This is an American anthology on; yep you got it, beer!
As work is the curse of the drinking classes I can tell you I was pretty pissed at having to take crucial drinking time out to review this. All was not wasted though. Beerzine is akin to a Shlitz; slips down easy, no great taste to it, okay. Fizzy, you know those American beers, light.
Carrie McNinch (Beerzine's editor) opens the comic with a page entitled 'Reasons you should drink'. And there was only one reason; to avoid sobriety.
Amongst prose pieces from the likes of Jeff Bagato, Max Traffic and Joe Gallo, the standout story was Jim Cameron's brief anecdote about laying drunk in the bottom of a city work trench. A five-foot hole dug to fix a burst pipe.
If it's a truism that being in the company of drunks is a bore then it could be said that many of the stories in Beerzine are samey. What can you say really? You drink, get happy, get sad, fall over, vomit. Regret your actions the next day, do it all over again as soon as you're able.
Sometimes however whilst rooting through the Kwiksave offie section of life, there's a knockdown bottle of single malt in with all the cheap blended, and John Porcellino it is. 'November 15th 1am. Drunk' is a Caveresque tale of tanked up loneliness. Captions placed under empty panels; "My dad spent convention time in Lislo Illinois, right where I worked as a mosquito abatement man. This was before I knew anything. Now I am drink".
A true drop of the hard stuff.
Carol Swain