Look inside Wasted Ink Zine Distro's new Central Phoenix home

Perhaps political philosopher Thomas Paine made the first zine when he published "Common Sense" in 1776.

Think about it. Since the late 18th century, if you had something to say and access to some way of printing and combining pages, you could make your own zine. Over the almost 250 years since "Common Sense" encouraged patriots to make their own nation, artists, cartoonists, creatives, photographers and writers have been engaging audiences in almost every subject imaginable by making their own publications.

Big, small, tiny and chock full of information, humor, art, snark or just the personal thoughts of their creators, zines have been present in our world much longer than most people probably imagine.

New zines are constantly being created, and in the Valley, Wasted Ink Zine Distro has been leading the way for much of the last decade. On March 19, the group, which is led by Charissa Lucille, opened their new, much larger location at 323 W. McDowell Road.

The move comes "after many years in a tiny, little bedroom(-sized) space," Lucille says. "Really, like nine years of our business has been in 300 square feet or less. We packed a lot of zines in there and we were to the point where we needed more elbow room.”

When you step into the new location, which is conveniently located right next door to another Lucille venture, Paper Jam + Print, which provides printing services to many valley zine makers and collaborators, it's easy to see why existing in a tiny space was challenging for the Phoenix collective.

Wasted Ink Zine Distro technically does not have any full-time employees, but thanks to Lucille’s hard work and passion for zines, as well as a small army of devoted contractors and volunteers, the organization is poised to continue to grow.

“We launched the zine distro in 2015, and we started off with 30 people that we were representing their work and we felt like that was a huge undertaking. It felt like, ‘Whoa, this is really cool, this is special.’ And now we represent over 300 different vendors,” they say.

More a labor of love than a quest for fiscal success, zine distribution is not a full-time job for Lucille, who became interested in creating zines during their last semester at Arizona State University in 2014 as a student of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Looking for an outlet for their own work that was something outside what their studies were offering, zines provided an opportunity that Lucille continues to seize.

A friend suggested they start a zine, and things started to click.

“I was looking for another place to publish my work that was, I don’t know, just humbler and I started a zine. It was a spark,” they say.
“I thought, ‘Well, I gotta go research this a lot,’ and then I figured out that I knew magazine layout, I know how to do a few different art mediums and I have friends who are creative and can do art, so I kind of just slapped things together and it evolved quickly to be an international collaborative scene,” Lucille says.

Their first zine was (and still is) called "Fem Static." Through networking on social media in the mid-2010s, Lucille watched their corner of the zine world grow to the point where launching Wasted Ink Zine Distro and having a physical location for established and potential zine fans was a no-brainer.

“We were looking for places to put the zines and there were so many other shops and places that had a bunch of zines in them in different states, I was sitting here thinking, ‘Well, OK, we have a ton of people here in Phoenix. It’s a huge city. It’s full of creatives, full of writers, full of artists … this would be the perfect spot for a zine hub,” they say.

Zines have been around for a long time, and they do come in all shapes, sizes and most importantly, purposes. Some zines are purely for entertainment and others are deeply rooted in education and awareness. There really is something for everyone when it comes to these publications if you're willing to take the time to explore.

At the new Wasted Ink, the space is bright, open and full of zines to check out, but it's also not overwhelming in the least. Wasted Ink is a safe, inviting space.

The front room has an assortment of zines focused on relationships, body awareness, trans rights and humor, but the zine library in the back room, which also has an area for quiet reading, discussion or zine creation itself, is really quite fascinating. Lucille and their team have created an impressive resource center for anyone looking to learn, grow as a zine creator or just see an excellent cross-section of what is out there for longtime zine fans or those just learning about the artform.

According to Lucille, about a dozen would-be zine creators reach out to them each day. While they would clearly love to help each one, Lucille simply doesn’t have the bandwidth, but they do have ways for nearly everyone to get involved.

“You might have to wait a bit. We really do want to stock as many zines as possible and we want to print as many zines as possible, but it just depends on our production time and if we are adding new vendors. We have a really extensive internship program we began developing in 2016,” they say.

Interns go through a six-month program, and they have a choice between four areas of focus: retail, printer/production, event management or archiving for the zine library. While in the program, interns can print their own materials for free and earn full profits from their zine revenue while learning multiple aspects of the zine business. Wasted Ink recently got their first intern from outside of Arizona, too.

Lucille is clearly excited about the opportunities a larger space affords Wasted Ink and looks forward to their first First Friday event in the new space on April 4. Both Wasted Ink and Paper Jam + Print will be open for curious guests to check out and soak up some of the Phoenix zine scene.

Check out the Wasted Ink website for more information about various events and happenings, as well as location hours.