“Fly’s punk feminist sensibilities highlight the work of women in the alternative culture movement in ways that would not be found in the work of male archivists. The alternative feminism she documents is an important yet under-recorded slice of women’s history.”
—Trina Robbins, acclaimed cartoonist, writer, feminist activist, and historian

“Perhaps the most important and seminal archive of counter-culture zines to ever be assembled, this collection is unique in the fact that it intimately chronicles both the production and collecting of one of the primary female and working class icons of the international zine world.
—Marshall Weber, Artist/Curator, Booklyn, Inc.

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Fly Zine Archive Description¬–
The collected Zines of iconoclastic punk, squatter, and post-feminist artist/activist FLY,
Fly’s archive is an unparalleled resource for the study of zines, alternative comics, protest culture and the history of squatting in New York City’s Lower East Side in the 1980’s and 90’s — a movement that was unique in the United States in terms of scale, organization, culture and durability, and an essential topic for scholars in independent publishing, anthropology, sociology, urban studies, and history seeking to understand urban social movements, the current explosion of DIY and sustainable culture, and the dynamics of the American city at the end of the 20th century.

Fly’s distinctive Zine collection contains otherwise unavailable primary research material documenting the history of these movements from several complementary angles, and consists of dozens of self-published zines. Her massive zine library consists of thousands of zines starting in the early 1980’s to date and surveys the global rise of zine culture.

Major catagories of zines and other underground publications represented in the collection include:
• punk rock
• NYC Downtown art scene
• NYC East Village art scene
• riot grrl
• squatter culture (NYC and global)
• underground/self-published comics
• crusty culture
• anarchist
• feminist

Biographical Sketch–
Fly is an internationally recognized Lower East Side icon. She’s an archivist, zinester, visual artist, musician with unique vision and a manic graphic style. Fly was instrumental in depicting the struggle of the Lower East Side squatters against the forceful socio-political restructuring of New York City during the Giuliani Era. She’s the creator of long-running “Peops” series of zines which form one of the most comprehensive portraits of alternative culture in the Americas and abroad. Primarily thriving in underground circles, her artwork has been featured on the covers of radical publications such as the New York Press, The New Yorker, World War III Illustrated, Maximum Rock’ N ’Roll, Punk Magazine, and countless others.

Fly was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and like many other cartoonists and illustrators became quickly bonded to the pencil and sketchpad. In her case, she applied these tools to grapple with the chaotic world around her consisting of grown-ups, teachers, and their banquet of illusions. After high school, Fly attended York University in Ontario where she studied graphic design and art history graduating in 1986. After graduation she traveled around the world building houses in Grenada, touring Japan and the American Midwest with her band (God Is My Co-Pilot), doing performance and installation art all while enmeshing herself with community of squatters, train hoppers, old beatnik, off the wall artists, and making herself a member of various artist run spaces and community organizations.

She settled in the Lower East Side in the winter of 1989 and became an active member at the ABC No Rio and Gargoyle Mechanique Laboratory artist collectives. She cemented her place in the city’s counterculture by participating in a series of culturally significant shows including “Your House is Mine,” “Unreal Estate,” and ABC No Rio’s “Ten Year Anniversary.”

The move to a politically roiling New York City neighborhood impressed Fly who recalled exploring and explaining politics with her art. Her namesake comes from her early postcard zine titled ‘Maggot Zine’ where she signed off each issue with ‘Fly Girl’. The monthly project ceased in 1996 but the nom de plume has stuck since and evolved into a considerable element of her artistic identity. Throughout the 1990’s she continued to publish her own comics and build the ‘Flybrary’ while performing and working as a frequent contributor to local neighborhood tabloids, independently publications, and punk zines.

Box and Item Count:
Box Count: 17 total boxes (estimated)
Item Count: 2,000 (estimated)
Measurement: 16 linear feet (estimated)

Archivist Note–
The Zine Archive is still being cataloged and organized, the majority of the material is at Booklyn in Brooklyn, NY, but some conponents remain at Fly’s (now legal) squat in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Significant portions of the collection have been cataloged in Excel databases. These addendums will be made available to interested parties and curators.

Housing Notes–
The majority of the collection resides in standard banker boxes [10 x 15 x 12”], and smaller boxes measuring around [11.5 x 8.5 x 11”]. I’ve reorganized material and created new series in a collection that for the longest time existed as a single unit. The collection resides in fairly good condition having been stored in paper-friendly conditions at Fly’s Lower East Side apartment for the last fifteen or so years. Within some of these series, item counts are being finalized and we anticipate additional notable material will be discovered.

Series Listing

Series I: Publications by Fly (1980’s – 2017)
Comics, Zines, and Compilations (1980’s – 2017)

Series II: Radical Periodicals and Publications
Subseries A. Punk Rock Zines
Subseries B. Anarchist Publications
Subseries C. Neighborhood Newspapers
Subseries D. Zines & Small Press
Subseries E. Independent Comics

Collection Description

Series I: Comics, Zines, and Compilations (1980’s – 2010)
This series has full (or nearly full) runs of most of Fly’s self-publications including Fly’s most notable zine Peops (2001-present) skillfully combines portraiture with storytelling and reflects an international network of global radical communities. While touring the world with God Is My Co-Pilot, Fly made a habit of sketching the locals and travelers she met and recording their stories in their own words. These portraits and narratives ultimately became the basis of Peops. Later on, Fly asked members of her community to sit for her and become part of the project. The zine captured the dramatic stories of many early Lower East Side squatters, from the struggles of the 1990s to accounts of settling down in now-legal living spaces. Peops, which continues to this day as an entirely solo project for Fly, has been widely celebrated and recognized for its diversity of characters, accessibility, and longevity. The zine also helped Fly to develop a reputation within underground and punk communities. Peops was adapted into a book by Soft Skull Press and a DVD by the Killer Banshee Studio in 2003. This series reveals the depth of Fly’s dexterity not only as an illustrator but also as a seasoned oral historian.

CHRON!ICRIOTS!PA!SM, published in 1998 by the anarchist press Autonomedia, united five of Fly’s early comic zines (In Doctrine Nation [1992], The Dystopian of Sobriety [1995], Mean! While [1993], All Stressed Up With Nothing to Throw [1994]) into a transformative book that blended together graphic novel and underground art. Its publication in 1998 signaled the waning of dramatic squatter’s battles against police action and marked a new introspective era in Fly’s narrative-making. Thematically similar to My New York Diary by Julie Doucet, CHRON!ICRIOTS!PA!SM captures Fly’s growing pains in New York with dreamlike encounters of Lower East Side squatter life combined with stream of consciousness writing and surreal cartoons of a bleak metropolis. The book is of interest to contemporary urban historians and despite its fantastical elements, it is her most accurate work.

In a recent interview Fly recalled the CHRONIC’s erratic character and her exploration of dark urban themes as the “absurdity of trying to exist in the middle of the riots and then the disorientation of traveling to different countries & being in cities for only a few hours.”

This series also contains the zines that follow the girl “K-9” whose coming of age stories feature adolescent hang-ups, impromptu road trips, squatting in the Lower East Side, and subsequent altercations with authorities. K-9’s story is loosely based on Fly’s own life.

Series II: Radical Periodicals and Publications

Subseries A – C. Punk Rock Zines / Anarchist Publications / Neighborhood Newspapers

This series combines radical and anarchist newspapers and punk music zines collected by Fly from the 1980’s to the present day. The series contains sizable but not complete runs of the notable punk zines Slug and Lettuce (#35 – 89), Maximum Rock’ n ’Roll (#200 – 379), and World War III Illustrated, all of which featured Fly as a frequent contributor, cover artist, and interviewee. This series also contains assorted alternative magazines that Fly has illustrated for including Herizons and $pread, the latter a defunct San Francisco magazine which covered with vivid detail the international sex industry.

These materials reflect a critical point in the history of New York City’s underground press before the ubiquitousness of the web as an information medium and platform for communicating within radical and alternative circles. Aside from their rarity, these publications exhibit how underground circles communicated through pen and paper methods and classified ads. The long running Slug & Lettuce contained a classified section where it was safe to drop a line into the wilderness. Unlike popular rock journalism driven by slick corporate advertising, punk zines spurred camaraderie among outsiders who gathered monthly at the mailbox looking to find meaningful connections with peers. A significant number of these publications were distributed informally through the info-shop and radical bookstore circuit, with the latter functioning as accessible musical venues for hardcore punk music.

Heavily influenced by political bands such as Crass, the urban hardcore punk embodied a new “In-your-face” punk ethos away from clubs and bars, choosing instead squats and punk houses. Unfettered from cover charges, these hardcore punk DIY venues and info shops began to distribute paper material free of charge. Seasonal tabloids like The Shadow, whose motto was “Information is Strength and Knowledge is Power,” covered the alarming rise of police antagonism against the Lower East Side squats and homesteaders during the height of media blackout and draconian infringement of civil rights throughout lower Manhattan. Fly gathered the majority of these serials either through subscription, trade, or through the info-shops and anarchist libraries.

Subseries D. Zines & Small Press
Fly’s personal zine collection has thousands of items (they’re still be discovered and counted, and new material is added monthly) and is dated from the early 1980’s to the 2010’s and includes many of her early zines published after graduating from art school. She is a recognized figure in the zine community, which has now embraced digital tools, new modes and debates behind gender, sexuality, ethnic, and artistic identifications. This subseries reflects the meticulous and ephemeral nature of the zine community, where home addresses for zine swaps are scribbled on pieces of paper, and friends create personalized works of art for each other.

The subseries material originates from all over the United States, parts of Canada, and Europe, with emphasis on personal narratives within the community, activism, anarchist and radical politics, feminism, squatting, urban homesteading, and life off the grid. Personal zines (per-zines) make up the majority of this subseries, and collectively they bridge early 1990’s alternative politics (ACT-UP, Anti-Gulf War, Eco-Activists) with currents of underground culture (railroad hopping, psychedelic drugs, hitchhiking, sex work, crusty punk, squatting). As mentioned before, the Fly Archive spans a period hailed as the final burst of zines and comics before the domination of digital methods in independent press.

Subseries E. Independent Comics
Fly’s collection of mini-comics, comic anthologies, manga and graphic novels is notable for representing the growing number of women innovators in the comics and cartoon community and industry. Her reputation as a well-known cartoonist and illustrator is reflected in her role as a collaborator and instructor who has taught comic and zine workshops at former MoCCAFest and its California equivalent A.P.E. (Alternative Press Expo). Many of her former workshop students have gone on to do considerable work in their own right.

Notable Zine & Independent Comics Creators:
Artichoke Yink Press (comics), Aaron Cometbus (zines), Abby Denson, Adam Suerte & Urban Folk Art Collective (comics), Arwen Curry (zines), Becky Colonna (comics), Becky Hawkins (comics),Burn Collector (zines series), Cristie Road (comics), Eliot K. Daughtry (zines), Evil Twin Press (independent press), Fiona Smyth (comics), Gabrielle Bell (comics), Jason Shithead (comics), Josh Simmons (comics), Julie Doucet (comics have originals), Katrina Del Mar (early photo zine), Kevin Scalzo (comics), Laurie Weeks (writer), Lorenz Peter (zines), Mary Flener (comics), Matt Howarth (comics), Mineshaft Magazine (comics), Monkey Punk (squatter zine), Nate Doyle (comics), Nate Powell (comics), Nosedive (Icky Apparatus), Peau Sensible (newsletter), Peter Bagge (comics), Piss Bucket (squatter zines), Puree Noire (French comic compilation), Re:Action (newsletter), Sophie Crumb (comics), Stefano Zattera (Italian illustrator) Evil Twin, The Assassin and the Whiner (zine series), Trina Robbins (comics), Urban Hermit (zine series), Wendy-O-Matic (zines)

Archivist’s Note:
Richard Jung Lee has been Booklyn’s archivist since 2012. He obtained his masters in library and information science at Pratt Institute in 2014 and is the collections archivist and the archivist for the Queens Memory Project at the Queens Museum. He has a personal mission to piece together untold narratives, rectify historical fallacies, and dismantle notions of elite institutional history making. His work has taken him across the history of radicalism, histories behind people of color movements, ephemera and Americana, D.I.Y., culture, zines, and independent comics.