8/3/2025 12:06 PM
Welp I've come to the end of GenCon! I had a pretty decent con and picked up a bunch of board games but I'll share maybe a picture of what I got when I get home (which will be tomorrow)
I got to play a bunch of games, including two games of Dungeon Kart! Finally! Here's some photos from my experience at GenCon:
In addition to all this fun time, I've been hiding copies of "I've Been Here The Whole Time" around the convention! Let's look at some photos to see what Sam got up to:
I hope if anyone else reading this went to this years GenCon, that you also had a good time! Next on the docket is to finish up the next issue of Stacks! We're RIGHT at the finish line with this issue and I aim to have it out sometime this month!
7/29/2025 12:06 PM
Making my final preparations before I leave for GenCon tomorrow. "I've Been Here The Whole Time!", as well as its answer key, is now available on the Other Zines page! This is in prep for people who find the zine around Gencon. Originally I was just gonna put up the answer key, but just having that up would spoil the fun for other people so, enjoy! Additionally, I made a new quickie zine this morning called "DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS RAT" that I also wanna put out around GenCon, I'm kinda desparate to find other people that know about the site MatMice, so take a look at it. And if you remember anything about the site, reach out to me at zinesbylennon@gmail.com. I'm getting convinced that I dreamt the whole thing up despite there being a backup on the wayback machine and a wikipedia page for it.
Finally, I added three more artists to the new Forgotten Music Archive. Catfish Haven, a cool pop-punk group, Fonograf, a nice little cover band out of Chicago and finally D'z Nuts a punkish band that i really wish had stuck around a bit longer. They could have really come into their own once the Deez Nuts meme became a thing. At least we have the music.
I'll have my laptop with me at GenCon so I'll see about updating this section of the site with all the goings on and things I'm up to. Who knows, on the rare chance someone reading this is ALSO at GenCon we could meet up! Until then, have fun ya nerds.
7/28/2025 9:34 AM
There's a new option on the sidebar! "Forgotten Music" will take you to a page where I've mirrored MP3 downloads of music from defunct bands that I've found on old Web 1.0 sites through the Wayback Machine on the internet archive. I've gathered them all in one place for your ease of access downloading pleasure. I'm sitting on the music of a few more bands at the moment, and will get them uploaded once I have the metadata complete. Enjoy! (If you recognize yourself on that page and want the music taken down, please contact me on instagram @Ham1ltron. Better yet, if you're up for an interview DM me there as well! I'd love to know more about your band and where you are now!)
7/27/2025 12:08 PM
Had a pretty eventful past few days. I got some tattoo work done, and I'm prepping to go to Indianapolis for GenCon next week. I've been working on a new zine last minute called "I've Been Here The Whole Time", it's a Game Changer fanzine in the shape of the Sam Reich standee and has pictures with the Standee hidden in them, getting more and more difficult. I quickly realized with the time crunch I've been a bit in over my head. It is A LOT of cutting and assembling. So yesterday, I recruited my friend Eels to help me get the zine pages cut and rewarded them with some tasty Thai from down the street. Together, the two of us plus my girlfriend, Maddie, got 11 copies of "I've Been Here The Whole Time" assembled. I'll be hiding some of these around GenCon for people to find. I also plan in the very near future to upload the solutions to this zine as some of these are downright evil, just as Sam Reich would want them to be, I imagine. After GenCon, I plan to assemble more for sale at Quimby's and Howling Pages. They've been a whole lotta work to make and assemble so those copies won't be free, but I will upload the full zine here after GenCon, and before they hit the shelves.
In other news, I've spent my morning browsing the old web again, one of my favorite things to do. I was also ripping a random CD from a thrift store I got. It happened to have a URL and it sent me down a whole rabbit hole of checking out the old web pages of now defunct bands in the search of web graphics and MP3s. I have plans to upload the MP3s I got somewhere, I just don't know where yet. I've been compiling them into some sort of bootleg album deal and I'm currently storing them alongside the rest of my digital music collection. But I think some sort of repository for "forgotten underground web 1.0 bands" or something would be in order. For now however, I've put all the graphics I've grabbed so far and put them on display in a new page under the "More" menu option on the sidebar. Please, check it out! A dream thing to come of this would be to track down some members of one or two of these bands I've found so far and interview them for Stacks. I'm particularly interested in Barely Standing. They had LOTS of MP3s and Videos up on the internet archive, I've dutifully stored away. They were a rock band that did lots of covers but also some of their own stuff from what I can gather as they released at least one album I can't find anywhere. So if you ever went to a Barely Standing show in the early 2000s and have a copy of one of their CDs, get in contact with me through my guestbook.
7/20/2025 9:43 PM
Sorry, I meant to make this post last night but I was tired. Chicago Zine Fest was great! I wish it went on longer, the few hours I was there for just was not enough. I met some really cool people and traded and bought a ton of cool zines! Here's what I walked home with:
This morning I made a new zine after watching a German production of CHESS from 2011. It was really bizarre and beautiful and it just stuck in my head. So I spent the morning spitting it all out into a new zine. This zine's a bit more special than that as I made it for the Summer 2025 Electric Zine Jam! The Jam is focused around making zines with Electric Zine Maker, a really neat bit of software that's kinda like Kid Pix but for printable zines. Since it was made for that jam I've immediately made it available here for free. It's about damn time I made a CHESS zine and it likely won't be the last one I do either. Physical copies will be available at Quimby's and Howling Pages in Chicago if you're looking to get your hands on a copy folded by me. I expect it to release at the same time as the next issue of Stacks so be on the look out for it in August.
Anyways I'm going to go watch some NHRL and watch robots tear each other to pieces.
7/19/2025 8:39 AM
Chicago Zine Fest is today! I'll be leaving in a few hours to go and hopefully trade with people that have booths there. Hopefully there's other folks also trading but I might even just hand out zines who knows. I still have quite a bit of backstock on a few different zines, especially older issues of Stacks. I'll share my little haul on here when I get back.
I also just uploaded another zine I didn't have digitized: Beyblade X: Trash Guide. Similar to Hot Plastic Topic, but focusing on all the trash you get from Beyblades. It's also the only one of my collage zines I no longer have the original collage for. I guess I held back on uploading it in case the original ever showed up, but it hasn't. So I did a quick scan through the document feeder of my printer, and that will have to be good enough. If the original does ever turn up I'll be sure to do a proper scan of it.
7/18/2025 9:41 PM
I got a little bit more done tonight. I started on The DIY Zone page. But other than the spinning gif of my sewing box (hover over it to see inside!), I haven't put much there. It's coming though! I have a number of things I wanna photograph for the page. All hopefully with some sort of hovering over feature. There's gonna be some cool stuff there, I promise. Especially if you're a fan of battlejackets and other stuff.
7/18/2025 2:58 PM
I added a new way to navigate the page for mobile users on the landing page, as well as a censor panda. The mobile user navigation is basically just a site map, but it works around the problem of the iframe all the content is displayed in on the main site not displaying correctly on the actual site.
I also added a "More" link. I have a list of pages on there I basically wanna make but haven't gotten to just yet. But rest assured, they're coming. That being said I think I'm going to work on getting a guestbook going next.
In other news, the TRON: ARES trailer dropped yesterday. I'm iffy on the plot. It IS the natural progression of the series and I get this is a different grid than Flynn's grid but why is Jared Leto here? The new Nine Inch Nails music is so good tho. I am cautiously optimistic. I really don't like Jared Leto in starring roles (or as a person at all really, I'm sure there's horror stories with him on this set like there were from Suicide Squad) but on the other hand, it's a new TRON movie so I can't help but be excited.
7/17/2025 9:22 PM
Last update for today. I removed the cbox. I really want some kind of cbox/guestbook thing I just haven't found the best way to implement it. Right now I'm trying to make sure my page looks nice on my PC monitor AND my laptop and the cbox pushed the last.fm widget out of view on my laptop and that just won't do. Add it to the list of things I need to do lol.
I started messing around with "remastering" that comic I mentioned in the previous post. I wasn't good at drawing then, and I'm still not good at drawing, but I'm trying my best to make an improvement on the comic. Aiming for that pen-drawn look while also leaning into the quality of life improvements I get out of making it with photoshop. Here's a look. One of the images is from the scan of the original comic, one is the work-in-progress remaster. You should be able to tell which is which. Regardless, I think it's coming along nicely. The minimalism is charming in a way. :3
Anyways, there's not much else I can do for tonight. So uh, cya.
7/17/2025 12:28 PM
I've been working on more things for the site! I added a zine I hadn't digitized yet, Post-It Proclamations. It's a zine I made when I was away from home and didn't have access to my computer or my usual supplies as a sorta challenge I guess. I also added two zines that pre-date Zines by Lennon. Activate Your Right Mind, and No Day But Today. Activate Your Right Mind is a pre-cursor to my collage art zines and might be the first zine I made in college. It's not my best work, but for archiving sake it's here. I feel similarly about No Day But Today, a little RENT fanzine of poetry made from lyrics from the musical. Felt a bit half-baked. But still, it's here.
I started to digitize my middle school comic that's laying around. IDK what I'm gonna do with it just yet. Maybe retrace it in photoshop IDK? I made it with a friend and it's a whole lotta setup and not much happens. Does have this little moment though: (may need to open the images in a new tab to read IDK)
Finally, I stole some code from MelonLand for my little Porygon friend. IRL, I hide porygons on all my DIY clothes stuff. Felt right to have him here. He doesn't like iframes though, so conviently he shouldn't really cover any main page content and will mostly watch you from the sides of the page. Hopefully he's not too distracting.
7/17/2025 8:30 AM
The new site for Zines By Lennon launched yesterday! I'm so glad you've come to check me out. That being said the work is far from over. I just coded in this news page and added a cbox, albeit with some compromises.
I'm having some problems with that last.fm widget. Mostly the size of it. I can't decrease it's height and it's got a whole black box area underneath it you can't see, so for now it sits at the bottom to hide that. Ideally, the cbox would be at the bottom, but oh well.
Anyways, I launched the site with 31 zines! That's 23 zines in the "Other Zines" section and 8 issues of Stacks. That being said, I still have more to upload. Not only do I have some zines of mine that I've never circulated and I'd like to digitize, but I have some zines that pre-date Zines By Lennon from my college years and even a comic from Middle School. The middle school comic sits in my drawer right now and is a bit worse for wear. I'm going to look into scanning it and doing my best to repair it digitally and rebuild it in InDesign or something. I think it would be a neat little addition. As far as my college zines, these were from my pre-transition years. And while I have them all archived if you know where to look, they won't all be making an appearance on this site. There are a few I intend to tho. Notable examples: a RENT fanzine that's full of poetry using stolen lines from the musical and another poetry zine that's kind of a precursor to the collage zines I'd release under Zines By Lennon. There might be more from that era, but I'd need to do some digging. I definitely have other people's zines but while I have them archived, I don't plan on uploading any of those. Only ones I've made will appear on this site.
Anyways, I'm going to get back to pulling my hair out over HTML, CSS and... sigh...JS.