2022 & A Long Winded Welcome
Well, excited to be on a new platform. I'm writing this a bit in advance of the launch date for this new site but I think I generally do- at least for the intro section of the zine.
When you're finally able to read this, it'll be 2022 (or nearly so) and technically 2 years since I launched Strangers. The anniversary that I acknowledge for the zine is February 14th, but I launched the page on January 1st, 2020 with a little preview of a zine I did called 'Please Sell Me Your T-Shirt' which was basically a photo zine of all these really cool old school comic shirts that people on Depop were flipping for way too much money. I had all these plans to do bootleg t-shirts and all this other crazy shit that just never ended up happening, probably for the better.
So, without too much rambling and reflecting, I'll get into some of the news for 2022! With a new year comes a new site comes a new name, kind of. For the past couple years I've been doing everything under Strangers Fanzine but I feel like, at least in the last 6 months, the zine has been the thing that people identify Strangers with the least. The distro stuff obviously got way out of control and I had a lot of growing pains with that but I think what's really started to establish itself as the most identifiable piece of Strangers is the publishing, or as I've been calling it; 'Strangers Fanzine Presents.'
I haven't been terribly happy with that name and wanted to make sure Strangers was identifiable by more than just the zine. So- going forward the full name is just going to be Strangers Fanzine & Publishing. You'll see either Strangers Publishing or Strangers Fanzine depending on what's relevant.
In regards to the zine- I am really hoping to put out more than 2 issues this year. Last year got to be absurdly busy from a personal side and the idea of designing a zine just became nearly impossible. I am sure that's also why the publishing took off like it did and if I'm being honest, I also just like doing the publishing a lot more. That being said, I am going to be bringing someone on to help assist with the zine. Ian Thomas has been writing articles for Strangers since Issue 2 and does a lot with The Comics Journal. He's got a great voice and vision and I'm excited to be working with him. I will still be doing design/interviews and curation but Ian is really going to help take the zine under his wing so I can continue on with the publishing, distro and just fulfillment side of things.
That being said- I've already teased a handful of books for 2022. A few of those being:
Deadnauts by Andrew Zakolodny
Meddle by Marc Wagner
Disco Lavante by Garresh
Tales From The Zap Vol 1 by Jake Machen
Trenchcoat Vol 2 by Jake Machen
The Complete Jungleland by Adam Falp
Joseph's Tower by Noah Bailey
Gun-Metal Affair by Bryce Davidson
Krania #2 by Brian McCray
along with a handful of titles from artists by the likes of Tyler Landry, Taylor Chiu, Pigeon aka Kamila Król, Jordan Barry-Browne, Nate Doyle and more.
2022 will also see the arrival of our first Kickstarter project; Dynamite Diva: One-Eyed Wild Ride by Jasper Jubenvill. After a successful launch and much back and forth with the printers, it's finally able to make it's debut!
Additionally- we'll have some new books by Strangers alum like Bhanu Pratap and a new two part series by Connor McCann!
I can't thank you all enough for the constant support over the last year, from your patience on orders that took to long to just constantly hyping up and buying our titles- I am excited to keep thing going and bring in another amazing year!
- Eddie