>> PAYTON: The Bronte sisters were the original Riot Grrrls.

Prove me wrong.

♪ Hello and welcome to "Flyover Culture," your guided tour of pop culture in the Midwest.

I'm Payton Whaley.

Zines are just one of those things that defy explanation, like postmodernism or Tom Hank's accent in "Elvis."

>> He'’’s white.

>> PAYTON: Give me your definition of a zine, and you'd probably be right, and also wrong, but also right.

Zines can be just about whatever the heck you want.

But there are some loose guidelines.

>> To me, a zine is a self-published magazine, and that's very wide ranging.

That's wide ranging on purpose.

I think zines can be a lot of things.

>> I kind of consider zines anything that is self-published that people make and distribute on a small scale.

>> PAYTON: That's Mark Murrmann and Cathleen Paquet, two artists originally from the Bloomington area, who got their start working on zines.

They agreed to help me out on this exploration of the zine scene.

Like they said, zines tend to be small press printings of booklets or little magazines that can be filled with anything from prose to poetry, comics to collage, photography to, I don't know, a step-by-step guide to changing your oil.

As Mental Floss puts it: While not totally necessary, another big part of zines is that they are tactile.

There's excitement that comes from getting something made by an artist's hands into your own grubby little mitts.

Zines have a long history of being passed around at conventions, shows, you name it.

Well, zines have something of a long history in general.

Zines as we know them now go back to the fan zines of the 1930s.

One of, if not the earliest, was "The Comet," a sci-fi zine made by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago.

Science fiction had a big part to play in zine culture those early years.

And in 1955, the first Hugo Award for Best Fan Zine was given out to "Fantasy Times."

The nature of zines has long allowed for people on the margins to express themselves without going through a publisher.

That's why the first queer zine goes all the way back to 1947, in the form of "Vice Versa" by Edythe Eyde.

She published under the pen name, Lisa Ben.

Three guesses what that's an anagram for.

For much of the 20th century, zines were made with mimeographs, also called stencil duplicators, but that was thrown out the window once Xerox copiers were introduced in 1949.

>> Now, you tell me, is that cheap or thrifty?

>> PAYTON: And thanks to copy shops like Kinko's in the 1970s, Zines saw another big boom around the time it pivoted to the punk scene in big cities like London, L.A., and New York City.

A lot of that do-it-yourself punk ethos still persists in zines to this day.

>> Punk is very -- has very much, like, by nature been, like, DIY.

When punk came out, it wasn't long before record labels pronounced it dead, and, you know, people were just, like, okay, if -- you know, if record companies don't want to put out our records, we'll just put them out themselves.

If, like, big venues don't want to put on our shows, we'll just put them on ourselves.

>> PAYTON: Zines would see another big surge in the '90s, thanks in large part to the Riot Grrrl scene.

An underground feminist punk movement.

This movement was huge for zines.

According to Flavorwire, by 1993, there were roughly 40,000 zines being published in North America that were dedicated to Riot Grrrl music and politics.

And that brings us to now.

Zines might not be as visible as they were in the '90s and the aughts, but they definitely never went away.

Check your local bookshop, comic shop, record store, you'll likely find something good.

A quick aside, earlier this year, we got a fun wrinkle to this.

"The New York Times" reported that a miniature book made by Charlotte Bronte, the last of the over two dozen that she made, resurfaced and went up for sale for $1.25 million.

Is this book of poems the first zine?

Read that first page and tell me it's not.

Sold by nobody and printed by herself.

The Bronte sisters connection to punk music is so much deeper than we first thought.

There have been countless artists and writers who got their starts in zines.

Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Erin Tobey and, hey, we know that guy.

So I wanted to ask Cathleen and Mark how making zines has influenced their work now.

Cathleen is a student who also works in youth mentorship, and Mark is the photo editor at "Mother Jones"; and yes, he still makes zines on the side.

>> Now I work with Girls Rock, and with girls trans and nonbinary youth in music mentorship, and I think that's something that -- that definitely, like, dovetails with that kind of work too, because, you know, when you are dealing with girls, women, queer folks, People of Color, you name any marginalized, like, population, and to just constantly share -- share and remind people that you don't have to wait for someone else's permission to speak.

That's the most important thing I took away from that whole community, and that just, like, influenced everything.

>> You know, I decided to go to journalism school because I did a zine.

You know, somebody I went to grad school with worked at "Mother Jones," and kind of helped me get the job there.

And so it's all, like, this nugget from doing zines that, like, I knew I wanted to do something in publishing.

I didn't know what.

You are always picking up pointers from people, and I still am, you know, like new ways of doing stuff.

You know, I'm working on a zine now that there's a specific way I want to get it printed.

So I'm reaching out to people to try to figure out how to do that without breaking the bank.

>> PAYTON: But it's not just the material work.

Zines have always provided a rallying point for communities of creators, whether that's at a brightly lit convention hall or a punk show in someone's basement.

>> I toured for years and every town I went to, when I would meet people, and, like, trade zines and stuff, it's, like, you know, most people have, like, photo albums of the things they did in their, you know, teens and 20s, and I have a trunk of written documentation of, like, what all of these people's lives were like.

Like, I have so much more than just snapshots.

I have, like, essays and poetry, and, like, all of these things that people made and wrote.

Becoming pen pals with people was, like, a really big part of it too.

So, you know, I would pick up zines sometimes, and even if I didn't meet the person face to face, if something in it resonated with me, I would just write to people, and same with my zine.

So I ended up with pen pals, like, all over the country, all over the world.

>> You read somebody's zine, and you do get an idea of who they are.

You get an idea of the music they like.

You get an idea of kind of, you know, what makes them excited, what bums them out.

You know, when you are making a zine and writing that stuff and presenting that stuff, it's very much, you know, outward facing.

In a way, sort of performative version of yourself; whereas, when you are writing a letter, it's more one-on-one and personal.

And then, of course, when you meet in person finally, you see how tall they are.

You know, you see that they smell like a dirty sock or that, you know, they are really funny in person, where their writing -- their zine writing is more serious.

>> It was just this tangible thing.

Tangible, but really ephemeral because they were just, like, different everywhere, and they would just float around, and most of them would just end up in the trash.

But then, like, lasting things would come out of that, being, like, relationships with people or the trunk of stuff I hoarded and kept under my bed until a museum wanted it.

>> PAYTON: So are we going to see another big resurgence in zines?

That's up to the people who want to make them.

>> People who have grown up -- you know, they were born when the Internet was around, they don't know anything different.

And so a zine is like a new experience, like something that's like printed and tactile.

In the same way that, you know, for a lot of people, you know, the first time they experience a record, just because it's a different experience.

And so I think it's very similar.

What makes zines, I think, still last is the same thing that is -- is kind of what's helping with the vinyl resurgence, and that's the experience.

You know, the actual physical tactile experience with it.

>> PAYTON: The barrier of entry for zines could not be lower.

So I asked Cathleen and Mark, what advice they had.

>> Just let your voice be your voice, and, you know, if it resonates with someone, great, but it also doesn't have to.

You are going to have to find your balance between, like, the self-consciousness in it.

What you are willing to put out into the world, versus what's your -- what's your authentic voice, and, like, how do you navigate that.

I mean, I think that just goes for any creative endeavor.

>> PAYTON: Or put more bluntly.

>> Other people might think it sucks, but who cares.

You know, just do it.

You will learn from your mistakes, and it's fun.

As long as you are having fun, it doesn't matter.

That's all that really matters.

>> PAYTON: A big thank you to Mark Murrmann and Cathleen Paquet for talking zines with me.

And a special thanks to Hilary Fleck at the Monroe County History Center for putting me in touch.

This whole episode got started because of a zine exhibition the center is putting on right now.

So if you are in the area, please go check out the exhibit.

It runs through the end of October.

Our season finale is up next, and it's gonna be a fun one!

See you next time.