Zines In Fiction

[Harley R. Pageot]

Whenever I come across the use of zines in a TV show or movie or book, I beam. Unfortunately they're almost never actually called zines.

This is meant as an ongoing thread for you to bump any time you come across something.


Gilmore Girls (TV series)
Jess starts his own publishing group and starts making what are essentially poetry and litzines but I think they're just referred to as chapbooks.


The Apprentice Of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (novel)
Duddy's friend Virgil starts a zine about epilepsy but it's simply described as being a publication, never a zine.

[Emma Jane Falconer]

Also as well- the Story of the Treasure Seekers- E Nesbit. The kids try to make a newspaper to restore their family fortunes (after trying digging up the garden, being highwaymen in the park, divining etc) and then quickly discover why no-one ever makes any money out of zines (about 70 years before zines were really around as well!)

[Harley R. Pageot]

Charlie Brown makes a fanzine about a favorite baseball player of his!

[Derek Neuland]

Also in Gilmore Girls, Jess is seen reading a copy of Punk Planet. Season 2 i believe.

not zine related, but in the episode when Jess is at his publishing group's party, he's wearing a Dinosaur Jr. shirt.

[Dorian Shaw]

Michelle Tea's Valencia novel has a chapter where she breaks into a labour group office and has an all night zine party.

[tim scannell]

yep...party on!!

Dorian Shaw said:

Michelle Tea's Valencia novel has a chapter where she breaks into a labour group office and has an all night zine party.

[Harley R. Pageot]

How I Met Your Mother

In the episode 'Game Night', we get flashbacks to young Barney being a hippie and working in a coffee shop and he has a perzine for sale at the counter!

[Billy Da Bunny]

What a cool thread! Yeah, I was going to mention that simpsons episode! It's so great, at the end every single person in town starts their own newspaper. how cool!

That band, Harvey Danger, had that one popular song, with the line "I wanna publish zines, and rage against machines..."

also, on the "punk in the mainstream" line, there's an AWESOME x-files episode with that hott guy, where he can control electricity. He's wearing a Vandals shirt, and there are a few Vandals songs, which is amazing. best x-files ever. I think when they show him in his messy punk rock room there are zines laying around... oh, hey, this episode:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751095/

[Bradley Adita]

Fredric Wertham

[Harley R. Pageot]

On The Venture Bros. Dean publishes his own newspaper which is very zine-like.

[CXMNZ]

It's been a long long time since I watched it, but I seem to recall some of the young folk in Neighbours (Australian soap which is pretty popular in the UK for any of you who haven't heard of it) were creating something called a 'blogzine', which was this revolutionary idea to make a paper version of a blog.

[Harley R. Pageot]

From Adrian Tomine's collection Scrapbook:

[False Start Distro]

They call it a book in the show, but it's definitely a zine! In Battlestar Galactica, Gaius Baltar has an underground political zine about class issues and the emerging underclass.

I frackin' love Battlestar!