BLT: Black Leather Times Humor Zine for Goths

I was so excited about the cool Tshirts for the BLT Kickstarter project that I kind of buried the lead. So the Tshirts are really great because the art is really great and the art was created for a humor zine for goths. The Kickstarter is to put out a giant 400 page book of back issues of BLT, plus some new material, including information about their artistic process for other artists and publishers. BLT features humor about how to tell if your date is a vampire and why the goth-industrial DJ keeps playing the same tracks. Basically, if you’ve ever gone to a goth club or worn fishnets or black boots, the wit in BLT will speak to you.

kickstarter staff pick blt

Let’s do a BLT book! And T-shirts!

Punk humor zine Black Leather Times needs your help celebrating turning 25 this Halloween. That is a quarter century of bringing the sociably antisocial funny to science fiction conventions, goth industrial nightclubs, and punk rock group houses.

“Oh, BLT is hilarious. I love it. I almost peed myself the first time I read an issue. I think an anniversary book would be a great idea.” – author Thomas Roche

Some History

I used to live in a DC area punk rock group house called Cambodia. Yes, you are right, it was named after the Dead Kennedys song. My concerned parents told me they worried it was “just like Andy Warhol’s Factory”. I heard “artistic incubator” and set about publishing first BLT and then Blue Blood. BLT contributors have done all sorts of marvelous things in art, writing, music, gaming, and crime. I’m so grateful to have been able to work with so many cool and interesting and talented individuals. Even the dicks. Sometimes dicks can have great senses of humor.

BLT started out as a bit of a general interest zine and quickly found its voice as primarily an absolutely fearless humor zine. Each issue featured hostile yet funny opinion pieces, sarcastic quizzes, appalling advice columns, and witty editorials. Along with occasional nightclub, book, CD, restaurant, con, and city reviews and embarrassing outtakes from band interviews.

“off-color sketches about grunge culture hijinks” – Kevin McManus, The Washington Post

I like comic strips and humor books and stand-up comedy, but I often feel alienated by routines which reference what most people’s lives are supposedly like. BLT makes us all feel at home, with hilarious and insightful commentary on mohawks and employment, industrial DJs playing the same songs, dates who claim to be vampires, and Spock ears versus elf ears. Articles include using stage blood for birth control, how to be a fake escort with a real college degree, and drugging your mom so you can sneak out to Rocky Horror. With bonus pus and spiked barrels of death.

“Punks with computers. You’ve been warned.” – bestselling author Richard Kadrey in Covert Culture Sourcebook

Posted by on July 27, 2015. Filed under Headline, Zines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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