One of a kind! Diane DiMassa Zine Chicken Rules! Signed! All about her cat

  
A stand alone zine all about her world famous cat Chicken. It is a wonderful, quirky celebration of Chicken and cats in general. Of course, Hothead appears in several of the episodes so I suppose you could consider this zine number 22 though it is not listed as such. This was published in January 2005. Copy written Diane DiMassa and Giant Ass Publishing. When this came out, I bought a dozen or more copies. I gave all away other than this one as gifts. I kept this because as you can see from the photographs the great artist signed it to me. "To my man, Joe XO Diane" I kept it in a plastic bag for the last 20 years. There was a period where I framed it still in the plastic bag under glass and had it on my wall in my bedroom.

Like all of my other DiMassa works, it is very rare. Rare on its own, rare in this amazing condition, rare signed! I wonder what would happen if, say, some lesbian really checked out for lunch, you know, like say her brain just totally shit the bed one day, and she starts believing everything she sees on T. So, like, while she's going about her daily queer routine, all this T. Crap is seeping in and she's getting psychotic, and like she needs therapy really bad, but she doesn't know it?

I bet her boundaries would be really fuzzy. I bet she'd be lots of fun to be around. I bet she'd be a real. Written by the sainted artist.

I will send this Priority. More pix available, just ask. Feedback left after your feedback is entered. ALL BUYERS IN THE U.

Shockingly (to me) I will be here through the holidays. People have asked how I came to have so much art and ephemera by the great Diane DiMassa. I believe I found zine number two in a quirky bookstore in Chicago in the early 1990s. I picked it up and quickly read it and bought it immediately. I found zine number one and bought them all as they were printed and became available.

I enjoyed her radical feminist honesty and passion. I loved her cracked sense of humor which coincided with my own warped sense of humor. I admired her bravery at putting it out there. There was something else that I couldn't initially quite put my finger on.

In 1986 I became sober and was increasingly looking at the world through different, no longer bloodshot eyes. There was something about the character Hothead Paisan which spoke to me. Clearly the character is a tad imbalanced, but the sensibility of the artist seemed informed by sobriety. It wasn't until some years later when I read an interview with her that my suspicion was evidently correct.

I believe sobriety helped her access all of her feelings: rage, anarchic humor, intense desire to communicate, growing clarity, inspiring bravery. But I came to love the Hothead character. When I love an author or artist or musician, I tend to collect their works compulsively. Eventually, I bought 15 or more of her paintings.

Additionally, I bought over one hundred pieces of various DiMassa ephemera.