OK, so it’s not SPACE. But my grand plans for SPACE fell by the wayside when my wife fell ill, leaving me to chaperone my eldest at the National Geography Bee in Washington, DC. (Which wasn’t ALL bad, as I got to check out Fantom Comics on Dupont Circle.)
And lest you think that I’m belaboring that point, you need to keep it in mind as I share this one. Because as the parent of a high schooler who travels a LOT, I’m finding that my hobby has to fit into his schedule. The Fantom Comics visit is a perfect example; he had his competition, and I found a cool comic shop in town to visit as he got his DC Metro fix.
I had plans for almost a year now to do that chaperone thing again, this time for the International Geography Championships in Vienna, Austria in July. (Note to self: Don’t forget to bank a few weeks worth of FANzine Live videos before you leave!!) True to form, I’ve been busily looking at the various sites to see if there’s a cool, zine-centric comic shop in Vienna where I can scratch my small press/zine itch.
And while I think I found one or two possibilities, I also learned about what appears to be a very, very cool zine fest in Vienna called the Fanzineist Art Book and Zine Fair that took place this past weekend. By cool, I mean…
And it goes beyond that, as organizer Deniz Beser lined up a number of musical acts. This was a day/night affair!
There’s plenty more from their Instagram account, so I’ll just direct you there.
Fanzineist goes even further, however. The live fest took place this past weekend, but there’s also an online component that is live for a month! From May 10 to June 10, Fanzineist Vienna’s online exhibition is running for folks to browse.
I looked into it further and thought, “Why not?” So I tossed my couple bucks in, helped support the Fest and added Phoenix Productions to the list of online exhibitors.
Pretty nifty. I took some time to check out the other vendors, and their material is all over the place. Some was not for me, but other stuff was jaw droppingly good. If exploring zine culture and comics around the world is your thing, I’d say that Fanzineist is a great place to look.
In the same vein, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival also ran this past weekend. That, too, looks like a top-shelf zine/comics fest experience.
While Fanzineist offers links to online exhibitors – which I think is great – TCAF takes it a step further and offers an online store with vendor zines, pins, stickers, prints, etc. available from a single source. I engaged in a little late-night retail therapy yesterday and ordered some zines from the fest.
Even if you don’t buy anything, it’s so impressive to see the breadth of works that people are creating using the simple zine, minicomic and self-publishing tools that are available to all of us. Check out the Fanzineist online exhibitors, check out the TCAF online marketplace…and get inspired!
Phoenix Productions 