Read an Excerpt

Precursors of the current zine explosion include all publications classed as “proletarian”: novels, nonfiction, short stories, magazines, pamphlets, poetry, plus related genres such as tough-guy, freak/carnival/sideshow books, writing by people of color, early feminist writing—in short, all the voices of the social underclass. (from essay)

Excerpt from Bruno Richard:

Q: Did you make any money off your publishing?

A: A little bit, but it was never enough. Over the past 20 years we managed to produce 45 books. Recently somebody asked me if I’d like to do a book with them for no money, just a copy of the book, and I agreed. That’s often the way it works. All the books are different—we change the size, the type, the topic, every time. It’s all done just to do something before dying. It’s more interesting to do something when you’re alive than just living!

Q: Well, one of your rewards is meeting people all over the world—

A: Everybody I ever liked, I would send them a free copy of my book. I would write, “I like what you do very much. This is what I do. Is there something you could send me in exchange so I could see more of your work, because it is not readily available to me?” When I travel, I look at magazines and find things that interest me; then I try and meet the people who produced them…

I draw three to five hours every morning before I go to work (4:30-9:00 AM) and sometimes I draw at bedtime if I’m alone. That’s all I can do. For me, work is a kind of “regularization”—if I didn’t work and stayed alone in my room drawing all day like a monk—! That’s why I need a regular job, and that’s why I hate weekends! Besides, my job pays for all my publishing…

I like to destroy pictures. Often, I’ll find a photograph and then redo it in a drawing my way—only then am I completely satisfied. When something touches me, like a photo of a girl—even if she’s not nude, I’ll make her nude. When I find a picture that touches me very much, I’ll do it my way, like “Guernica” was for Picasso…

My drawings depict the awfulness and comedy in this world, like George Grosz who did biting drawings of the bourgeois, the military, prostitutes, etc… I also show the bad side, the dark side of “true love” because I don’t think true love exists!