Zines

These PDFs represent digital versions of the printed zines I have created, some are still available on my shop! A lot of the content of these zines is fake ads for weird products and stores, some arcane, some enigmatic, some outright evil. I construct these ads out of pieces and parts found in old magazines, newspapers, and ephemera and spice them up with my own artwork and drawings and a healthy dose of grit and grime. I dredge through hundreds (if not thousands) of these sources, looking at ads and weird headlines and try to make ads from an alternate future. Ads that make me laugh. Over the years I have created a few brands and stores that persist through the zines and the themes or product lines also make me laugh. Some examples:

• Sargol is a (apparently bloodthirsty) cult whose name comes directly from a snake oil medicine of the early 20th century that was such a scam it was mentioned in federal lawsuits and helped lead to the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Perfect for a weird cult. A lot of the text in their ads is direct from old medicine advertising. It is usually brutal.
• "Stores" like JUM, Discount Riot, Local Offal, and EF Noodlefelon's Shopping Bog are all places that I have imagined to sell food or products that might be magical... or at least enigmatic. Some are definitely cursed. A lot of the imagery for them comes directly from grocery and drug store ads in the 60s and 70s. I usually generate product names by taking something from a real ad - a sale on ground beef for example - and then running the text through an anagram finder. Then I cut up the letters and reassemble them into whatever weird bullshit I find funny.
• This is also how most of the brand names are created - I find a logotype, cut up the letters and run them through the anagram finder until something comes out. Forlorn Danglers, Grim Witness, American Insect Stench Motor Co. all came about from this process.
• Some things are just straight from the actual horrible past. Advertising was a little weird, especially for smaller companies, before the rise of the big agencies in the 50s. Old ads for medicine, pest control, and even food were often really bizarre. Taken out of context and they sound ominous or violent or disturbing. A lot of the ad text in the Bargain Abyss is just copied right from an old source. In newer zines I do a lot of editing because it ends up being funnier. Sometimes removing one word is all it takes.

Bargain Void was printed in full color and is based on magazine and newspaper advertising from the late 60s and early 70s. Many of the brands and shops from the Bargain Abyss make an appearance.

Bargain Abyss marks my first zine using old advertising sources. The sources range from the late 1890s to the 1960s. This is the first appearance of Sargol, JUM, and many of the brands that appear in  Bargain Void, the Boncos zine and my other artwork.

This was a special zine commemorating my favorite American Football Sports team, the Demver Boncos. The images are mostly taken from old Broncos roster books and news articles. This does include a few ads, including one for Jum.

Recurrent Teeth was my first zine project created using found images and weird ads. All of the text in this was generated by an RNN (a pre-GPT AI, now outdated I suppose) and selected for their weirdness. Because of how much I liked creating the ads I started making one-off mixed media advertising pieces that eventually prompted me to create the Bargain Abyss a couple of years later.