Category: top ten

1. Open Country #2 by Michael Deforge $3.00

2. Open Country #1 by Michael Deforge $3.00 – DeForge sets some bodydrama into motion with the first installment of Open Country – The homebrew scifi premise here is youths messing around with psychic projections, avataring themselves into a fleshribbon realm where physical and mental integrity show some fraying around the edges. -EF

3. Twenty Million (20,000,000) by by Isabella Rotman $6.00 – A surreallist tale about pale white space snakes on a survivalist quest through a deadly darkness in search of some giant lifesaving “egg” or whatnot.  Where people come up with these crazy ideas is beyond me. -EF

4. Thickness #2 by Angie Wang et al. $10.00 – Hot ‘n slimey crypto-beast on humanoid-beast action. Eagerly anticipated sophmore release for this sexy anthological comic. Works from Lisa Hanawalt, Michael DeForge, Jilian Tamaki and more.

5. Kid Mafia #1 by Michael Deforge $3.00 – “That special time between the end of high school and the beginning of college… depicted by Michael DeForge, so it’s a complete fucking nightmare, OK?! With bonus skateboard action. Part one of an ongoing series. Features 2 bonus “Military Prison” strips.” – from wowcool.com

6. Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Three by Joshua Chapman $1.00 – Although the “school project” alibi is wearing a little thin on this educational zine series, the nerdery aboard this enterprise holds strong and is remarkably entertaining. Makes me wish I knew more Star Trek things to crack puns about.-EF

7. Brainscan #29/No More Coffee #4 (split zine) by Alex Wrekk and Ben Spies $3.00

8. Chicago IRL #3 Spr 12 $11.00 – Chicago’s homegrown queer art rag, issue #3 and going strong!

9. The Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – Joining the literary-minded ranks of n+1, The Paris Review, The Believer and Lapham’s Quarterly, and doing it with Midwestern flair, The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design. The debut issue is a stunner, a cohesive and relevant blend of fiction, history, innovation, interviews and a 50-page oral history of Siskel and Ebert. -EF

10. Burn Collector #16 by Al Burian (Paquita Press) $5.00 – It’s always a joy to see another installment of Al’s adventures, especially since we see him less and less in Chicago due to his relocation in Berlin. There’s plenty of flash rant-style review pieces (an Iron Maiden concert for one), books he’s read (a YA novel!), and also his comics. Like the last issue of BC there’s also some interviews too, like Tim Remis from Sweet Cobra (and of lesser-known Soviet folk singer fame), as well as Sascha Scatter of The Icarus Project. Published by Caroline Pequita’s art-freaker publishing house Pegacorn Press in Brooklyn. -LM

Michael Deforge rules the Top 10 this week! And a new issue of Burn Collector!

1. Burn Collector #16 by Al Burian (Paquita Press) $5.00

2.   The Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – Joining the literary-minded ranks of n+1, The Paris Review, The Believer and Lapham’s Quarterly, and doing it with Midwestern flair, The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design. The debut issue is a stunner, a cohesive and relevant blend of fiction, history, innovation, interviews and a 50-page oral history of Siskel and Ebert. -EF

3. Hoody #1 A Hip Hop Comic Graph Novel by Joel CRAVE Maxime Jr $5.00 – Bouncing through a chromosplash cityscape of graffitipsychedelia, Hoody’s an all-blue Vaughn Bodian anti-hero on a trail of pig roasting secret clues. Wild motions that sometimes remind me of Bernie McGovern’s “Army of Lovers” comics. -EF

4.  Thickness #2 by Angie Wang et al. $10.00 – Hot ‘n slimey crypto-beast on humanoid-beast action. Eagerly anticipated sophmore release for this sexy anthological comic. Works from Lisa Hanawalt, Michael DeForge, Jilian Tamaki and more.
5. Proximity #9 Grassroots Planning and Placemaking Objects Spr 12 vol 4 #1 $11.99
6. Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek The Next Generation Season Three by Joshua Chapman $1.00 – Although the “school project” alibi is wearing a little thin on this educational zine series, the nerdery aboard this enterprise holds strong and is remarkably entertaining. Makes me wish I knew more Star Trek things to crack puns about.-EF
7. Colors #83 Win 12 $8.95
8. Incinerator by Michael Deforge (Secret Headquarters) $5.00

9. Kid Mafia #1 by Michael Deforge $3.00 – “That special time between the end of high school and the beginning of college… depicted by Michael DeForge, so it’s a complete fucking nightmare, OK?! With bonus skateboard action. Part one of an ongoing series. Features 2 bonus “Military Prison” strips.” – from wowcool.com

10. Open Country #2 by Michael Deforge $3.00

Proximity #9 is at #3 this week.

1. The Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – Joining the literary-minded ranks of n+1, The Paris Review, The Believer and Lapham’s Quarterly, and doing it with Midwestern flair, The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design. The debut issue is a stunner, a cohesive and relevant blend of fiction, history, innovation, interviews and a 50-page oral history of Siskel and Ebert. -EF

2. Hi-Fructose #23 $6.95 – Showcasing an eclectic mix of underground artists, pop surrealists, emerging and rediscovered counter cultures, and awe inspiring art.

3. Proximity #9 Grassroots Planning and Placemaking Objects Spr 12 vol 4 #1 $11.99

4. Lucky Peach #3 Cooks and Chefs Issue (McSweeney’s) $12.00 – Dave Chang of the Momofuku restaurant empire alternates between griping about everything being done already and the kids having no motivation these days in this new issue which I thought was themed “The Death of Integrity” but instead seems to be about, uh, “Cooks and Chefs”. I’m still up in the air about how self-referential this magazine is – it’s sort of like a chef perzine with a big magazine budget, which sometimes makes it’s cavalier attitude feel like chef crony-ism and empty trash talk. All the same, I’m interested in eating and the Matt Furie centerfold is sooper cute. Food is dead, long live food. -EF

5. Cave Girl by Ireal $1.00 Unfoldable stories of Cave Girl living, a lot about mushroom hunting, musings on bears and beasts, spiders too. -EF

6. Trubble Club #5 by Everybody – Mi Familia! The cartoonist cabal is back for more with this deluxxx edition full color comics offering, silkscreen print and possibly stickers (Thanks Post Family!)! Trubble from: Nate Beaty, Grant Reynolds, Laura Park, Jeremy Tinder, Aaron Renier, Rachel Niffenegger, Bernie McGovern, Lilli Carré, Corinne Mucha, Jeffrey Brown, Lucy Knisley, Becca Taylor, Jose Garibaldi, Joshua Cotter, Joe Tallarico, Onsmith, Lyra Hill, Sam Sharpe and Carrie Vinarsky with assists from Ezra Claytan Daniels, Craig Thompson, Thorne Brandt, Erika Moen, Antoine Dode and Alec Longstreth. KAPOW! -EF
(P.S. Edie is far too modest to write that he himself is also in it! -LM)

7. Judas Goat #53 by Grant Schreiber $1.50

8. My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf (Abrams ComicArts) $17.95 – Backderf puts together a memoir of high school in the washed out suburban seventies when he was classmates and comrades with grisly serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. My Friend Dahmer is a compelling read in the way it maps the social environment and reflects on Dahmer’s self-awareness. Backderf focuses in with a too-close-for-comfort look at Dahmer’s disturbed adolescence and also his humanity, and this is the most shocking and intriguing part of this book, the separation -for a minute- of the man from the monster. It doesn’t attempt to tackle the truly gruesome part of Dahmer’s biography, the part we all know, and so the portrait the book produces is both intimate and casual – a bit like Gus VanSant’s Elephant, a character study where we are looking at some trecherous moral precipices, and trying to understand what makes someone leap from them. -EF

9. Lucky Peach #2 The Sweet Spot $12.00

10. Cat & Gnome by Graham Roumieu (Blue Q) $7.99

1. The Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – Joining the literary-minded ranks of n+1, The Paris Review, The Believer and Lapham’s Quarterly, and doing it with Midwestern flair, The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design. The debut issue is a stunner, a cohesive and relevant blend of fiction, history, innovation, interviews and a 50-page oral history of Siskel and Ebert. -EF

2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins $8.99

3. Roctober #50 $5.00 – Roctober is 20 years old! This is issue #50! I love this magazine!!!!! LOVE THIS MAGAZINE! Let’s have a party.  -EF P.S. Thanks to everybody that came out for this event last week.

4. The Avocado #1 by Mellie Manfredi- Winter writing about feelin’ chilly and eating chili! -EF

5. Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace (33 1/3 Series) by Aaron Cohen (Continuum) $12.95

6. Doris #29 by Cindy Crabb $2.00 – More mini horse adventures(!), tales of life, grandparents and Girls Rock Camp plus half the issue devoted to a longer personal essay, charmingly titled “How I learned to stop worrying and love being queer.” It’s a new issue of Doris, of course you should read it. -EF

7. DIY Magic (Floating World Comics) $13.95 – Magical practice for the roving tripper, sloppy scrapper, intuitive lifesprout, beligerent believer, permanent vacationer and dirty weirdo. Illustrated by a dream team of visual power – Ron Rege, Pippi Zornoza, Aiden Koch, Tommi Musturi, Inés Estrada, Dunja Jankovic, Christian DiFilippo and Lala Albert amongst much others! Call these corners, pronto! -EF

8. The Baffler #19 $10.00 – What?! A new issue of THE BAFFLER?! For reals.

9. Crap Hound #8 Superstition by Sean Tejaratchi (Show & Tell Press) $12.00 – A new issue of Crap Hound! This issue meditates on such things as black cats, butterflies, knots, candles…All with a wonderful “Fair Use” collage-y awesomeness. “One of my favorite zines of all time” –Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

10. Bust Apr May 12 $5.99

What Is This? A Poster. A Book enters the top 10 at #8 this week.

1. The Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – Joining the literary-minded ranks of n+1, The Paris Review, The Believer and Lapham’s Quarterly, and doing it with Midwestern flair, The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design. The debut issue is a stunner, a cohesive and relevant blend of fiction, history, innovation, interviews and a 50-page oral history of Siskel and Ebert. -EF

2. The Believer #88 2012 Film Issue $12.00

3. Lucky Peach #3 $12.00 – Dave Chang of the Momofuku restaurant empire alternates between griping about everything being done already and the kids having no motivation these days in this new issue which I thought was themed “The Death of Integrity” but instead seems to be about, uh, “Cooks and Chefs”. I’m still up in the air about how self-referential this magazine is – it’s sort of like a chef perzine with a big magazine budget, which sometimes makes it’s cavalier attitude feel like chef crony-ism and empty trash talk. All the same, I’m interested in eating and the Matt Furie centerfold is sooper cute. Food is dead, long live food. -EF

4.   Lucid Coma #2 Spr 12 by Kottie Paloma, Jaina Bee & Matt Krefting $12.00

5. Doris #29 by Cindy Crabb $2.00 – More mini horse adventures(!), tales of life, grandparents and Girls Rock Camp plus half the issue devoted to a longer personal essay, charmingly titled “How I learned to stop worrying and love being queer.” It’s a new issue of Doris, of course you should read it. -EF

6. Sammy The Mouse Book 1 TPB by Zak Sally (Lamano 21) $14.00 – Zak Sally collects his curmudgeon mouse comics and prints a beautiful 2-color graphic novel-collection-thwarted spirit quest. A labor of love that fears neither the grotesque nor the unstable, to be held and dug. -EF Thanks to everybody that came out to this awesome event last week!

7.   Snot Rocket City #1 by Margot, Taylor, Cory & Jeff $2.00

8. What Is This? A Poster. A Book. by Dan Evans and Carol Sogard $4.00 – (see above for picture.) Is it a graphic design group project about book layout and printing that is also interesting and legible as a zine and poster also about book layout and printing? Why, yes, I think it is. -EF

9. Birthday Boy Comics #1 by Matthew Koerber and Eric Scheidt $6.00 – These harbringers of fun give you a  carnal comics tag team repleat with multiple costume changes and plenty of saliva close-ups. -EF

10. Kramers Ergot #8 by Sammy Harkham and Dan Nadel (Picturebox) $32.95 – This latest Kramer’s anthology feels a little bit like cocaine and a reptile tank. The contemporary comics contributions are bookended by Robert Beatty’s retro-digital airbrush wizardry and bisected by higloss cgi still lives by Takeshi Murata. Then there’s a mouthwash Preface by Ian Svenonius’ space cowboy essay “Notes On Camp, Part 2”. Followed by some great cartoonists paring it down and playing it cinematic and cool – CF’s Hunger-ish scenario, Harkham’s Kubrick’s cube, Ben Jones gives us a long yarn in a dental floss line, Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw do a foggy bit about sexual predator entrapment hued in Cold Heat pervert-purples…

This issue of Lucky Peach debuts at #10 this week.

1. Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design.

2. Doris #29 $2.00

3. Monocle vol 6 #51 Mar 12 $10.00

4. The Plot #1 A Monster in the Forbidden Forest by Neil Brideau $4.00 – Fantastical coming-of-age story in mini comic form by a Quimby’s employee and comics sommelier!

5. Being a 13 Year Old Girl #1 by Liv Love $1.00 – Chicago youths represent!

6. Halfsteps and Cloudfang by Daniela Olszewska $4.00

7. Girls On Girls #1: Girls Singing Songs About Girls Zine and CD $5.00 by Amara Leipzig and Isabella Rotman – Amara Leipzig and Isabella Rotman assemble a cover album and cutes ha-hoots liner notes zine that’s all women singing songs originally written by men about women. Gender theory via aural pleasuring. -EF

8. The First Line vol 13 #4 $3.00- The first lineof every piece in this issue is “It Had Been a Long Year.”

9. Maximumrocknroll #346 Mar 12 $4.00 – Still going strong! The zine that will still be here after the apocalypse.

10. Lucky Peach #3 Cooks and Chefs Issue $12.00 – The much anticipated third issue of McSweeney’s food mag.

1. The Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design.

2. Inside Pee-Wees Playhouse: The Untold Unauthorized and Unpredictable Story of a Pop Phenemenon by Caseen Gaines (ECW) $19.95 – Thanks to everybody that came out to this event this past Friday. We were told Large Marge sent them. The word of the day was AWESOME.

3. Notes For A Peoples Atlas: People Making Maps of Their Cities (AREA Chicago) $8.00

4. Truckface #15 $3.00 – Third year teaching high school English for CPS starts with LB hacking up a foreboding bloody clotball snotball. Truckface continues to be an annual report of both teaching and being taught- moving through all the drama, anger, goofiness and apathy and learning how to learn from it all. -EF

5. Mono Kultur #30 Win 11/12: Chris Ware a Sense of Thereness –  Well, yes…..Surprising, compelling interview zine import with Mr. Ware. 24p, red and black ink, color cover, 6″x8″

6. Gangsta Rap Posse #2 by Benjamin Marra (Traditional Comics) – You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.

7. Chameleon #2 by Jesse Balmer and Jonny Negron $10.00 – Rage exercises and messy ends. Jesse Balmer gives us a dirty line to feline mind control, Jon Boam does a room study that reminds me of Luke Ramsey’s Islands’ Fold books, Patrick Kyle sends us to the trollverse and keeps us there, Uno Moralez keeps it pixelatin’, Roman Muradov works some stylish melancholy into his piece on sheltering umbrellas- it reminds me a little of Laura Park’s work for Mome- Jonny Negron drafts a great, gritty street fight and Zejian Shen takes the cake with a nocturnal mission – her drawing of a pool of virgin blood is maybe my favorite thing in this book that’s already all-thriller, no-filler. Look straight into these eyes, kiddies. -EF

8. Hark a Vagrant by Kate Beaton (D&Q) $19.95

9. Bust Feb Mar 12 $5.99

10. Giant Robot #65 $4.99

1. Soup and Bread Cookbook: Building Community One Pot at a Time $20.95 – Thanks to everybody that came out for the event for this wonderful Soup and Bread Cookbook, compiled by Martha Bayne from the Hideout’s weekly winter soup nights of the same name.

2. Kramers Ergot #8 ed. by Sammy Harkham and Dan Nadel (Picturebox) $32.95 – This latest Kramer’s anthology feels a little bit like cocaine and a reptile tank. The contemporary comics contributions are bookended by Robert Beatty’s retro-digital airbrush wizardry and bisected by higloss cgi still lives by Takeshi Murata. Then there’s a mouthwash Preface by Ian Svenonius’ space cowboy essay “Notes On Camp, Part 2”. Followed by some great cartoonists paring it down and playing it cinematic and cool – CF’s Hunger-ish scenario, Harkham’s Kubrick’s cube, Ben Jones gives us a long yarn in a dental floss line, Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw do a foggy bit about sexual predator entrapment hued in Cold Heat pervert-purples. Johnny Ryan delivers a space carnage ramble, Chris Cilla does some smut with David Heatly flavor overtones. Tim Hensley does Svenonius’ essay one better in a single panel National Lampoon sort of gag. Despite a icy hands-off feel to much of book there’s still a pulpy heart beating here-Gabrielle Bell nails down something sinister in pastel California colors. Leon Sadler is at the best I’ve ever seen him here – grungy characters in a feral bizarro smurfville. I may be biased, but I’m especially partial to the converging and diverging paralell multiverses of Anya Davidson’s brutal “Barbarian Bitch” which I think acts as a great counterweight to the book’s closer, a 40-page reprint of Penthouse’s “Wicked Wanda” that’s a (yes) campy  combo like if you remade “The Mouse That Roared” with the plotline of Hothead Paisan. -EF

3. Monocle vol 5 #50 Feb 12 $10.00

4. Adbusters Mar Apr 12 #100 vol 20 #2 $8.95

5. Juxtapoz #134 Mar 12 $5.99

6. Dazed & Confused vol 3 #6 Feb 12 $9.99

7. Mono Kultur #30 Win 11 12 Chris Ware: A Sense of Thereness $15.00 – Well, yes…..Surprising, compelling interview zine import with Mr. Ware.

8. Raw Deal #13 – Formerly “Loitering Is Good”, “Raw Deal” picks up in the West Oakland trainyards, an ode to California’s sun-drenched post-industrial shitscape. Partially about acclaimating to a job as a rookie brakeman for the Southern Pacific Rail, RD#13 incoroporates plenty of curmudgeonly appreciation for the yards’ old-timers and lots of salty anectdotes of train history. With a palpable sense of love-hate for West Coast wastelands, the segway gets made to the obsessive neccessity of punk botany. Like a beligerent Johnny Bad Appleseed, the heart of this issue is an account of cultivating rare trees, seed smuggling, survival and botanical accountability, renegade urban improvement, and the deep feeling of connection once you set your sights on an ecosystem as the big picture. Written with a ton of passion and a little swagger, it’s a little similar to Erick “Iggy Scam” Lyle’s personal-is-political-is-punk writing, totally badass and hungry to get at the core of it. Best two bucks yer going to spend all day.  -EF

9. Bikenomics How Bicycling Will Save the Economy if We Let It by Elly Blue $5.50

10. Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek by Joshua Chapman $1.00 – I mean, why stop with Season One, right? -EF