Zine Review: Don’t Leave Me Alone by gg

As the first to a new series, it is only proper that I introduce how zine reviews work at Late Comeback. This is not a place where we tell you if something is good or bad, where something needs to be improved or had a stellar use of imagery. Zine reviews give you a sense of what someone created, and what we felt needed to be shared with you. CONTAINS SPOILERS.

gg’s “DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE” begins like a seemingly innocent story about a girl who loves comics and gets bullied at school. The comic has a blue tone, a sense of slice-of-life sadness as we discover more about her. The girl comes from an immigrant family that can’t afford much; when at the grocery store, she excitedly picks up the next copy of Silver Surfer, but upon realizing that it costs $19.99, she places it back on the shelf. Her father pays for her soft serve in coins and after taking one bite from her cone, pretends to be full.

As they drive home at night, stars fully out and glimmering in the sky, the girl sits upside down in the backseat. “Dad, I think we’re alone in the universe,” she says. The father asks about aliens, but what she means is much smaller in scope. The girl does not discuss humanity; she means her family. Her. No friends at school, just comics and her dad. An overwhelming sense of blue.

Suddenly, we have a panel with a cop siren. The father pulls over, with panels thereafter alternating red and blue. All panels prior were black and white. “Dad! Are we going to jail?” the girl asks.

“No worry, okay? Probably is nothing,” he replies.

The girl hides behind her backpack in the backseat as the father is asked to step out of the vehicle. The cop beats her father with a police baton, the girl watching from the window. She runs out of the Cutlass and runs into the woods. The officer sees her and chases.

The girl trips and tumbles in the air, landing safely in a river. In red panels, the officer stumbles, falls, and lands on a pile of rocks under a waterfall. The girl climbs out and returns to her father, lying on the ground. “Don’t leave me alone,” she pleads.

Read the original copy of “DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE” here.

Blue, as a Feeling

When Caroline and I sat down to write our goals for 2020, regularly updating this blog was one of them. If anyone has ever tried to maintain a blog with consistent updates, you would know how easy it is to fall behind when you’re trying to balance a full-time job (bills gotta get paid), make art on the side, be a sociable adult, take care of yourself, and get enough sleep. The reality is there just isn’t enough time in a day. But the good news is that we are going to post consistently this year, even if it means just one post a month.

To make things more cohesive for us, we decided to work with quarterly themes, and so when Classic Blue was announced as Pantone’s Color of the Year, I knew that it was befitting for our first theme: Blue, as a Feeling.

If you were to ask my friends or family what my favorite color is, they would probably say some variation of dusty rose or pale purple, and while they’re not wrong, I will tell you that I have always been obsessed with blue ever since I could hold a crayon in my hand. To be specific, it was Crayola’s cerulean blue that my five-year-old hands would gravitate towards and demolish immediately. I would color pages of sky and water with cerulean until I could no longer sharpen it with the crappy sharpener on the back of the box.

To me, even at five years old, the world was blue. 

I can’t think of a color family that describes Late Comeback’s work more perfectly. I mean, we even have a zine called “Blue”!

Excerpt from “Blue”

Starting this week, and every week until April 1st, we will be posting a new piece of art on our Instagram, illustrating what Blue, as a Feeling means to us. From moments of content and hope to feelings of melancholy and despair, blue is a color as vast as the human experience. We hope to show you a peek into our tiny, blue world, and maybe you’ll see a part of yourself in it too. 

–Rachna

Reference Guide:

  • “Bluets” – Maggie Nelson
  • “Blue Period” – Aidan Koch
  • “Blue” – Nananan Kiriko
  • “Days of Being Wild” – Wong Kar Wai
Listen to the Spotify playlist below:

2018 in Review

This year has been a wild ride, let me tell you. Rachna and I had talked about wanting to self-publish, but it seemed easier said than done. And when we made it to DC Zine Fest, we had no choice but to create and print and staple and sew. Then we made it to Richmond Zine Fest, and we had to do it all over again.

To be honest, I brought my materials to work and started stitching my zines together at the office. I cut out squares for “TWINS” on my formica desk and left accidental scars from a new Xacto blade. I was staying up past one in the morning, only to wake up at 6 AM to get to work, and I cried as I listened to St. Vincent. I hated myself for doing this, but I hadn’t felt this excited in so long. Why else would they call it a labor of love?

Rachna fell asleep at her desk and would prop her head up with her hand. Since our desks face the wall, anyone who came in believed she was lost in thought instead of in her dreams. She’s pulled all-nighters to draw mini zines and her 30 comics, and she’s helped me cut and glue. We finished marketing projects during lunch and took photos with extra lights pulled from empty cubicles. I would adjust the light according to Rachna’s directions, and she would snap what she could on her phone. You would never know there was a 70-pound safe in the original photo of our first LC Press posts. We became cropping queens.

We made friends with other zinesters from fests we attended and met artists we admired from Instagram for real. We flipped through some zines at Small Press Expo and became good friends with Cam del Rosario. We even did a collab with him (which is AWESOME; shout out to “Living Space”, y’all). Honestly, it hurts that he lives in Louisville.

Every time the zine fest cycle begins, we feel anxious and excited, like when you’re going to Kindergarten for the first time. You wonder, will I make any friends? Will anyone like me? Will they like what I have to offer? It scares me every time, even though we’ve met some wonderful people. When potential buyers of your work approach your table and their faces change from delighted to horrified, it’s…well, it’s an experience.

Late Comeback was never about the money. And even though I say that, Rachna and I genuinely hope that LC Press will become so much more than just the two of us. Right now, it’s more important that we are seen, and we have been. Thank you so much for seeing us, for experiencing this with us. We’ll see you next year, with a new batch of zines.

-Caroline

Who Is Late Comeback Press?

Honestly, we were going to start this up in August, but a lot of things happened (and a lot of slacking too). After attending two zine fests, producing some zines, and doing a collab, we think we’re finally ready to tell you a little bit about ourselves.

Read More