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With its low cost of entry -- a few thousand dollars and access to a copying machine -- this society of self-publishers is growing fast. This year alone, at least 20,000 titles have been produced in the U.S., and Friedman says the cottage industry is growing at an annual rate of 20%. Doug Biggert, who oversees the supply of some 500 titles at 102 of the Tower record, video and book stores, says the chain sells 4,000 zines a month. The supply always changes, of course. Dozens of new titles pop up and fold each month and focus on everything from the benign to the outre. 8-Track Mind, for instance, extols the aural experience of listening to eight-track tapes. ANSWER Me!, on the other hand, claims to tap "primal longings for violence," according to its 33-year-old publisher, Jim Goad. Issues have contained the text of an actual phone conversation between euthanasia advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian and a woman pretending to be terminally ill (in reality, Goad's wife), as well as articles about the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a pro-pedophilia organization. Goad is about to publish "The Rape Issue," which includes such articles as "Let's Hear It for Violence Toward Women." An admirer of Louis Farrakhan and David Duke, Goad proudly describes what he does as "journalism without a social value." Publishing, he says, "keeps people like me out of jail. The zine is a good outlet for aggression that otherwise might be spent injudiciously."
The vast majority of zines, however, settle for the slightly irreverent. Some have literary aspirations, others revel in white-trash culture; some have , a weirdly tight focus, others purposefully ramble. Diseased Pariah News uses gallows humor to lampoon the daily trauma of living with AIDS; Processed World ridicules the consumer culture of Popeye's chicken shacks and Subway sandwich shops; the I Hate Brenda Newsletter lambastes former Beverly Hills, 90210 star Shannen Doherty for everything from her pancake-white makeup to her recital of the Pledge of Allegiance at the 1992 Republican Convention. Dirt Rag is a service zine for dirt bikers that lists the sport's contests and teaches readers how to make spiked ice tires for the winter. Chuck glorifies trailer- park food -- such dishes as Armour Potted Meat Food Product; and FishWrap publishes poetry like Craig Thompson's "Swarm," which includes the line: "Splattered on the windshield, a thousand gnats struck low by physics."
Friedman traces contemporary zines to two sources. One route passes through the highbrow beat poetry of the 1940s and '50s that, because of its small audience, perfected the art of producing the small-run, beautifully crafted publications called chapbooks. The other follows the science-fiction press back to its pulp roots in the late '30s when fans of this literary genre circulated rough, mimeographed copies of their own voluminous stories, commentary and manifestos.