Printing and Advertising:
The only printing related cost that could be problematic would depend on what we want to do with the cover; postage is going to be the killer, and I'm going to research that over the weekend. We could take advertising, though that may make us ineligible for certain postal rates. Has anyone here been involved in zine production in the past? I'm not terribly knowledgeable about zines.
I've had a bunch of disjointed ideas about the content:
Name:
We'll need to decide what exactly we're calling the zine. I'm leaning toward simply "Anime Punch". In the 19th century there was a famous British weekly satirical newspaper called "Punch" (after Punch and Judy); the modern usage of the word "cartoon" originated in Punch. We could look at Punch for ideas for cover design - not many people would get the reference, but we definitely want those who do to come to our con.
Style and Tone:
We'll need to study fanzines of old, as well as avant garde "little magazines" and, aparently, 19th century British newspapers. I'm thinking of making it look like a pastiche; we could have different articles in different fonts and such. (Imagine dense, single-spaced quasi-academic articles next to more readable breezy fannish pieces, etc.) We might occasionally have our mascot in the margin making fun of the pretentious article she's next to. Etc.
(At one point I considered looking into printing with a mimeograph, hectograph, etc. for extra nostalgia value, but that looks hard, messy, and (these days) probably more expensive.)
I guess the tone I'm going for is that we're jaded, over-educated pricks, yet still pathetic fanboys/girls at heart, and that despite our "in-you-face edgy gritty hard-core over-the-top proactive*" attitude we're still open and accepting of everyone from the DBZ-loving middle schooler to the unbearably cool members of the hipster elite.
*There are more Poochi-style adjective I could squeeze in there, but not "extreme", as our con chair says we're definitely not going to be "extreme"....
Manifestos:
"There is a specter haunting fandom - the specter of Anime Punch!"
We'll need a manifesto or two. Something bombastic, putting fandom on notice that we're going smash it and make it anew from the pieces. Our program for the salvation of fandom could flail around violently, with our positions differing radically in tone and substance. Thus, we want "to have fun and eat lots of yummy pocky :)" and at the same time "to critically engage with the Japanese experience of (post)modernity". We could proclaim the Otakunization of the World and then yell at fanboys to wake up from their dream and reengage with the painful, gritty world around them. (We'll want an Anno quote in there....) Or we could have dueling manifestos.
I'm toying with names like a "Manifesto of Futurist Otaku", in the spirit of the undisputed masters of the art of manifesto writing, the Futurists. ("Pocky is not a food for heroes, and fandom needs heroes!" a la the Futurist campaign against pasta....)
Articles:
We should have a review or two, as well as other articles. We can take all sorts of stuff. I don't actually know as much about what fanzines tend to run; I'm planning to do some research on that in the near future. Of course, I love quasi-academic pseudo-intellectual stuff about pop culture (like you see in "Hermenaut", and various fandom "journals", etc.) Fanzines don't seem really well-suited to fact, news, or "reporting"; rather, you'd want more personal writing about interpretations and how one was affected by a work. (While I was thinking about this I remembered a meditation by Brian Ruh on "
displaced nostalgia" that resonated with me. Not mentioning this for any particular reason.)
What else do zines have? Rants of various sorts, short fanfic (often tightly centered on illustrating some particular point), etc. I think fake advice columns have probably been done to death. but whatever. In future issues we might have a letters section.
Manga:
Ideally, I'd think we want two short manga, maybe one following the wacky hijinks of the con mascot (maybe we could have a contest to name her?) and another more serious, even experimental piece. All this depends on how many pages we get to work with and what our various artsy folks want to do.
Puzzles and Games:
We could have Go problems. Newspapers regularly have bridge problems, so we could have Yugioh problems for absurdity's sake.... Various sorts of contests, etc.