FA2Z #1 [G is for godai] Interview: Jack of all trades, master of some.
#FA2Z #FAtoZ #FromA2Z #FromAtoZ #FromA2Zine #FromAtoZine
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IOkk8IEAgWlU-UaRA8T_rxcm2PHkxlO3
1. Origin story: What's your name/nickname? What country/place do you call home? What's your work/day job?
I go by “godai” since like mid-1990s. It’s the name of the unfortunate protagonist from Rumiko Takahashi’s comedy series Maison Ikkoku. We were very much alike back then. Both of us got a grip late in life, and eventually, I think we are still alike.
I was born in Poland and have lived all my life in Poland, but I have also spent a lot of time in Sweden, and I could easily call it my second home. I’m a small-town boy who saw some of the big world and travelled around visiting places and getting to know people all over the continent. I still like to do it.
I currently work in IT as a technical writer, mostly writing software documentation. I’ve been in IT since 1999, so that’s kinda my life vocation, I believe.
2. First loves: What's the first piece of art, music, film, or writing that made you think, "I want to make something too"?
Oh, that’s pretty easy to pinpoint. It’s not about zines, because zines are one of the plethora of my second-hobbies. My first and foremost hobby is writing fiction. I have written six novels so far and around 50 short stories. I started around seventh grade (13 years old here) when, during the classes, we read an excerpt from The Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem. Precisely, it was an excerpt from The Hunt. I was inspired so much that I wrote my first two short stories, which were also SF.
For making comics, it was the reprints of Alan Grant's and Norm Breyfogle’s Batman/ Detective Comics run. I really wanted to draw comics back then. I settled down to write these, but every now and then, I draw some Batman for fun.
As for the zines, there was no clear “moment”. I knew what they were; they were popular behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s--mostly music zines, but also some SFF and other stuff. But I was already in high school, and it was 1995 when I edited and published the very first one of my own. In a way, it was a follow-up to a zine published by people from two grades up. They made an A4 xerozine that contested the school reality after a double suicide. There was a lot of grief, anger, and resentment in those two issues they managed to publish before they graduated.
When the crew left the school, we still had some material left, several ideas, some angst that we wanted to burn. And that’s how Proletaryat came to be. It was less angry, more silly at times, but contested the same things and the same school. Late on, two of the people who worked with me in Proletaryat made their own zine, Ektopia, and it was a total banger.
3. Guilty pleasure: What's something totally unexpected you're obsessed with outside of zine-making? Any hobbies or collections?
Oh dear, it’s like “it would be easier to list who is not Zeus’ son”. I do a lot of stuff, I write fiction, I sometimes write comics too, I do small press and editing--right now I publish an SFF annual magazine, but also constantly work on something--I have just started working on an anthology dealing with coming of age behind the Iron Curtain.
And I keep on writing, as mentioned before. Right now, I have a collection of stories barely finished and am starting to work on a new novel, too.
I draw and paint some, although I do it under a separate online persona. It’s mostly silly, recreational stuff.
I read and collect comic books, and I have done so since the early 1980s, but I rotate the collection; sometimes I sell stuff, sometimes I buy stuff, so right now I have around 1,500 issues and omnibuses only.
I like card modelling and scale modelling and have designed many models myself, mostly historical spacecraft and architecture. I also like model trains and own some.
I’m into 3D printing, mostly things that have no practical use, like figurines of frogs or Star Wars props for cosplayers, and collector friends.
And for the past 20+ years, I have been going around my town taking photos. I recently bought a drone to be able to take photos that I wasn’t able to take before.
And it will soon be 20 years since I got into podcasting and have produced several hundred episodes during that time, both on my own and sometimes with friends, covering all the broad spectrum of popular and unpopular culture.
There’s probably some more, like making fridge magnets, Game Boy games, and other things, but these are the main activities I take up after hours.
Oh, yeah, I absolutely love cooking.
4. Unexpected skill: What's a random talent or skill you have that no one would guess from reading your zines?
Well, I spent a year in the army, and I know how to shoot.
I’m also pretty decent at bringing up kids; one is already an adult and a prolific athlete, and the other is an active member of the local music and DIY scene.
5. One-liner bio: If you had to describe yourself in 10 words or fewer, what would you say?
Jack of all trades, master of some.
6. Evolution check: How has your zine-making changed from your first issue to your most recent one--style, voice, or even motivation?
Surely so. The first one was born out of resentment. The new ones are done to entertain people (and myself). I make zines about pigeons to make people smile and find some beauty and art in these trying times. In a way, the motivation is the same--the refusal to accept what is around and the yearning to change it. Just the means are different.
Zines have always, too, been about self-fulfillment. I just want to make things. And this is, too, a shift--in the 1990s, making zines was something that people just did. Nowadays, in the overwhelmingly digital, online world, making physical copies is in itself an act designed to defy modernity.
There’s still anger in me, but now it runs an engine instead of burning. That’s why I teach kids to make zines, too.
7. Defining moment: Was there a particular issue or project where you felt, "Okay, I've really found my zine-making identity"?
Can’t say I did. I’ve done a lot of stuff, and I still run a manga/anime xerozine that I started in 1996. And at the same time, I published a professionally printed zine that ran for five years and still keep on publishing a semi-professional SFF magazine. All the while designing and folding minizines.
I don’t think there is one way to do it “right”. Zines, in their very core, their basic nature, follow no rules. They can change, evolve, and adapt on a whim. Sometimes I need to invite people to a 68-page A5 issue with a naked fairy riding a shrimp on the cover, and sometimes I just design a single-page foldable zine with some watercolor pictures of a fox, and they are both good.
My identity? I’m a storyteller. Zines are an important part of telling the story and reaching an audience, just like ISBN-marked novels and air photos of an abandoned railway bridge. Maybe what I found is that I want to search. Not sure yet, I’ve only been doing it for like 30 years.
8. DIY wisdom: What's a lesson or trick you've learned over the years that you wish you knew when you first started?
Good tools, even if few, make the difference. You can make a great photo with a toaster, but if you want to take a picture of that one figurine on the back wall of the house three blocks down, you need a camera that does physical zoom.
For the zines? A bone folder is your best friend, a total game-changer. Stuff like cutting mats and sharp blades makes the difference, too. Metal ruler. These are the tools of the trade, but you need the trade first.
I only learned about single-page foldable zines a few years back. It was as if I reinvented the wheel. So learning, constantly learning, getting to know the tooling, the methods, the ideas--this is what any author needs to do, to keep themselves afloat and keep having fun. I wish I knew more people who would show me what I can do.
9. Community ties: How has being part of zine culture shaped your friendships, politics, or creative networks?
It’s very difficult to say, I have a very broad background and have been a part of several fandoms throughout the decades. Comics, Star Trek, Star Wars, SFF literature, scale modelling--I’ve been a part of these movements for years; they intersect, interconnect, interact. I often publish fiction and comics in my zines, and I even had a card modeling zine. One recent notable change was my gaining more international contacts after I started making minizines in both Polish and English.
10. Longevity fuel: What keeps you making zines after all this time--habit, necessity, joy, rage, or something else?
Not sure. I just like doing stuff. In a way, I probably need to do stuff or I’d snap. Cutting down card models, writing stories, and folding and cutting zines are all sorts of manual therapy. I’m not actually interrupted, but I am sometimes disturbed. Making things, doing and creating things, is what sparks joy. Sharing these does to.
I’m Generation X. We do most things out of spite. Might apply to me.
11. The physical object: Do you think the handmade/printed aspect of zines still matters in the digital age, and how do you approach that balance yourself?
More than ever. They used to say that if something got on the internet, it would never disappear. This is not true. Digital life is ephemeral; online places and artifacts dwindle and perish overnight. A single glitch can wipe out a web community, blank an archive, or void a collection. The digital era is the time of lacking. You can’t own bytes and bits. But you can own a booklet. And share it easily.
Digital endeavours are also trackable; any activity leaves tracks. It’s pretty self-explanatory that today, maybe more than 10 or 20 years ago, this is not desirable.
Physical copies last. Paper is perishable, but it’s still enormously less perishable than a 20-year-old hard drive or an online cloud with an unpaid subscription.
It can also be easily untrackable. My friends published their zine for two years in our high school, and the authorities never found out who did it. Here in Poland, we know that the paper can talk so loud the government is ready to imprison people who produce the paper. Communists taught us the value of their fear and the power of homemade copies.
Personally, I’m very much a digital citizen. I publish most of what I do online, on my blog or, in the case of art, on dedicated services. But I still keep the typewritten copies of my short stories from the early 1990s, and I keep most of my drawings (except those that I gifted to friends), I have copies of all my novels, magazines I published, and so on. These will last. Some day, someone will open a dusty box and find those.
I live the best of both worlds.
12. Audience surprises: What's the most unexpected place or person your zine has reached?
I was delighted to learn that a comic zine we published in the late 2000s is collected by the Polish National Library. This makes us immortal; we will never be forgotten. There are other zines and magazines I have published and collected there, too.
And of course seeing you mini on somebody else’s Instagram is great fun, always. Be it Belgium or Canada.
But the best audience response is always my male suicide prevention zine. Males constitute 85% of fatal suicides in Poland. It’s not spoken about, it does not get media attention, and it’s out of the spotlight. Basically, any single group gets more attention than adult males when suicides come into play.
I make dozens of copies and just hand them out to guys at conventions. It’s always the same pattern: surprise, recognition, gratitude. The best part is when they ask if they can make copies and pass them on. So that’s the best place--the hearts.
13. Creative risks: Have you ever taken a leap--content-wise or format-wise--that totally changed how people responded to your zine?
Not so, but I did have issues that brought back negative feedback due to the content. I was once scolded because all the girls pictured in a zine were fit, and I once did a parody of right-wing scaremonger stories that was thought to be serious by some leftist activists. That’s part of the experience. This kind of drama is not even at the top of the list of things I don’t care for.
But talking about the form, format, delivery--nothing of that ever was a problem. Although honestly, normies always try to open the 1-page foldable minizines and can’t really comprehend that you don’t need to do it. Or even shouldn’t.
14. Cultural role: Where do you see zines fitting into the broader landscape of art, activism, or storytelling today?
I don’t think the zines’ role has significantly shifted since the Harlem Renaissance. They were always the voice of the excluded, the bridge between those who share the same passion, the cry of the overlooked, and the expression of love and affirmation for those who wanted to share.
They tell stories out of the mainstream, ones that can hardly be told otherwise. Activism is one of the natural breeding grounds for self-published things. So is art.
15. Legacy vibes: If someone found a box of all your zines years from now, what do you hope they'd understand about you--or about the world you were documenting?
I think they would just browse and notice the multitude of topics and think something like, Wow, the guy had so many things on his mind. What a mess. And what a nice picture of a fox!
16. Zine titles?
Mine? Well, let’s see. Proletaryat, Manga Rider, Cleavage, Kolektyw, Co mówiłem durniu?, Fenix Antologia, Żar-ptak, Rocznik Fantastyczny… A dozen of story zines. And some 80+ minizines.
17. Zine sizes? Average number of pages?
B5, A5 sizes, the comic zine we had was around 60-100 pages, the Manga Riders are 20-24 pages, Żar-ptak was 52-68 pages, usually, Proletaryat and Cleavage were eight pages A4. I also published several A5 stapled zines with my short stories; these were anywhere between 8 and 16 pages. Fenix and Rocznik were substantially fatter, the latter one 200+ pages. All minis are somehow eight pages.
18. Number of issues so far? Print run?
Ten issues were the most for a zine so far, but Manga Rider is going to crack that limit soon. Rocznik is too, at some point, but it will take years, as it is an annual. I mostly do 200-250 copies of each issue. The minizines usually get 20 copies per zine, as they are given away for free (the suicide prevention zine is an exception; it’s constantly replenished as I need to have several copies at hand at all times).
19. Physical distribution? P.O. box or snail-mail address?
Personal mostly. I would sell stuff (or give away) at conventions, meetings, and face-to-face. I also exchange zines via snail mail, but I don’t have a P.O. box now. I use my home address for that.
20. Digital distribution? Social media/website links/email?
I have my own website where I put up stuff for download. This way, I have the most control over it, and there is no power above to tell me what I can or cannot put up for people to access.