Back in the ’80s, there was a zine called Factsheet Five that was—much like Behind the Zines—a zine about zines. I thought that was pretty much the dumbest fuckin’ thing ever. Who the hell wants to read a zine about zines? Turns out that quite a few people wanted to read a zine about zines, actually—much to my disbelief, Factsheet Five amassed enough readers that the publisher was able to make his living off of it for a while. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose. Fast forward to the immediate now, and my first thought when I picked up Behind the Zines was pretty much the same as my first thought was when I picked up Factsheet Five: Who the hell wants to read a zine about zines? As it happens, it turns out that I want to read a zine about zines, because, despite my initial skepticism, this content is actually pretty engaging. Different zinesters write about zine archives, zine clubs, zine typesetting—Razorcake’s own Todd Taylor even chips in a piece about zine organization—and you’d think the thing would be so far up its own ass that it would be essentially unreadable to anyone who was outside the narrow confines of the zine demimonde (as I haven’t published since 1994-ish, I’m pretty sure my membership is considered lapsed at this time). It was actually quite an enjoyable and inspiring read. Sometimes detailing the creative process behind a project is more engaging than the project itself, and, from what I’ve zine, this might be such a time.–Rev. Nørb ([email protected], behand.net/saekoreed)