New Year Zine Reads
2025 ended poorly, experienced mostly as a weary gap between two (now three) different bouts of winter illness. It is a slow season, so I made sure to bring some good zines (and other things) with me for the spare time. I don't want you to miss out though, so here's my quick summary of the five neat things I read while time was sluggish.
Cherry Print by Rebecca O'Hagan
I was late to this one, but luckily it was easy to spot when it reappeared on the shelves of Typewronger Books. Cherry Print is a great zine all about that famous fruit, fashion, femininity and fashioning yourself around an image. Just like The Best Supermarket in Edinburgh, the last of Rebecca's zines I read, so much of the pleasure is learning how specific a relationship with symbols (or supermarkets) can be. In many cases, being un-ashamedly specific and niche is exactly what I look for in a zine. This one really has got it.
Sadly I had to give this one away as a Christmas present, because it was too good not to share.
Toothsome Magazine Issue One "From AM to PM"
This little magazine is one of the two mini publications I got from the Edinburgh Cookbook Shop pop-up which ran in December. In short, it's a stack of morsels - short pieces about food, food people, and food related things from around the world. It does the magazine parts well: full of great layouts, lovely photography and topics I would never have thought to search for. A far cry from the uniformity of this digital touch-click-scroll world. Highlights are a chef who cooks dishes she cannot eat, a dry indomie noodle salad, and some cool egg photos. Next issue I hope we get some bigger bites out of the topics they cover.
Asian Food Travel by ASIAN_FOOD_DESIGN
Item #2 from the Edinburgh Cookbook shop pop up is this gorgeous travelogue focused on all the great Asian food the author and her family enjoyed on their weeks of travel around asia. It makes some really gorgeous use of the risograph printing to have the pencil illustrations and photos layered over each other to really make you focus on the dishes, people or buildings she wants you to care about. A great example of a travelogue, and thinking creatively with the different layers of Riso printing.
Of all the publications in this list, this is the one I most wish I could make. So I'm going to practise drawing food for a while I think.
You can get this beauty from her website, or maybe ask the Edinburgh cookbook shop to get more when it opens for real later this year.
Sacred Bodies by Ver
Monsters and deviant eroticism in a fantasy world, this is a good one. I've been getting into sketching recently and still don't know how magicians like Ver manage to make their colours look so good. This comic is really focused on its central relationship and using that to illustrate the wider social dynamics at play in the wider world. I think it nails what it goes for, and I'd definitely have kept reading if it went further. Maybe Ver will return to this world in future, who knows.
I got the hardback copy of this from La Belle Adventure's independent comics section, if you aren't local then paperbacks are available online. It makes a great gift for any friend who likes monsters1.
The Mardler Issue 3 by East Anglian Folklore Centre
A classic form - the anthology. I grabbed this folksy zine in The Holloway, Norwich2. This edition contained poetry, East Anglia specific folklore and an introduction to Roman house spirits. Since I read this they've released a new and extra-big issue, if you want to stay on the cutting edge of East Anglian Folklore!