A Visit and Interview With Cartoonist Ellen Lindner

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Ellen Lindner with Strumpet 2 at Hypothetical Island 

It was a cold and windy night when I went over to cartoonist Ellen Lindner’s studio, located in a building called Hypothetical Island in Brooklyn, NY. Lindner wrote and illustrated the excellent graphic novel Undertow, and edits the international all-women’s comics anthology The Strumpet. These are all books I enjoy and would recommend, for the record. Ellen is a long-time subscriber of BUST Magazine, too—it’s one of her favorites.
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The Way the Lights Went Out: A Hurricane Sandy Zine Benefit

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There are many people out there who still have not recovered from the tremendous chaos that was brought to the East Coast by Hurricane Sandy.  To lend a hand, two of New York’s favorite zinesters—Kate Angell and Katie Wadkins—organized a benefit at the Bluestocking Bookstore and activist center.

 

During this event, there will be zinemakers reading from their work, and plenty of zines have been donated to raise funds for hurricane relief. 100% of the proceeds will go to The Ali Forney Center, a Manhattan-based organization which provides housing to homeless LGBT youth.  The readers include Kate Angell (My Feminist Friends, A Thousand Times Yes), Jamie Varriale (Vélez Sinvergüenza), Jenna Freedman (Lower East Side Librarian, (Barnard Zine Library curator), James Aviaz (Everything is Fucked, Everything is OK), and Dre Grigoropol (Dee’s Dream).

 

Many popular zines will be represented.  Some titles include Homos in Herstory, Tazewell’s Favorite Eccentric, Bangarang This, Black Lesbians in the 70s Zine, Adventures in Menstruating, and many more. The event starts at 7:00pm at Blue Stockings which is located at 172 Allen St. New York, NY 10002.  Hope to see you there, and brings brings some zines if you would like to donate.  They have all the information you need on the invitation.

I <3 Zines: Visiting the Barnard Zine Library

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One of the best places to review uncensored feminist resources is the Barnard Zine Library.  This library is a part of the Barnard College which is a school of Columbia University. This institution thinks, “that zines are important cultural artifacts and research materials, as well as being a pleasure to read.” “What is a zine?”, some readers might ask.  The word “zine” stems from the word magazine or fanzine. A zine is a DIY publication. The collection includes around 4,000 zines with topics ranging from activism, anarchism, body image, third wave feminism, gender, parenting, queer community, riot grrrl, sexual assault, transgender experience, and more.

 

 

Visiting the Barnard Zine Library is recommended to anyone interested in zines about feminism and femme identity. The Barnard Zine Library is maintained and curated by Jenna Freedman, a research librarian, activist, archivist, and zinester.  The library attempt to acquire two copies of each zine.  One copy gets placed on the shelves of the library stacks and is available to anyone to read.  The other copy gets archived in a temperature controlled room and acid-free environment.  Those zines will be preserved for future generations.  They even have issues of BUST, which twenty years ago started as a zine. Plan out your visit, the library’s information can be found on their site zines.barnard.edu.

Happy 2013, My Peeps! Here Is My Past Year In Comics.

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I’m doing the bloggy thing to do, which is to write a year review.  Here is my year in comics in 2012!

Dee's Dream: The Cosmic Wombat House

Dee’s Dream: The Cosmic Wombat House

Dee's Dream: The Patriot Parlor
Dee’s Dream: The Patriot Parlor

In 2012 started coming out with zines my series Dee’s Dream.  Dee’s Dream: The Cosmic Wombat House debuted at MoCCA Fest in April.  The second issue Dee’s Dream: The Patriot Parlor debuted at SPX in September.  Dee’s Dream is about poetic bohemian Dee Fynch and her underdog garage band, which is also called Dee’s Dream.  Both zines are over 16 pages.

House of Frame
House of Frame

 My comics were in woman’s anthology Dirty Diamonds 2 and 3, The Work Issue and Travel Issue.  For the work issue, which came out in April, I did a four page comic called House of Frame. The comic is about a young woman working in frame shop, who encounters a very difficult customer, who happens to be another young woman.

Lupa Cachula's Life: The Hurricane
Lupa Cachula’s Life: The Hurricane

In comic I have in the Dirty Diamonds: Travel Issue, which was launched in December, I had another four page story called Lupa Cachula’s Life: The Hurricane.  I came up with a new character Lupa Cachula who is a weird witchy outsider. Read it here. I’ll probably make more comics about her in the future.

Screen Shot 2013-01-02 at 12.45.22 AM
From Suspect Device #2

 In April, when Josh Bayer’s Suspect Device #2 came out, I had a one page comic in there.  My strip is about issues with self image.

Dre's Questions

When one of the organizers of the Philly Feminist Zine Fest asked me to create the flyer for the event, I could not be happier! Also, I illustrated the cover image for the zine Dangerous Damsels which is an anthology about feminists fairy tales, and it is edited by zinester and festival organizer Sarah Rose.

Asbury Park FlyerFlyer by Bryan G. Brown and me.

My fellow cartoonist friend Bryan G Brown and I collaborated on a illustration for a flyer for the Asbury Park Comic Con 2.  We tabled together at the show, and had a wonderful time.

Comix Gone RoguePart of my illustration of Lois Lane.

I illustrated and covered a vintage comic cover for a non profit project called Comix Gone Rogue.

BUST

BUST Blog

I ended up writing some articles that recieved major attention on the BUST Magazine Blog, and had an article in the very popular comics blog The Beat.  I wrote about different comics shows and events such as: The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, The Asbury Park Comic Con, Locust Moon Comic Con, and The US launch party for Strumpet Issue #2, an international anthology featuring women creators.

Zine Crush #2My Zine Crush

At the very end of 2012 I created a two page comic for Zine Crush #2.

Happy New Year!  2013 should be a great year! 13 is a actually a very lucky number!  I hope I’ll make way more comics and do more of those things that I love to do.

On the Scene: Locust Moon Comics Fest

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What I wrote and reblogged for and from The Beat.

Locust Pic 1 by Kyle Cassidy

This past Sunday marked the first Locust Moon Comics Fest, a rookie comics show in West Philadelphia organized by the two owners of Locust Moon Comics. This show filled the hole  left behind by Philadelphia Alternative Comic Con when organizer Pat Aulisio decided to focus more strongly on creating comics. It was held at the Rotunda, the same venue as the past two PACCs, and featured a few of the same exhibitors. But this show had a different vibe than PACC, offering more of a mix between mainstream and indie comics, and displaying a wide range of artistic styles. Some of the featured guests included Farel Dalrymple, J.G. Jones, Jim Rugg, Jasen Lexx, Terry LaBan, Box Brown, Ben Marra, Ed Piskor, Jeffro Kilpatrick, Ad House Books, Meathaus Enterprises, Secret Acres, and Koyama Press.

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Mercury in Retrograde November 2012

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Are you frustrated because, nothing is going as planned? Do you feel like this month has been blanketed as a haze of confusion? Do you find yourself lost and taking the wrong path, when you know the way? Well, prepare for more mayhem because Mercury is in Retrograde. This means that the planet Mercury appears to be going backwards in its orbit from our point of view on Earth. While it isn’t actually going backwards, it looks appears this way for about three weeks. It happens four times a year. We are currently in one of these movements, as Mercury started going retrograde November 6th and won’t go direct (forward), until November 26, 2012.

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The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in Brooklyn Again!


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This Saturday is the fourth annual Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. The event is free to the public, and promotes alternative comics artists and publications. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about comics, and pick up some radical zines and prints, directly from the artists or publishers themselves. I have been to the Fest twice and both times were filled really amazing experiences. Continue reading →

Sandy Aftermath

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A hurricane named Sandy came out of nowhere and really chewed up things on the East Coast.  It is really devastating.  Lower Manhattan is without power and flooded, parts of Queens burnt down to the ground, and the Jersey Shore permanently altered.  Bust Magazine is, the place intern at is in the part of New York that doesn’t have power and is damaged.  I’m not sure when the office will reopen.  Now is a good time to get a subscription.  I have been reading Bust for over ten years.  It is a very satisfying magazine.

A photo I took of the New York City skyline after Sandy.  Usually you can see many more buildings on the left side of the Empire State Building.

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Philly Zine Fest 2012 Memories

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I went back to Philly for the tenth annual Philly Zine Fest at the Rotunda. It is hard to imagine that the Zine Fest is that old, but it is. I remember visiting the Zine Fest while I was in college and thinking that it was cool, and something I really wanted to do. After college I began working a lot. Since the Zine Fest is almost always in October, I couldn’t make it because it is a super busy time in my work life. Fortunately for me the 2011 Philly Zine Fest last year was in November and I got a table. There I met one of the organizers, Sarah Rose, whom I had the great pleasure of spending a lot of time with in 2012.

Somehow, I forgot to sign up this year although I remembered to take off from work well in advance. Luckily I managed to get a table once I got there. My table was smooshed up against a bunch of loudspeakers on the stage. People asked me if I minded being right next to the speakers, but I actually liked it. It wasn’t mind-bogglingly loud and I was grooving to the tunes the DJ was playing. I could actually hear the music. If my memory serves correctly, he played a less upbeat selection of music that including The Smiths, M83, Robyn, and Aphex Twin. Plus, the position of my table on stage made me feel like I was a teacher about to give an important lecture, which I liked. Here is my picture at my table.

It truly was a great spot, because I was near by some of my homies like Dan Strauss, Kelly Phillips, and Cyn Why. Therewas lot of people I knew tabling at the Zine Fest including Sarah Rose, Bangarang Photography, 3:00 Comics, Awakening comics, Bianca Alu-Marr, Andria Alefhi, Annie Monk, and the Soapbox collective to name a few.

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