After many travails, BENT Zine 3 has seen print! This issue features the art of Justin Varn on the cover.

Read it online or subscribe on our new BENT Zine web site!

Links to many of our writers and artists, read BENT Zine online or download it, or contact us about subscription or distribution in your area.

Yes, that's right... you can now view BENT Zine online as a web comic on our new ComicSpace website! At present, we have published issues 01.00 through 01.02, as well as set up Comic Galleries for each of the serial pulp graphic titles, "RAGNAROK," "TERRIBLE TERRORISTS OF TERROR," "THE DOOMED (Adventure Theatre)," "ZEITGEIST, USA," and "TWO DICKS IN HELL."

Now, if you didn't get to read the earlier issues, you can at least get up to speed on the intertwining storyline of our "BENT Universe."

Enjoy!

Yes, it's true. We haven't forgotten about you, our dear readers! With any new business, getting off the ground is a challenge. Add to that the peculiarities of our project – collaboration between artists and writers, lack of financing, dependence on the dedication of our artists and writers (since nobody is paid), and an abysmal advertising market – and the result is a long wait between issues.

Don't give up on us! This project is just that: an ART project. As such, we've come to terms with a few realities. Rather than put out half-as-good work on a regular basis, we've decided to put out twice-as-good work on an irregular basis. At least, until this puppy starts to fly.

The next issue – number three – will be published in February, come hell or high water, as they say. There's a lot to look forward to in the issue, which is complete except for the holes in our advertising. This project is unusual, and in the Taos art market, the unusual doesn't get the kind of play that the same-old-same-old gets. Advertisers have been as hard to come by as a reliable printer. So far, we've been blacklisted (i.e., censored) by printshops twice. Advertisers apparently have similar compunctions about putting their names on a project that doesn't fit into a neat little Taos-style box.

What you can expect in issue three of the fully-illustrated BENT Zine:

• Lead Article: "Curiouser And Curiouser" by Justin Varn, with illustrations by J Varn and Joseph Edwards


• Serial Pulp Graphics: "Terrible Terrorists Of Terror" by Justin Varn, "Ragnarok: Phase 2.2" by Joseph Edwards, "The Doomed" by Keith Basham, "Zeitgeist, USA" written by John Biscello and illustrated by J Edwards, and "Two Dicks In Hell" written by Scott Sloan and illustrated by J Varn.


• Short Fiction: "The Great Crash and Burn on Iron Heart Pass" written by Melodie S Edwards and illustrated by Ken Koschnitzki.


• Features: The Soapbox (opinion), The Snobs (reviews), and The Peanut Gallery (poetry and art)


• Plus: Stand-alone art by new, emerging and established artists.

Also, look for a new, full website with the e-zine versions of BENT Zine available for free.

—The Instigator

OKAY then... at least now we have some sort of web presence. BENT Zine has been offline for a couple months while we figure out how the hell we're going to keep doing this magazine!

Sure, people love us: the serialized graphic novels, the outstanding fiction, the in-depth articles, the marginalia, the art, the reviews, the poetry. But we're having a hell of a time staying in business, as the always odious task of selling ads has fallen on yours truly, The Instigator, which means I'm doing too much!

Our next, long-overdue issue will be released, if all goes well, in January or February, 2008. If you'd like to support BENT Zine, the best way is to ADVERTISE. Email us and we'll hook you up with a rate sheet and distribution info.

We're always looking for distribution points, so feel free to contact us if you want to help us enlarge our network of hotspots. Also, we do indeed offer subscriptions at a nice, low cost.

Now that we have this MySpace Blog going, look for improvements and updates as we gear up to get this show on the road for rizzle. Ay't?