Zines, short for “magazine” or “fanzine,” have been a part of the punk music subculture since it began in the 1970s.
According to librarian Daniel Pewewardy, these do-it-yourself publications are helpful in providing a snapshot of a community — anchoring them in a time and place.
“I think zines have a lot of potential for helping communities … identify themselves,” Pewewardy said. “Especially [with] what's been going on in the last few years with gentrification in the Midwest, and you're seeing all these neighborhoods starting to look the same in Oklahoma City and Tulsa and Wichita. You're seeing this uniformity kind of stretching across the country right now.”
Pewewardy recently hosted a zine workshop as part of the Wichita Public Library’s Third Place on 2nd Street event series. He said zines are a good way to express yourself with a low barrier of entry.
“Whatever your inclination is, you can make a zine out of it,” he said. “If you're a writer, you can have a zine full of poetry. If you're like an artist or designer, you can have a very art-heavy zine.
“If you have social causes … there's zines that people use to help bring awareness.”
For WSU student James Owsley, who goes by the moniker “Bones,” punk music was the thing he wanted to write about. So he started the zine “Oi! Bones!”
“I was in my first semester of college at WSU when I thought that I just wasn't doing enough for the punk rock scene here in Wichita,” Owsley said. “I was struggling to find a community, and I couldn't really play an instrument or had the resources to buy one to learn, and I was like, ‘Well, what can I do?’ I can write because I've been at the journalism program for a semester, and so I just decided to just start my own zine.”
As “Oi! Bones!” grew, Bones recruited two friends to help produce the zine each month: artist Hambone and writer Indigo.
“When we first started, we were printing wherever we could, as cheap as we could, mostly public libraries, and then we would staple them together,” Indigo said. “I remember we did one event where we needed 70 zines, and we had spent ages stapling all these zines together. It was literally printer paper.
“Now we have, they sort of look like a published magazine, like a traditionally published magazine.”
Production on “Oi! Bones!” begins each month with Hambone coming up with a cover for the zine.
“We all usually send in our like ideas for what the cover would be, and then we just go through and pick which one we think is the best or the funniest, or would make the coolest art,” they said.
Hambone’s art sets the theme and aesthetic for that month’s issue, and Bones and Indigo begin to form story and interview ideas around the art.
“The art is such a big part of ‘Oi! Bones!’ and that mood carries on throughout every page,” Bones said.
While Bones is the punk anchor of the trio, Hambone and Indigo have found the local punk scene to be an inviting and accepting place.
“I know both Ham and I are less punk than our counterpart,” Indigo said, “and so I was really worried the first time I ever went to a punk show. I was really nervous about what it would be like to be there as a feminine person.
“In my I had this image of what it would look like … it'd be all older white men, and they would be scary… and it really wasn't that. It was a really wonderful concert, and the crowd was very diverse, and everyone was kind and respectful about space.”
Much like a crowd at a punk show, Kansas is made up of people from all walks of life. Indigo hopes that “Oi Bones!” can capture that essence while staying true to its principles.
“Kansas is, in many ways, a very diverse place, and it's a place with radical abolitionist roots, and … I want our little snapshot of this, of our region, the state we're from, to be one of like radical progress and one of belief in others and community and support for each other, and all of these important core tenets,” she said.
“We are just from here, and we're just people.’
Starting a zine has given Bones, Indigo and Hambone an outlet to express their interest, beliefs and aesthetic. They hope their work can inspire others on their DIY journeys.
“I was talking to a friend yesterday,” Bones said. “I was like, ‘You should start a zine of all your poetry.’ He's like, ‘I don't have the time for that.’ I'm like, ‘You have as much time in the world … you could start this tomorrow and not publish for two years, and that's fine.’ Make a zine. You can just make it work.”
“I think maybe if I were to say, “What do I want from this?” I want us to keep having fun,” Indigo said. “I want to make something with my friends, and I would like to get better at it. I would like to learn a skill that I can take elsewhere, maybe apply it to other things, but mostly I just want to keep having fun with my friends.”
“You do not have to make your zines for other people,” Hambone said. “I think if you just talk about what you like or just make something just for fun, I think that's enough. There's no pressure to be the best ever, or have a big meaning behind it. If it's just something you create, that you created, that you wanted to create. I think that's all that really matters.”
“Oi! Bones!”, along with other zines, can be found at Spektrum Musik, The Record Ship and The Hereafter.
