Here’s something you can’t get on a Kindle: handcrafted art zines. Chicago-based Parking Block Publishing specializes in small-run, inexpensive books created by local artists, photographers, and printers.

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I gave up on zines years ago, mainly because I honestly didn’t find many that weren’t self-indulgent or overly mired in some political stance. Mildred Pierce, named after a novel by James M. Cain, has reinvigorated my interest in DIY publishing with its freeform but well thought-out and sophisticated content focused on art, literature, and cultural criticism.

Theo Ellsworth makes obsessively detailed drawings and self-publishes comics, mini comics, and zines about imaginary people and places. The cosmic imagery, subtle geometry, and implied animism in his works recall the epic, heroic, and odd imagery of Jean ‘Moebius’ Girard, Mayan ruins, and the Nazca lines, filtered through the jam-packed and often psychedelic lens of underground comix from the 70s. For Imaginary Friends, at San Francisco’s GRSF Gallery, Ellsworth is making 30 pieces using pen and ink, colored pencil, and watercolor. A quarter of them will be woodcuts. According to the artist, recurring themes include but are not limited to ‘parades of monsters, people made of leaves, scaled and antlered beasts, flying machines, complicated structures, and dreams’. The show runs between July 18 and August 19.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I was lucky enough to meet with John Trippe, the main man behind the popular arts based site, Fecal Face. Trippe started Fecal Face in 1998 as a zine that has since developed into a hugely popular web site that not only has arts news from San Francisco but from all over the world. It’s a great hub for those interested in younger developing artists who are beginning to have shows and get their voices heard. [Shepherd Fairey photo via Fecal Face]