From the Vaults: NoPants #1
With NoPants #0, I reignited the flame in my belly to make zines. With NoPants #1, I took that flame and lit a bunch of shit on fire.
You can download a PDF of NoPants #1. And if you wanna know more about the creation of this issue, here's how it went down:
I'm not sure when I made this issue. But it says 2002 on it, so I'm gonna assume that it came out in November since #0 was released in October.
This entire fall 2002 college semester was a lonely and confusing one for me. I think the angst I was feeling began to spill out in the odd "insert" which takes up the majority of this issue.
I took a bunch of loose doodles from my notebooks and turned them into a pathos-riddled coloring book in the middle of NoPants. While it's pretty common to see homemade coloring books at zine fairs and small press expos nowadays, I thought I was really breaking some new ground at the time!
The coloring book pages are filled with hyperbole like "I hate my life" and creepy scenes like a bleeding couch, but there's still some truth and vulnerability to all of it. I think this page captures that dynamic best:
I don't actually hate my family. Well, not all of the time! But sometimes they drive me crazy. Especially back then when my parents were splitting up and my sister was starting to raise her own family. I was an irresponsible 20-year-old who was annoyed by the mature issues they were dealing with.
I also continued my storytelling feature with "New Juice". It's not groundbreaking or anything. But these little first person stories were always a ton of fun for me to write and my most nostalgia-inducing moments in NoPants. This page is sideways in the zine, forcing readers to spin it to read my tale of minibar horror.
If, after reading this zine, you're asking yourself "But, Nick... why?!?" I think it's worth noting that NoPants didn't cost me a penny.
Now it's standard practice to charge college students for copies and keep track of how much they print from the computer. But at the time, my school didn't do that. Plus, I had a part-time job at the school's copy center. So I could basically make any copies I wanted any time I wanted.
Next: NoPants #3 because NoPants #2 doesn't exist.
