#world's finest zine

[wfzine]

Anyone else love the contrast between Clark's sunny smile and Bruce's sulky frown? And equally important: the bat-ear headphones!

This page illustration was drawn by @januariat

Our preorders are open until May 14th, 12pm PST!

[not-another-robin]

Super super excited for the @wfzine !!!! Order these goobers to your home on April 14th :]

[kiunlo]

HEHEH guess what i got in the mail bitches

:3

[superbattrash]

I did a fun little Q&A in preparation for the World’s Finest Zine. I didn’t wanna spoil my piece too much, so instead you’ll get a look inside my head. More Q&As to come the next couple of days! 

Check out the zine account @wfzine for more info and previews! :3 

[iszapizza]

My preview for the World's Finest Zine! Check out more about it in the zine account @wfzine !

[susiecarter]

WFZine Q&A! (Part 3)

More @wfzine​ behind the scenes! /o\ :D @gothamguts was kind enough to toss this question in specifically to give me room to flail about this, because o m f g, I CANNOT OVEREMPHASIZE how bad I am at editing stories in order to make them shorter instead of longer, and how ludicrously difficult it was for me to trim my draft down to size. Like, in a good way, I absolutely love how it turned out! BUT MAN. ;-; On a good day, I can hammer out somewhere north of 1k per hour—cutting words, on the other hand, I apparently do at a rate of about 20 per hour, and that’s a generous estimate. :’D Anyway, yeah, more of me wailing under the cut!

Q: What was challenging about writing your zine piece? (optional: and how did you overcome it?)

The big challenge for me was definitely having a maximum wordcount! I was so grateful to have been invited to participate, I couldn't believe it, and then the maximum wordcount came up and I was SWEATING, like, oh, god, countdown until the invitation is RESCINDED and I am KICKED OUT INTO THE STREET—

Anyway, yeah, I'm really bad at estimating how long a draft is going to be before I've written it, and that's because it's always longer than I'm expecting. ALWAYS. So I should actually be counting my lucky stars that my first draft came in as close to the max as it did! But it was still 600–700 words too long. :'D So I had to go over it ... god, I don't even know how many times, it must've been at least 20, looking for more words I could cut or something I could rephrase, and cutting, cutting, cutting, and then scrolling back up to the top and checking the wordcount, and learning I'd removed, you know, 18 words. ;-;

It was definitely a really valuable exercise—going forward, I'm planning to try to remove 100–200 words from every draft I write before I post, because I have an adjective problem and also an adverb problem, and having that target to hit, really thinking about which words were the most important ones in each sentence, was great! But after I'd cut like 500, and I STILL NEEDED TO TAKE MORE WORDS OUT ... ;-;!!! It was so hard, it was like MURDER. I'm thrilled with the final version, and I think the story I wrote is stronger in a lot of ways than it would've been if I hadn't trimmed it down! But it was still so ridiculously hard for me, omg. :'D

[butcherlarry]

Weekly Fic Recs 30 and 31

Howdy! I'm back from my vacation! And all I got was cherished family memories, a farmer's tan, and Lyme disease (don't worry, I am on drugs for it, lol. Ticks were thick were I was at). Since I didn't have a fic rec list for last week, I'm making a longer one for this week. Although, this will be the easiest fic rec list that I've made because majority of what I have been reading has been from @brucewayneweek!! There were so many good fics to read! Below is a link to the entire collection:

Bruce Wayne Week 2023 Collection!

There are 46 (!!!!!!!) works for you to check out! What are you waiting for??? Go read them!!!

Some other fics that I read that were not BWW fics (but still batfam/superbat centered) were:

borderline by TheResurrectionist - Batfam, wip. More of the EXCELLENT hive mind fic.

Patchwork Pod by Ktkat9 - Superbat, wip. Mer Bruce fic!!

Dr Stevenson by Ocearna - The Batman (2022), wip. Part of the Bruce Wayne vs Gotham series. Battinson interacting with the people of Gotham in a series of emails.

we shall be free; we shall find peace by mediant - Superbat (not introduced yet), wip. I might have screeched when I saw this fic! There is fabulous art by januariat as well. It was also inspired by the below fic as well (WHICH YOU SHOULD ALSO READ). Clark is taken captive by Lex early on, and is given a smol Kon to take care of. SO MANY FEELS.

onward, lonesome hero (carry on, carry on) by hoebiwan - Clark Kent, complete. Clark is taken captive by Lex early on in his life and does his bidding. The Justice League captures him. Much angst, but a happy ending.

Can You Hear Me? by Mawiiish - Superbat, complete. This was a fic in the World's Finest Zine!! And it is SO GOOD. Superman and Batman learn each other's identities when Batman and Nightwing get into some trouble.

Just A Little Bit... by HaleHathNoFury (My_Trex_has_fleas) - Superbat, wip. More of the creepy alien Clark and eldritch Bruce fic. Ivy and Harley are also there AND I LOVE THEM.

a near defacement by TheResurrectionist - Batman, complete. The JL interact with a meta that can control metal, which mess with Bruce's past medical implants, oh no! :(

The Dad Life by Lulu_Ryhmea - Bruce Wayne, complete. Bruce and Roy Harper bond over being dads.

Damn, that was still a lot of fics on top of the BWW stuff. I got a lot of reading done on vacation!

Happy reading!

[netherworldpost]

thank you for tolerating my rambling about business plans

I want a stationery + zine company

but not like a normal stationery + zine company

I want a spooky cheesy Halloween company

but not not a normal spooky cheesy Halloween company

I have a lot of experience doing a lot of weird business things pre/outside Evil Supply Co. and I'm devoted to taking the entirety of Extremely Unrelated Things --

one of my former clients is a company that produced some of the finest industrial drill bits in the world, they were MASTERS of engineering drill bits -- they sent things into SPACE and other things to the OCEAN FLOOR

(for clarity, on purpose)

another was a milkshake stand

-- and convert this lifetime of experiences into something...

...unusual

and now it is time for to begin drawing

[youngharridan]

Let me preface this by saying I adore Annie Autumn. Its one of those great one-sided/parasocial kind of relationships of my online life. I’ve been following her for awhile now after seeing her tagged in another friend of a friend’s posts. I bought a baby blanket from her for a friend of mine when she was doing a fundraiser, and I have one of her hook rugs on my wall as well. It’s devastating watching her go through cancer treatment and now settling into end of life care - but I also really value what she is willing to share with everyone. Radical queer community grieving at its finest. That is all to say – this is a funny kind of review. Not that I ever strive for objectivity or anything like that. But this little zine really hit a spot in me and its really interesting to give a bit of a longer reflection.

I bought this on a total whim – Annie made merch for her living wake and asked Instagram if people would buy it. Which hell yeah of course we wanted it! Let everyone wear this beautiful stuff while giving you some money for your family. And she included this zine with the totes and shirts. I knew she had built her home with her family and community and jumped at the prospect of hearing more of the story. It’s a short zine – maybe less than 10 pages, colour printed on cardboard. It’s structured around two weather events that woke Annie up in the middle of the night and threatened her home. In-between these stories of fire and flood is a bit about the actual building of the house. The thing that initially struck me is that this is a climate crisis story, displaying the real cost of our collective failure to address climate change meaningfully and sharing the material effects of this crisis. This is a story that is both political and personal in all the best ways.

Annie talks about how building her own house was a dream of her’s from when she was a teenager. I feel like it is such a strong trope in the queer community that we all dream of running away from society to start a commune where we can live freely and build things together. I have personally harboured this dream, but during the covid-19 pandemic lockdowns I was confronted with just how interconnected we all are and thought that this kind of running away fantasy was really cruel. I don’t want to turn away from the world, I want to find a way to live in it while also being in community. This also led to me to looking at houses instead of property when it came to buying a house. I did kind of abandon the city in the end and run away a bit, but just up the hill to the mountains where we could afford to buy a house just outside of the insane Sydney property bubble.

There is something that I struggle with that comes in later in the zine that I want to dig into a bit, towards the end. Annie reflects on how the house is far from perfect but that:

“I love that she’s still a bit of a work in progress, that I’ve shown my kids that you can build a life using your hands, and that life can resist dominant paradigms that dictate that you ‘cant’t’ or ‘shouldn’t’ make things for yourself. That tells you not to try in case the things you make are ‘bad’. That its better to work in a soulless job so that you can pay others to use their hands to make things for you – your clothes, your home, your garden”.

This kind of sentiment is something that greatly irritates me while also being something that I agree with to a certain extent. I live in a house that someone else built – and we paid someone to renovate the kitchen in the first year we lived here, and I don’t regret either of these decisions. I also really want to learn how to paint the walls myself and take on other repairs eventually as well because learning skills rules. The garden is going to be a lifelong project for me. At the moment it’s a fussy cottage garden that the retirees that lived here before us obviously poured so much love and care into, but is full of plants I want to slowly replace with natives and productive fruits and vegetables. I don’t think it’s fair to blanket say that all work is soulless, and that paying professionals to do things for you is wrong. But I do think we could all stand to learn the true cost of things like food and clothes on the planet, people, and animals. So call me a fake radical but I am happy to give some jobs over to the tradies in my house.

I kind of can’t believe how long this went – hoping to review more zines this year but don’t expect >500 words very often.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 776: Lungfish Love Is Love

Three years had passed since Lungfish's previous album... the longest gap between records in their career. And out comes Love Is Love in what is arguably a very different musical landscape of the new millennium.

Zine culture had been replaced by music blogs, meaning folks were less likely to see the requisite Dischord print ad featuring all their latest releases. The touring circuit had become even more saturated, with scores of new post-hardcore bands flooding the stages in the wake of the breakthrough popularity of artists like At The Drive In and Refused. Outlets that had been covering nü-metal just a couple of years earlier were now talking about moppy-haired screamo bands. Major labels were creating incubator deals with indie labels to stake their claims on young underground bands.

Frankly, it was all a little gross. But if you were in that world, that was the game you were expected to play, because if you didn't tour constantly and you didn't get on board with social media and you didn't make cool t-shirts, then you wound up like Lungfish, and you put out what was arguably one of your finest records and no one would even notice. Back in 2003, I remember the owners of Jade Tree telling me how Love Is Love was an example of what happened when an artist and their label didn't evolve with the times. Apparently the sales figures for the album were abysmal.

But fast forward twenty years and I'd argue that more people talk about Lungfish now than they did back in their supposed heyday of the '90s. And Love Is Love in particular is lauded by many as their finest work. In 2003, Lungfish knew exactly who they were and they knew exactly what they wanted out of their music and they made an album that leaned into their strengths as craftsmen of hypnotic rudimentary esoteric anthems. They weren't reinventing the wheel because the band itself was the wheel and no improvements were needed to their austere perfection. Their music wasn't fashionable. It wasn't a part of the Zeitgeist. It existed outside of all of that, and consequently it's aged far better than the hordes of commercialized bands that capitalized on the foundation Fugazi built in the previous decade.

[ao3feed-superbat]

Can You Hear Me?

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/OZRhWoe by Mawiiish My contribution to the World's Finest Zine. -- Clark clearly remembers his first meeting with Bruce Wayne. Meeting might be an exaggeration, but when Bruce Wayne shoves you into a pool it’s hard to forget. “Oh no,” Bruce exclaims, voice at least two octaves higher than his natural register. “I am so incredibly sorry, let me help you up, Ken!” “It’s Cla—” “Clint, of course, I’m sorry, here, take my hand.”  Words: 4491, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Superman - All Media Types, Batman - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: M/M Characters: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Dick Grayson Relationships: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: superbat - Freeform, Pre-Relationship, Identity Reveal, Flirting, Bruce Wayne is Brucie Wayne, Hurt Bruce Wayne, Near Death Experiences, Worried Bruce Wayne, Worried Clark Kent, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Gone Wrong, Hurt Dick Grayson, clark is fascinated by bruce's heartbeat, POV Multiple, Hopeful Ending, Dialogue Heavy, Near Drowning read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/OZRhWoe

[wfzine]

🚨LEFTOVER SALES ARE NOW OPEN!🚨

✨LINK HERE✨

Missed our preorders? Now’s your chance to grab a copy of the World’s Finest Zine! We have a limited stock of individual items as well as a few bundles remaining. We also have a few B-grade and C-grade copies of certain items, which will be sold at a discounted price. 

B-grade items are slightly damaged, such as by scuff marks, but they do not impact the viewing quality of the item.

C-grade copies are significantly damaged, such as large scuff marks and folded corners. The primary subjects of the zine are still fully visible! 

To see examples of B and C grade items, please view our shop listing or click on the read more! We have b grade zines and bookmarks, and a handful of c grade zines. 

For non-US customers, please read our Shipping FAQ carefully before purchasing! Items will be shipped as orders arrive, but please give up to a week for your tracking to update.

[not-another-robin]

Wooooagh.... wild Nars appeared in the @wfzine !! Me and a bunch of other great artists are working on this, go check out the account and stay tuned for updates!!

[kiunlo]

anyways i read all the fics and looked at all the beautiful art in the world's finest zine and everybody did such a wonderful job! i don't wanna tag ppl cuz i dont wanna be annoying but you guys are awesome and your art and writing is great!! :3

[superbattrash]

Full answer: Well, hyperfixation, for one. No, but in all seriousness I’ve been a huge Batman fan since I was around 5 years old. It wasn’t until 2021 when I re-joined tumblr and a friend said “Hey, why don’t you try writing superbat fanfiction?” that I thought I was “allowed”. I haven’t read all the comics, I haven’t seen all the movies etc, etc, but what I do have is a certain set of skills… Sorry.

As soon as I wrote the first sentence of my first Superbat fic, I realized that it was like coming home, like something clicked into place. They have my favorite dynamics in any and all fandom I’ve ever been a part of, and both of them come somewhat easily to me to write. Most of my OCs have a little bit of either Bruce or Clark in them if I look close enough and they’re just the most amazing characters. I can project onto them, I can put them through torture and they still come out the other side just as strong and awe-inspiring.

And there you have it, folks! Tune in for more Q&As tomorrow -- and in the meantime, you should go check out @wfzine and all the amazing artists >:3

[iszapizza]

I can finally share my work for the World’s Finest Zine! I loved being a part of this project! Please check out the official zine acc @wfzine for more details!