor, who will release his book at Zinefest. “I can try to explain in words to someone what it feels like to go to the bathroom, or to be misgendered, but when they see the comic, they really get it. It’s like a new language.”
Councilor says there’s been a resurgence of interest in zines lately, perhaps as a reaction to overexposure to digital media. “It does feel like it’s becoming radical again,” he says.
Over the years, Matthay has seen the diversity in artists and subject matter increase significantly. Current zines have many stories about gender identity, and the number of science fiction zines is also growing. Among these is JKX Comics, created by a collective of UW-Madison graduate students who use comics to communicate scientific research.
The open-ended guidelines for what constitutes a zine is part of what makes them so popular, says Lance Owens, a Zinefest organizer and director of ArtWorking, a nonprofit that provides resources and mentorship to artists with disabilities. The medium makes zines a perfect creative avenue for artists with disabilities, particularly those who communicate in non-traditional ways. “It can be disjointed, the narrative can be oblique, there are no rules. I think that’s what’s so wonderful about it — it’s so unrestricted.”
