I wrote this for librarything's "Early Reviewers" who sent me a copy for free. I recommend you head to the Santa Fe Writers Project to grab your own copy. It really, really is great: http://www.sfwp.com/the-books/
Self-publishing is a weird old thing. Why go to all the
effort of creating something that often will only be read by family and friends,
but takes you weeks or even months of effort to produce, then costs you too
much money to get printed, and then can be incredibly difficult to distribute
to complete strangers? Why not just do it electronically or just try and get it
published properly? It’s surely just pure self-indulgence…
Well yeah, in a way it kind of is. And I say that as someone
who has been happily, and not cheaply, indulging his silliest ideas for about
five years now. I am struck with a deeply silly idea (what if I wrote something
like “Roy of the Rovers” but from my own perspective of not caring or
understanding a single thing about the kicking game?) that makes me chuckle and
then doodle it down and hope it makes someone else laugh as much as I did (if
you want to find out if that person is you, by the way, the resulting “Roy of
the Rovers” parody is called “Johnny Kickfoot” and can be found in “The Common
Swings Variousness Spectacular” available from, well, me). So in many ways it’s,
yes, indulging myself in a very real way. But it’s also a wonderful way of
spontaneously taking an idea and getting it down on the page very quickly. To me
this is one of the most profoundly wonderful things about zines and mini
comics: it’s quick to produce and is frequently (once you get the hang of doing
them) pretty much the equivalent of opening up your head and allowing the ideas
to plop out directly onto the page.
And the delight of it all is… you don’t have to care or
worry about what readers might think about it. You’re not doing it for them. You’re
doing it for you. No second guessing. As long as it’s not entirely self-obsessed,
boring navel gazing that you’re producing (that’s what blogs are for, surely) you’ve
got a good chance of finding someone who finds what you do enjoyable. I’ve had
many baffled looks at my zines, but I’ve also found that one thing usually
appeals to each person who reads them. Just one thing. And it’s usually the
most unexpected thing in the world. My wife’s favourite was a kid’s book idea I
basically knocked up on the spot about a vain pony called “Carl the Splendid
Horse”. Just mentioning it sends her into giggles and I have no idea why. And I don’t’ think about it
too much either, because by then I’m usually trying to think of another silly
gag to make someone else chuckle.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I understand a lot
of the world that “Zine” comes from. I may not have been creating an
autobiographical, mainly text based zine like Pagan Kennedy did, but by golly
did this book resonate with me. Kennedy started “Pagan’s Head” as a way of not
trying to second guess what other people – and Pagan herself - expected from
her attempts to write the Great American Novel ™. This was the Great American
Novel’s idiot, carefree brother who just gadded about on the sofa and watched
the telly while his precious sibling vexed for hours pondering how many times
is too many when it comes to saying “said” on one page. In other words, this
was a spontaneous, slight, silly, wildly creative outlet for the kind of ideas
that she deemed unusable for her “proper work”. And before she knew it, that
spontaneous, slight, silly and wildly creative outlet had actually become, in
many ways, as important – if not more so - as the Proper Novel itself.
And that’s because a zine is like a dialogue. A dialogue
between the creator and the reader. It’s a letter to people you initially know
and then, hopefully, some you have yet to meet. It’s a bulletin straight from
your brain. And having Kennedy’s insights into the creative process – and then
being able to see that creative
process itself – are fascinating. In many ways the quality of the zine itself
is not important (although, handily, “Pagan’s Head” is a great read as it moves
slowly from self-indulgence to finding a very real and confident voice, as
Pagan moves towards the more themed issues: it’s a lovely companion piece to
something like John Porcellino’s “King Cat Classix”, a similar collection of
juvenilia slowly becoming bolder and more adventurous as the writer and artist grows
in confidence in using his skills) – it’s the story of how it got there that
really holds the attention.
Because in many ways zines, mini comics and the whole world
of self-publishing are more about the journey than they are about the
destination itself. Many novels suffer from being so focussed on the
destination, they don’t take the time to enjoy dawdling and take in the view on
the route. In the hurry to say something important about the human condition,
writers don’t suddenly get waylaid by a comical cat or an unusual street name. The
zine writer absolutely thrives on those tiny details. Most zine writers and
mini comic writers couldn’t give a stuff about the destination. Some of them
have barely left the house. Some of them could probably knock out ten issues of
something based purely on their front door. Which is why they’re so wonderful. They’re
entirely the work of a creative mind wanting to scoop out the overflow from
their brain and pin it down on the page. Even the dullest zine or mini comic
can contain something uniquely brilliant and vivid. And to read someone’s story
about how they progressed along that route makes it even more wonderful. A great,
great book.
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