Hello everyone! As Pride month has come to a close, we are happy to announce that despite the amount of posts slowing down scheduling-wise, we are continuing with our Zine of the Gay for the rest of the summer! We look forward to sharing even more of our zines with you!
This one’s for all of you Star Wars queers. Today’s Zine of the Gay is Hearts of Dankness
, volume one of a series called My Side-Project by a college student from Canada who goes simply by Blair. It’s a relatively short zine, consisting of some dialogues and drawings by the creator. Though we don’t have any other zines from the series, Blair says that she wants to include themes for every zine, and this one is Star Wars. She writes,
this time out i’ve written about star wars. particularly, conversations about star wars. i like to write dialogue. so did hemingway. but then he never wrote about star wars.
The first dialogue of the zine is called “The Boba Fett Debate” and is between two brothers, Tom and Mike. Starting with the question of “What do you think Boba Fett looks like under that helmet of his, anyway?” we get a fun example of what a night could be spent doing as a young boy, getting into little arguments with your siblings about the facial features of a fantasy man who never shows his face. After insulting each other, actually getting somewhere when it comes to describing Boba Fett’s features, and a visit from their mom (who has no idea which one Boba Fett is), they continue debating and then go to bed. The story really is the essence of boyhood in the late nineties, exemplified in its last couple of sentences: “They decided to go to bed that night after three hours of continuous debate, interrupted only to insult each other. They needed their rest. They had a big day tomorrow, as they were scheduled to re-cast the forthcoming X-Men movie for a fifth time with their friend Johnny at the arcade at two o’ clock, followed by the greatest damn G.I.Joe action-figure battle this world has e’er seen.” The creator includes a drawing of Tom later in the zine as well, with him labeled as “the handsome one”, and considering he’s both “the handsome one” and “the philosophical one” we’d say he’s got a bright future ahead.
The next dialogue, “Of Pricks and Wookies” follows a new boy Tim and an interaction of his with two school bullies, Steve Ridgley and Larry Jones. This dialogue takes on a more comical turn, with Larry being the typical partially stupid bully and Steve being for some reason incredibly eloquent. Our favorite Steve line in this is when Larry brings up C3PO and R2D2 and calls them lovers, and Steve agrees, saying, “Indeed, most certainly. They were involved in a relationship that was most intimate.” Larry builds upon this and says, “Ya, and I bet they did it with each other too!” When Tim starts to “get smart” with Larry and Steve, which includes explaining Chewbacca is that way because that’s what Wookies look like, Steve says “His manner doth perturb me. Perhaps we should inf1ict pain upon him.” before giving Tim the beating of his life.
Overall this artist has a really fun and playful style in both their writing, and the visual art they include, which mixes drawings and collages. The zine seems to bask in its young fanboy energy and reflect true to life experiences of boys obsessed with Star Wars.
Kit Gorton is a current intern at QZAP and graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in library science and English, with focuses on archives and media studies. A rather queer Hobbit, Kit is most often seen collecting things (such as leaves, rocks, books and the like) or doting on their cat, Good Omens Written in Collaboration by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.
