Friday, December 4, 2020

Zisk #30, #31

 


(Zisk, 2020) Celebrating their 20th anniversary Zisk puts out a double issue that is really two issues and is definitely a crowning achievement. #31, the more regular ish, features Rev. Norb channeling Jack Kirby on the cover, making it by far the best cover they have ever printed. This issue features research, rantings, and really nice prose on what baseball fans call The Big 3 B's. Namely Buckner, Bob Dylan, and Bitching about all kinds of things you don't like about baseball (mostly of the usual statistical/rule change/commissioner stripe, but also a surprising knock on non-Dodgers teams honoring Jackie Robinson). But #30 is the big deal here, as they break format and just print a small book by Todd Taylor researching the tragic razing of homes owned by poor Mexicans in Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles, ostensibly to build public housing but after a bait in switch, making the Fountainhead dude look like Mother Teresa, they equate projects with communism and eventually just pay the Dodgers to take the land and a lot of money to replace everything and everyone there  with a privately owned park and parking lots. This, of course, necessitates bulldozing the last remaining homes after barely yanking the residents out kicking and screaming. It's a nasty and ugly and predictable tale, guest starring Fernando Valenzuela as the dude who eventually convinces Mexicans that it's OK to like the Dodgers. If your powerful baseball zine can make you feel like shit for going to  a baseball game, that's what I call a baseball zine!


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