Along with the longer posts and my round-ups & miscellanies, I'm going to do short-burst posts about things I think should be noticed but don't fit neatly with anything else I blog about. These include odd finds, recommendations of things I like, and various pet passions.
A couple months ago, I got sucked into the massive piles of ephemera known as Internet Archive and found myself wading through various technical manuals, old magazines (hello Games Magazine!) and zines. My God - the zines. Some of them were fascinating, a good deal of them quite frightening, but it was definitely eye-opening to see such a massive amount of alternative views and styles on display [1].
Not representative at all of what's in "Army Man" (pic is from Wikipedia)
One of these zines is especially worth noting if you've ever been a comedy nerd - Army Man. Short and to-the-point, there were only 3 issues ever made between 1988 to 1990 but it was a testing ground for all sorts of comedy writers. These included - but not limited to - Jack Handey, Bob Odenkirk, Merrill Markoe, Andy Borowitz, Ian Frazier, Roz Chast, Ann Hodgman, and John Swartzwelder.
Having on hand a PDF copy compiled from what was uploaded to Internet Archive, I'm going to include it below as a download for those who want to read the whole thing in one sitting (all issues together just make 32 pages). Like all comedy, some of it hasn't aged well yet it's still an interesting document considering all of the people involved and what they would do later on with their careers over 35 years later.
If you want recommendations for other major zines of interest, here are some more [2]:
Boing Boing [3]
If zines aren't your thing, Internet Archive also has several other pages for magazines and comics with similar vibes:
Spin (the original 1980s issues)
End Notes
[1] So, normally I would post a link for this sort of reference but because the Archive doesn't seem to really have a strong moderation system, there's a fair amount of zines posted that could be either be classified as Questionable at best and Disturbing at worst (extremist politics, horror movies, and erotica seem to be overwhelmingly represented in this selection). To keep things safe for anyone coming to my blog - and to not give any wrong impressions - I'll caution you to keep a sharp eye when combing through what they have over there.
[2] Most of these are probably viewed as some of the "sellouts" within zine culture. (I grew up with Geocities and proto-blogs, so zines weren't on my radar until the last several years.) That doesn't matter, though - they're interesting and worth looking over if you've never heard of them before. If you're curious about digging further into zines, reading about Factsheet Five is a good place to start.
[3] This was a delight to find, since the website was one of my everyday favorites during my 20s.