I made a zine!

It’s titled “Glimpses”

Back in March, I started drawing comics as part of a 100 day writing challenge. It was a fun, sometimes grueling, process excavating various corners of my brain for ideas. One of my favorite threads to pull was scenes I’d notice over the course of everyday life. I’d observe something, it would amuse me, and then I’d render it into a comic. That’s what “Glimpses” is filled with—the moments that lingered.

I decided to make a zine because I’ve fallen into a “little book” rabbit hole this summer, kicked off by the wonderful Ed Ruscha exhibition, Now Then, at LACMA (pronounced “Roo-Shay,” as a museum attendant snootily alerted me). I was new to his work and loved that his practice includes the making of small, hyper-specific art books. Things like:

and my favorite:

As someone with a deep camera roll and notebooks scrawled with observations, the books really resonated with me. I love that these mini books weave loose snippets into a cohesive whole, giving weight, permanence, even value to previously disparate photos. There’s something substantive and expressive about them that feels infinitely less disposable than a series of social media posts. And of course, I love books, so my mind was blown by the realization that anyone can make their own books without being gatekept by a publisher.

On that same trip, I found the lovely, also ultra-specific, “City is Ours” zine at the incredible Arcana Books in LA. I couldn’t believe there was something so catered towards fascinations of mine.

So I’ve been on a zine trip this summer—paying visits to Quimby’s in Brooklyn (a shop that specializes in zines), Silver Sprocket in San Francisco (a zine-heavy comic shop/publisher), and the zine bins at Dog-Eared and Adobe and Desert Island Books. I’ve been discovering a world of pure, enthusiastic expression that’s relatively untainted by commercial interests.

With all that brewing, of course I had to make my own zine.

A process video, because I love process:

Evolution—note the broken binding on the left as I was figuring things out:

Outtakes, because mistakes are a part of every process. The shaded-in background was later removed because my printer just couldn’t get the toner to stick properly without smudging everywhere (I was testing if different darknesses could get the toner ink to fuse better, but…it didn’t):

A thank you to the 100 Days Writing Club for making the space to push these ideas into existence (and for reading these comics and many more), all the artists and zines and shops that inspired me, YouTube for showing me the many ways you can make and bind a zine, the Hawaii State Library for having scanners I could use in my aggressively analog process, and to Michelle for being the person I can always ask: “Hey, what do you think of this?”

I made 20 copies, some of which are already accounted for. Respond back if you’re interested in one! I’ll either hold onto it for you until we next see each other, or if you can chip in $5 (or so?) for US-based shipping, I’ll mail it out to you.

—Etienne