Cholo #3

If there ever was an enigmatic zine, this is it. Produced in 1980 via the San Francisco Comic Book Company, it's a thick, brass-fastener-bound collection of mismatched pages. The back cover is the front cover. The binding and paper selection mirrors the format of sci-fi zines of the era.

Contents range from crude drawings of Chicano gangs, stylized cartooning, prison art, lowriders, local landmarks, dedications, and the pervasive "Cholo" masthead that reappears constantly, like a magazine that keeps starting over.

Published by Gary Arlington, with assistance from "Rogelio Del Fuego" (Roger Brand). The juxtaposition of serious cartooning with naive art, street photos, jarringly out-of-place interludes, and found objects is the blueprint of the street art zine genre, especially from the Bay Area. This is the Mission School long before Glen Helfand gave it a name.

The convergence of so many subcultures into one publication - predating Teen Angel's by a year - is an anthropological clusterfuck of the best kind.

Very good condition. Some covers have slight rust marks and small creases.