Dan's Zines
Interestingly enough it was a library book that first introduced me to zines. As a middle schooler, I found the book “Zine Scene” by Francesca Lia Block and Hillary Carlip at the Albany Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library. My takeaway from “Zine Scene” was that a core ethos of zine-making is that anyone can make a zine - there are no gatekeepers - as a repressed, home school kid, that spoke to me.
Tabling at Portland Zine Symposium 2023
In the two and a half decades since picking up “Zine Scene,” I’ve made and shared zines about my life. Most to least recent, here is a sample of the work I’ve made.
Zine-a-Month #51 “Arrive Slowly: An Autobikeography” (June 2025)
I had the honor of producing a zine for Anna Jo Beck’s Zine-a-Month series in June 2025. Producing and sharing dozens of copies of this zine really would have been an impossible task alone, but it was important for me to experience the impossible becoming possible through asking for help and using community resources.
In this zine, I use the bikes I’ve ridden throughout my life to explore what it means to make progress.
"Motion & Rest 2024" (December 2024)
I spent a lot of 2024 working on the Smokies family anthology below, but didn’t want to end the year without a solo work of some kind. As sort of an “annual greeting,” I made this short, four-page zine summarizing the books I enjoyed reading in 2024 and included one of my favorite drawings from the year. If you’d like to read it, here’s a link to a pdf version.
"The Smokies Peaceful Side Log" (December 2024)
I edited an anthology of work created by the Kittaka family following a trip we took to the Great Smoky Mountains. We grew up hearing stories from when my dad spent a summer in the Mountains as a high school student, but had never been able to visit together. We documented this trip in a style similar to the student conservation log my dad kept for over fifty years.
"Motion & Rest Fall 2023" (October 2023)
This zine outlines what it was like for me as a lifelong runner to experience a life-altering injury. Both motion - PT, walking, and finally slowly reintroducing running - as well as rest were required to find my way back to running after injury.
"Tough Guy, Man Dude" (July 2023)
My final project for the Comics Portfolio Program at the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, OR. I retell the opening scenes of Final Fantasy VII and explore the way that game influenced my understanding of masculinity as a tween.
What about before 2023?
I have photos of some of my work on my Instagram between photos of trips. I also have hard copies of nearly every zine I've made. Maybe someday there will be time to document them all. :)
Dan Kittaka, November 3rd, 2025