Queer Zines and Queer Zines 2

Edited by AA Bronson and Philip Aarons

Printed Matter, Incorporated

271 pages, $25. (vol. 1)

264 pages, $25. (vol. 2)

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED in 2008 to accompany an exhibit in New York, Queer Zines has been re-issued in an expanded edition. Updates and corrections have been made to the original book, and a wholly new second volume provides a wealth of new zine descriptions along with fifteen short essays--by writers Scott Treleaven, K8 Hardy, Steve Lafreniere, and Bruce LaBruce, among others--on the queer zine phenomenon. Writing of the original publication, the editors note: "Like the material it represented, Queer Zines set out to be visually arresting, intellectually provocative, and unashamedly sexy." This new, two-volume edition is all of that, and more.

Self-published, quickly and inexpensively produced--often with appropriated texts and graphics--and flourishing ephemerally outside the cultural mainstream, the zine is a modern version of its often subversive and incendiary forebear, the pamphlet. (Think Thomas Paine with a photocopier.) As such, it can be devoted to whatever topic or obsession its maker desires to explore. And though Darin Klein is doubtless correct...