zine review #2

a Nancy remix, a substack find, and more

Happy Friday, friends, I hope if you’re in the South that you’re staying safe ahead of this storm. We’re doing a little bit of winterizing and tree nursery care at Home Farm, which has left me with just a little bit of time to go through my zine collection and find out what I wanted to share with y’all this week. You’re in luck, these three are delightful.

Feeling hashtag blessed by zines, enjoy!!

Survival Art by Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield

One of the best parts of being on substack has been meeting all these amazing zinesters and artists. I’m always in awe of people who can just do the damn thing, and Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield is one of those polymaths of art who is a writer, painter, illustrator, substacker, and scholar - she does it all. I am highlighting her Survival Art zine because I loved the cover, but I also picked up her essay on Technomagic Girlhood which has my little media studies heart singing.

Survival Art is a essentially a portfolio of Dr. Stringfield’s most recent illustrations and paintings, and I love seeing the evolution of her style across different themes and media. Some of my favorite spreads were of her “Real down to Mars girl” sketch that incorporates elements of her scholarship on Black girl magic in superhero media alongside her signature sunflowers. Ravynn’s work feels very grounded in a Mid-Atlantic/Southern rural experience that I think is important to see and know.

Pick up Survival Art here or Technomagic Girlhood here and follow Ravynn here.

Nancy Remixed by Lenny Ditz

meg lentz is the brains and Sharpie behind Lenny Ditz Comix out of Durham, North Carolina. They volunteer with the Triangle Zine Collective, and I met them when they came down to my teeny tiny town to run a zine workshop at the library. They are such a kind soul, love to share what they know about zines, and believe in the power of zines as an organizing and archival medium. Their most recent work has been with Preservation Durham to create a zine about Durham’s queer history and queer landmarks. Originally hailing from Florida, meg seems to love North Carolina just about as much as I do; place and culture are at the forefront of their work.

Nancy Remixed is one of their series that’s just silly! They take original Ernie Bushmiller frames and reorder/remix them with their own captions to create new stories. This issue was called “Puzzled Penitence” about first encountering the carceral logic of daycare. I love meg’s irreverent style in all of the Nancy comics, but their other work is amazing, too.

Find them on Instagram as lennyditzcomix or at your friendly local Chapel Hill/Durham/Carrboro zine fests!

A Short History of Race and Labor Movements in North Carolina by Redneck Revolt

This final one comes from Shelby, North Carolina and their then-local chapter of Redneck Revolt. The South has a long history of organized resistance and some of the strongest anti-fascists I’ve met come from the most backwoods parts of our community. I learned about the Shelby Redneck Revolt group years ago when they held a direct action in my hometown to protestthe Ku Klux Klan holding demonstrations. I had some critiques of their methods at the time but they were also the only ones who showed up against the literal Klan, and they were always open to those conversations.

As far as I can tell, the national organization no longer has chapters, but they still have lots of amazing zine material available for free on their website. This one that I have goes through several North Carolina events and figures who were pivotal to race and labor movements in the state. Some of these moments have since gained recognition, like the Greensboro Massacre and the Battle of Hays Pond, but others, like the Loray Mill Strike of 1929 are not commonly known nor taught about in our history books.

Check out more of their zines here.

---

Alright, friends, that’s all this week. Enjoy the zines, enjoy the warmth of your homes, and be safe!