cover image The Zine Yearbook

The Zine Yearbook

. Soft Skull Press, $14 (164pp) ISBN 978-1-887128-67-4

This seventh annual volume of 'zine reprints gives a look into the""vibrant culture that exists...outside of mainstream media."" Angel and Kucsma gather the best of these quirky, independent voices and peculiar obsessions into a motley assortment of text, photos and cartoons. Alexander Slagg explains why a car accident led him to build a totem pole; filmmaker Joshua Breitbart answers the oft-asked question,""How short is a short film?""; a poster announces""USA World Tour 2000: Policing the Globe One Country at a Time""; and Jeff Somers winningly admits to the lack of substance behind his 'zine persona, a""carefully constructed straw man constructed of assumptions, half-truths, ominously oblique remarks, and lurid facial expressions."" Anyone looking for new, at times strange, voices will find a rich assemblage here.