Zines

The term zine refers generally to a small-format publication, usually printed with relatively low production values and devoted to a niche topic. The word zine has its origin either in magazine or fanzine. Topics covered by zines can include personal or political issues, sex, or popular culture, including local music scenes and specific bands. Zines can serve as an outlet for individuals wishing to circulate their own writing, artwork, or comics. The work and materials invested in the production of zines is rarely, if ever, compensated adequately, though in recent years, a number of zines—including Giant Robot, Venus Zine, and the Comics Interpreter—have been professionalized and are now widely distributed through retail outlets.

Print has long provided a forum for the expression of political discontent and criticism. In this way, zines are part of a tradition that dates to the broadside movement and Thomas Paine's anonymous pamphlet Common Sense. While zines as a concept owe a debt to the ideas behind the amateur press movement of the early to mid-20th century and the proliferation of science fiction fanzines at that time, their most direct lineage ties them to the punk movement of the 1970s and the rise of doit-yourself (DIY) aesthetics and practices. Zines were doubtless enabled by the spread of Xerox's photocopying machines, which had by the late 1970s become inexpensive to use and readily accessible. Because of zines' early affiliation with punk, a number of the early significant zines were focused on punk music and politics.

Greg Shaw, who learned about self-publishing by reading science fiction fanzines early in life, published Who Put the Bomp from 1970 to 1979. Frequently called simply Bomp, Shaw's publication is one of the earliest examples of a zine. The zine published some of the early work of Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus and later transformed into an independent record label called Bomp Records, which Shaw ran until his death in 2004. Sniffin' Glue, perhaps the earliest U.K. punk zine, was produced by Mark Perry, founder of the band Alternative TV, in 1976. Zines became increasingly common through the 1980s and 1990s, and many of the longest-running zines started in the mid-1980s.

The politically charged, San Francisco-based Maximum Rock-n-Roll began as an offshoot of a radio show in Berkeley. MRR was founded by Tim Yohannon in 1982, and the first edition served as a textual accompaniment to Not So Quiet on the Western Front, a compilation album released by Alternative Tentacles (a record label that, at the time, belonged to the Dead Kennedys). MRR remains one of the most significant punk zines, relying on a volunteer staff and maintaining its independent, not-for-profit status even after Yohannon's death in 1998. The zine has a policy not to accept advertisements and reinvests the bulk of its profits in community projects. Another important zine with strong ties to the punk community is Profane Existence, a quarterly publication of the Profane Existence Collective, which was founded in 1989 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Profane Existence has anarchist tendencies and focuses on the political aspect of the community it serves.

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