Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us… Gee, to think it was a year ago that Issue 0 of Trash City oozed into the world. 36 A4 pages, corner stapled, I was as proud as punch of it.

Which is odd, because it wasn’t very good.

I remain astonished that anyone saw fit to subscribe to it. I read through it when I was working on the reprint, and the urge to take a red pen to it was almost overpowering. It has a certain naive, rough-hewn charm to be sure – beyond that, every second sentence made me wince. There were nearly no pictures. No front cover to speak of. Every page reeks of inexperience. Just about a total waste of good rain-forest.

Hopefully we’ve come on a little since then, even if I expect to do a similar piece in TC8 saying how awful TC4 was! To commemorate our anniversary, I’ve gone pro, or at least, the printing has – the first 100 copies have been done by a PROFESSIONAL, rather than on the office copier at unsociable hours. This cost a lot more that you might think (tho’ not as much as it could have – one place quoted 2.40 per copy!). To be honest, I over-ran on space, so eight pages are done in the old way – they can act as a comparison, though since they’re picture-free, and the main reason for going pro was to get good artwork reproduction, it’s not strictly fair.

It’s only eight weeks since last time, because this is the result of me clearing out the file of ‘things I wanted to print, but didn’t have room’. A lot of these are contributed pieces (oddly enough, I usually managed to fit MY articles in!) which seem to me to give this issue a broader variety of styles, which you may or may not regard as a good thing! It also meant a lot of awkward gaps at the ends of pages, which I’ve had to fill with my usual egotistical ramblings. If you like it, so much the better, if not, well, (ab)normal service will be resumed next time.

One possibility is that I keep up this professional printing, which will improve the regularity since I’ll no longer have to spend time hanging around said office photo- copier, looking guilty and having a litter of kittens every time someone comes in. This is good. However, it would mean a price-hike – although I consider TC a hobby and not a money-spinner, there are limits to the amount I am willing to spend on it. The subscription rate would probably be 70p or so per issue, as against 40p now, and even that’s significantly less than cost. Let me know if you think it’s worth that for a regular, pro-printed ‘zine with more illustrations.

“There’s a million dollars of violence in my heart,
but you won’t find any in my soul.”