Talk:History of Media Fanzine Art
"Modern" zines?
This page is a fantastic look into history and I can see how much love and effort has been put into it! I think it captures a pre-common internet time and the context of zine art back then. One concern I have is that there is little on there about zines right now (2020-ish), like genshin impact zines. The culture has changed, the art style has changed, and maybe old print zines like this still exist but much of the zines today share little overlap in fandoms, distribution method, art trends, even medium. For example spot art has become common in a lot of zines I've seen where an artist draws illustrations that fit alongside the text, or comics; zines also recruit artist and sell art for fanmerch which is produced and sold alongside the zine. It might be possible to rearrange this page to include that information, but I already really like the arrangement of the sections now. I'm not sure what to do about it, but wanted to raise it in case someone else has an idea Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 13:05, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
- I agree that in the time that this page was created and worked on, zines have changed, and that this page doesn't reflect that. I also think it would be hard to include the "modern" zines in this already long page, as it would lose impact for "both" kinds. I don't want to have this page trimmed down for those reasons, as the information here is a thing unto itself. I don't want to lose or reduce it.
- Brainstorm: Perhaps there could be two pages? One (this one) that is titled "Zine Art Pre [year]" and one that is for "modern" zines, and it could follow a similar format?
- We'd have to agree on a year when the "modern" zines became prevalent, which could be tricky. But if we included a short section on each page about the somewhat arbitrary/best guess line, it would address that topic.
- If we do this, we set a precedent for other similar pages about zines, so we need to be mindful of that. MPH 14:25, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
- Other zine pages have somewhat tried to include or reconcile the modern information, but it is a little hodgepodge and still skewed towards the past. There are of course some common themes (on this page an example might be zine cover art, which hasn't changed much in my estimation) - maybe it would be hard to choose which page those common aspects should go on. Or maybe we could just note that it is much the same as the past and link it back. Alternatively it could be 3 pages, things in common, Zine Art Pre [year] and Zine Art post [year] (pre internet prevalence vs post internet prevalence, and Zines and the Internet can be about that transition?) Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 15:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
- I feel there should be an article for Digital Zines. It would create a space for discussing the considerations unique to digital production and distribution the way that a Print Zine article could cover the history of mimeographing. That said, this article is about art in zines. There shouldn't be a chronological cut-off. That would be like Wikipedia's "rock music" article only covering the genre until 1995. At best it would seem arbitrary and weird. At worst it would feel like gate-keeping. I feel this article would benefit from an examination of more recent zines. Perhaps this could be integrated as a new section at the end to allow the article to still be read as a history. But I think it would be doing a disservice to the diversity and longevity of fannish expression through zines if we treated the genre/medium as though it were fixed in time. Night Rain (talk) 23:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
- Lots of good points.
- I'd like to point out that this article isn't the way it is because of "gate keeping," nor nor do I feel it's because it "treated the genre/medium as though it were fixed in time." The "chronological cut-off" isn't intentional, but instead because this article was created quite a while ago, and it hasn't been updated due to not enough editors, nor possibly interest. I want to honor the work that people put into this page, as well as the subject, as we go forward. MPH 01:40, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- Something can be perceived as having a specific intent without one being present. Which is why I qualified those stamements with "would seem" and "would feel like." Anyone who's edited Wikipedia will remember the emphasis placed on WP:OWN. It's understood that being in a communal project means that sometimes editors will tinker with and build upon your work in ways that don't sit well with you. I recognize Fanlore has been its own thing for a long time. But many interested in contributing here will have cut their teeth on other wikis. I feel the ideal approach would be to find balance between preserving mature articles and accepting the wiki as an eternal work-in-progress. That seems at odds with the view that newer zines wouldn't fit in this "already long page" and would make existing content "lose impact." This isn't a long read by wiki-standards! A long scroll, sure, due to the lovely galleries and insightful quotes. But it's only 30K in bytes. For contrast, Wikipedia's "dinosaur" article is 289K, and the one about the 45th U.S. president is 428K. I would personally much rather read a 428K article about zine art. Which is not to say the article will (much less should) ever grow to that length. But Fanlore is doing something vital and unique in documenting fan culture. And I feel we ought to do our best to encourage its growth. Night Rain (talk) 04:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- Great discussion! I just want to add one more point, which is that I think I would enjoy it all to be in one article, because that would help a lot more with finding information later on. This article does feel like a long read to me though! Still, one of my peeves about the zine articles is I find it super hard to figure out which article the information I'm looking for is in, if it's all together that would be easier
- My concern / argument for perhaps having two pages would be because the work of integrating more modern zines into a page like this, without losing the old information, written with a past context, while still grouping information by topic and avoiding duplication is... difficult. The page would need to go through a lot of refactoring and rearranging. Information could easily be lost(though with source control an industrious editor could probably find it again). In this format, it is hard to see what is still missing from each section. Editing a long article tends to be more stressful than editing a short one, especially when there's a big scope to parse through! As MPH says, the chronological cutoff here isn't meant to be commentary about the nature of the page but just that it hasn't been edited in a long while and now it's hard to edit on top of it.
- Not to say that it's not worthwhile, but just I'm quite lost to how to rearrange this article and create space for the new information; if someone felt able in rearranging this page to make the sections to expand on clear, I would support keeping the information together. Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 11:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- Something can be perceived as having a specific intent without one being present. Which is why I qualified those stamements with "would seem" and "would feel like." Anyone who's edited Wikipedia will remember the emphasis placed on WP:OWN. It's understood that being in a communal project means that sometimes editors will tinker with and build upon your work in ways that don't sit well with you. I recognize Fanlore has been its own thing for a long time. But many interested in contributing here will have cut their teeth on other wikis. I feel the ideal approach would be to find balance between preserving mature articles and accepting the wiki as an eternal work-in-progress. That seems at odds with the view that newer zines wouldn't fit in this "already long page" and would make existing content "lose impact." This isn't a long read by wiki-standards! A long scroll, sure, due to the lovely galleries and insightful quotes. But it's only 30K in bytes. For contrast, Wikipedia's "dinosaur" article is 289K, and the one about the 45th U.S. president is 428K. I would personally much rather read a 428K article about zine art. Which is not to say the article will (much less should) ever grow to that length. But Fanlore is doing something vital and unique in documenting fan culture. And I feel we ought to do our best to encourage its growth. Night Rain (talk) 04:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- WRT a Digital Zine article, it feels like you might be thinking that a Digital Zine is an equivalent word to 'modern zines' (?). to me it makes me think of digital-only PDF sales or free digital zine content -- which is almost always considered in relation to print. Even when it's only available digitally, it follows the conventions of print media (pages, formatting); there's something to be said about why digital but a lot less than physical zines and mostly in-relation to physical zines. Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 11:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- I feel there should be an article for Digital Zines. It would create a space for discussing the considerations unique to digital production and distribution the way that a Print Zine article could cover the history of mimeographing. That said, this article is about art in zines. There shouldn't be a chronological cut-off. That would be like Wikipedia's "rock music" article only covering the genre until 1995. At best it would seem arbitrary and weird. At worst it would feel like gate-keeping. I feel this article would benefit from an examination of more recent zines. Perhaps this could be integrated as a new section at the end to allow the article to still be read as a history. But I think it would be doing a disservice to the diversity and longevity of fannish expression through zines if we treated the genre/medium as though it were fixed in time. Night Rain (talk) 23:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
- Other zine pages have somewhat tried to include or reconcile the modern information, but it is a little hodgepodge and still skewed towards the past. There are of course some common themes (on this page an example might be zine cover art, which hasn't changed much in my estimation) - maybe it would be hard to choose which page those common aspects should go on. Or maybe we could just note that it is much the same as the past and link it back. Alternatively it could be 3 pages, things in common, Zine Art Pre [year] and Zine Art post [year] (pre internet prevalence vs post internet prevalence, and Zines and the Internet can be about that transition?) Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 15:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
What if this page were renamed History of Print Zine Art or History of Media Fanzine Art (so as to retain the edit history) and then the Zine Art redirect were turned into a new overview page with one prominent section near the top summarizing the pre-Internet print zine era (with a link to History of Print Zine Art), with more sections added for e-zine art, Internet-era print zine art, social media-era print zine art, other types of zine art.... (Looking at the current page, it seems very focused on media fanzines specifically, as opposed to SF fanzines or some other zine tradition, so History of Media Fanzine Art may be the clearer choice.)--aethel (talk) 00:47, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
- I would support this (particularly History of Media Fanzine Art) just to get it into a form that feels easier to edit and contribute to, though perhaps it would be worthwhile to combine it back at a later point. It would be important to me that the scaffolding or structure of Zine Art was made clear when the page was made, and disambiguated well from the article on History of Fanart, which is also heavily skewed towards media fandom. Not sure just separating by medium where the zine takes place would be a good idea, there are probably commonalities and differences, and it would be really important for both articles to be clear about what content goes on which page! Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 16:13, 20 February 2025 (UTC)
moved; things still to work on
Based on the discussion above, I renamed the page so it can focus on fanart in media fanzines and allow space for other types of zine art on the main zine art page. The current writing style isn't very history-oriented and could use some editing, but the things it describes are historical and don't match what little I've seen talked about online recently. Some observations and notes on stuff to work on:
- Feedback section is listed first. Since feedback comes last, after the art is drawn, printed, and distributed, it might make more sense to put this section last. However, if the comments on feedback are meant as a warning or explanation about the difficulty in getting primary sources/historical commentary on zine art, maybe that should be stated explicitly, so that the purpose of mentioning feedback first is clearer.
- There being less feedback for art than fanfic is an interesting historical note that I think is no longer true. Perhaps a comment and link to recent meta showing how things have changed would be an interesting addition.
- The Scarcity of Artists section sounds interesting, but still needs to be filled in.
- Trends in Art section seems unfinished.
- Art Parts of Zines: The Interior and Its Importance has some editorial asides about stuff to fill in. There's also a note at the end of the section--"Gallery of examples of interior art still to add:"--that is a little confusing. The section is now followed by a gallery of interior art--can this note be deleted, or did someone have something in mind to add to the gallery?
- Photo Manipulations section has a flag for needing examples, but it also looks like someone was planning to add some quotes from fans annoyed with photomanips on zines?
- Artistic Expression and Practicality section is a single quote from a fan in 1975. It seems related to the section The Challenges of Reproduction, which is a quote from 2007. I'd love to see a section explaining historical printing technologies and art reproduction, maybe with these existing sections as subheaders under it. There's some related tidbits on the Zine Production page.
--aethel (talk) 23:42, 7 March 2025 (UTC)
Glimpse is an sf zine where the editor also talked about the difficulties of printing art in 1976. And the History of Fanart page talks about zine costs and the evolution of zine art.--aethel (talk) 02:39, 8 March 2025 (UTC)