On December 3rd, ImaginAtlas returned to Expozine, Canada’s largest small press fair. This year, editor Olivia Shan was able to speak with Louis Rastelli, one of the original six co-founders of the fair. His passion for the world of zines shone through as he shared the history and goals of Expozine, its role in Montreal’s comic arts scene, and his thoughts on the place of zines in arts and culture today.
ImaginAtlas:
Thank you for agreeing to sit with ImaginAtlas! First of all, can you briefly talk about how Expozine was originally conceived?
Louis Rastelli:
In 1998, the other five co-founders of Expozine and I founded a non-profit organization called ARCMTL so that we could fund projects such as Expozine and others to help and promote book fairs and the small press in Montreal, and also preserve it.
And it took us a few years to get Expozine going, it started in 2002 as a general underground and alternative small press fair. There were already some comics fairs but it was very commercial—comics and manga-type things. We wanted to include more alternative comics and graphic novels. There was also no book fairs for poetry or other literary publications. The name Expozine puts zines at the centre of the fair. Zines go back to the 60s as far as being similar to the more homemade, do-it-yourself underground publications. So, those of us who started the fair in 2002, we’re all publishers of zines and books [who] take part in other fairs in Quebec and Ontario and Toronto, Ottawa. And we were always sad that there wasn’t one in Montreal.
ImaginAtlas:
I was wondering if you had thoughts on the place of the zine as a medium nowadays. This year in particular, zines had a huge presence at the Salon du Livre. There was a section of the festival called “Espace Zines,” and several events also centred around zines or zine culture. Do you think there’s been a resurgence of zines in recent years?
Louis Rastelli:
Yeah, we were partly behind that. I joined the board of directors of the Salon du Livre six or seven years ago. But then last year, I said, listen, let’s just do something new.
I’ve been doing zines since 1985. So it’s been almost 40 years. And there’s always ups and downs in terms of zine popularity. And every time there’s a down, people start saying things like, “well zines are dead.” You know, like when we started Expozine in 2002, everyone said, “This is crazy. It’s going to last two years, there’s the internet now. So, you know, what are you guys doing? You’re killing trees.” For years, they would say, “why are you guys still encouraging people to kill trees?” because there was this sense that the internet was going to very quickly just replace everything. We now know that it didn’t; it actually helps people connect.
I think the latest big craze is because books, in general, exploded during the pandemic. Comic books, novels, all kinds of books. We do so much stuff now by Zoom and working from home. You don’t want to stare at a screen all day, all night. I think that people discovered that it’s easy and fun to read a book also.
Just in Montreal, I think 12 or 13 new bookstores opened during the pandemic. When we started Expozine, there was actually a wave of closures of bookstores. We originally thought that, before we did Expozine, we’re going to do it like a co-op of people that was about 60 bookstores, who would take zines and comics on consignment from independent authors. And that’s how we did our zines in the 90s, but then around 1999, a huge wave of closures, and then there was a big chain called Chapters that went bankrupt. And a lot of zinemakers and comic artists and people like Drawn and Quarterly, lost money because they couldn’t pay anyone after they went bankrupt—this was a huge national chain. That’s what led to the first Expozine committee to say, well, we need a place to sell this. Now, 20 years later I never thought that we would see things go the other way and there being more bookstores. So what’s great is that between Expozine and the Festival de BD and all the literary festivals that Montreal has, people can now visit a circuit of different shops to sell and buy books and zines.
ImaginAtlas:
I think you’re right—I think people, especially post-pandemic, are really craving tactile experiences, and I mean, zines are like the epitome of that, right? And clearly, the turnout this year has been fantastic. I’ve noticed from last year there are a lot more vendors, too. It’s very exciting.
Louis Rastelli:
Yeah, we are slowly making it back to being a bit more crowded, a bit more tables. It’s still a little bit frustrating. If we had more space, we would have more than this. But we also don’t want to become like Comic-Con or the Salon du Livre. It’s not the same; it also would cost a fortune. It’s in the hundred-something-thousand per day that they pay to rent these places.
We’re still a little bit frustrated because we’re stuck in smaller spaces. In Toronto, the TCAF, Toronto Comic Arts Festival, is set in the equivalent of the Grand Bibliotheque—the Toronto public library. Unfortunately, we’ve had zero help from the city, especially Projet Montréal. They only want fairs to focus on the local residents now. So that’s a big challenge. It’s really too bad. So, we have a lot of potential for growth, but we’re still not reaching it.
But the other thing is it’s easier than ever to print your books, it seems. At this point, you could send the PDF to a service and get very nicely bound books of your drawings or sketches, and it looks like, you know, a proper thing. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a zine. It’s just almost too easy to make a nice book.
And even at the very beginning of Expozine, we took care to separate so-called “vanity press” books from actual zines. There’s always going to be a bit of a difference between that and the zine world. What’s great about it is there’s just so many different ways to become a creator, with Etsy stores and, you know, setting up a website or even just listing your zines and books on Facebook Marketplace. You know, we might not have started Expozine if all of this existed in 2002. We started it because there was nothing.
ImaginAtlas:
Yeah, we were talking about how great it is that Expozine covers such a wide variety of vendors. There are the bigger guys like Drawn and Quarterly, but then there’s also lots of very local and small artists, even debut artists. We really love how accessible this whole event feels—there’s no entrance fee which is great. One of my friends is a tabler; she told me about how fees to be a vendor are also very accessible. So, is that also one of the major concerns you guys had while organizing Expozine?
Louis Rastelli:
Yeah, the organization does a bunch of different things, and the one thing that’s in common with all of them is [supporting] independent artists. We have a network of vending machines that sell zines. This project actually predates Expozine; it was early 2001 when we started the network of vending machines, art vending machines, named Distroboto. It’s only two dollars or four dollars to buy an item. We have another fair called Volume that we started six years ago to promote art books and artists: books about art, art magazines, and fancier artist books that are more limited edition or hand printed. The books tend to cost a bit more, but it’s still free to the public. The tables are not that expensive for the kinds of publishers that are there. And we also have a printed art fair because there’s still a lot of people who want to exclusively sell prints and artwork. We used to accommodate them at Expozine—we used to have sections at the venue for that. But we really needed to focus on all the zines and the bookmakers that wanted to take part. So, in the spring, every two years, we have a print fair, and there, too, the idea is it’s a lot cheaper than most of the big art fairs. It’s also free to the public.
And then lastly, we have an archive centre—for 18 years, we’ve collected copies of everything that passes through these projects, and then people donate their personal collections of zines and posters. This year we’re probably gonna add about 250 or 300 zines and books from Expozine to the collection. There’s an entire wall chronicling the last 22 years of Expozine in about six thousand zines.
So, all of it is about making it easy or giving ways for the artists who are starting out or independent artists to get out there [and] meet the public. And then, while we’re at it, we try to promote and preserve—that’s the motto. The formula hasn’t really changed for like 20 years. It’s pretty much the same mission; it’s just a question of not really having enough funding to do as much as we can. This could be twice as big. We had to refuse a lot of people this year, which is always disappointing, but hopefully when you refuse that many people, maybe a bunch of them will get together and start another fair. Maybe there should be a comics fair in the fall, I mean, we’re talking with the Festival de BD Montreal, and they’re in May every year. I guess Comiccon is now October? But Comiccon doesn’t really do much small press. They used to have a, like a ghetto-zine area. The people who started Comiccon used to take a table at Expozine. And it was a bit weird, they used to put the superhero comics on the table and it’d be kind of like “these are real comics.”
ImaginAtlas:
There’s a bit of elitism there.
Louis Rastelli:
Yeah, underground comics don’t have superheroes with perfect muscles or whatever. But there used to be a real divide between the superhero comics and alternative comics, people would say “that person doesn’t know how to draw,” but these artists have a style that’s very original, and very personal to them. In 2002 that was still kind of new.
Unfortunately, among the people who couldn’t get a table, a lot of them lean on the comics side because, of course, we can’t have it just be half or two-thirds comics. We try to have at least one-third of comics and illustrations, one-third literary and poetry. And another third of the more general zines. That could be drawings, more fancy and artistic zines, and some of the radical, activist zines. Again, all these families don’t have a place at the Salon du Livre or at the Festival de BD. So I think we all have a place in the scene. But I think there should be some sort of fall or maybe late summer comics fair. You know, the more, the better.
ImaginAtlas:
I feel like we’ve been talking about this for the whole conversation, but why do you think it’s important to have a space like this, an event like this, for the local artists and zine community?
Louis Rastelli:
Well, I think people who make their own books and who write—it’s a very solitary thing. It can involve a lot of days at home alone in front of the desk or on the computer. I wrote a novel once, and it was crazy; it was months and months of 10-hour-long sessions. All my friends were like, “Where have you been? You never come out anymore.” So, for people who are very creative, you need to come out sometime and say hi. The internet is great and social media is great, but it’s not the same as actually seeing people, talking to people, and sitting there and having them come right up. You learn so much—you see which of your books customers pick up, you can chat with them, you can exchange ideas, you can meet people, meet collaborators.
ImaginAtlas:
Absolutely. Thank you so much! For our last question: My co-editor, who is sick today, wanted to ask if you wanted to shout out any of your favourite zines from this year’s roster.
Louis Rastelli:
There’s some tables I’m looking forward to visiting. I always am a fan of going to the tables that sell all kinds of zines that they order. We usually call it distros—somebody who may have a zine or two of their own, but they also distribute zines from the States and from elsewhere in Canada. So, I’m excited to spend a bunch of time at a couple of the tables that are selling books from elsewhere. There’s Great Worm Express, and that’s a distro from Toronto. And before we started Expozine in the 1990s, there was a great festival in Toronto called the Cut and Paste Zine Fair. Used to happen on Queen Street. Stacy Case used to organize that— he hasn’t done a zine fair in years, but he went and came back, he started to do zines again, and he actually took a table with our fair this year. So I guess that would be my answer: I’m excited about seeing an old friend from 30 years ago from the zine scene who’s getting back in the game just making zines—taking a table. I’m a bit jealous because I used to make zines a lot, but I’m so busy doing this. I would love to be able to just book a table and show up and sell my zines.
ImaginAtlas:
I’m sure eventually you will have the chance to do that too.
Louis Rastelli:
Yeah, yeah, we’re trying to get there with the grants and the funding going. So we can hire more, and maybe I’ll retire from helping them [with] the fairs and go back to being a member. And you know, every single co-founder—they all have tables at Expozine. I’m the only one who doesn’t have a table selling books. So, we’re real lifers. There’s quite a few people who have done 10, 15, 17 editions of Expozine. Even if some no longer come because they’re under Drawn and Quarterly or some other publisher, this is where they got started.
This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.