Ryan sent me a big ‘ol stack of Pocket Thoughts zines, and I let fate decide which one I’d read first and review here. I gave the stack a shuffle (the back of each of the zines is identical, with an ad to the Pocket Thoughts etsy) and drew a random PT like it were a playing card: issue 28, titled “Who Are You?” was the winner.

This zine has a little bit of everything: some musings and some amusing collage art (the brain-faced woman with a bottle neck is especially eye-popping), doodles, drawings, and even a short, surreal comic, all exploring themes of identity and all tied together through Ryan’s colorful, chaotic style. Some of the pieces are more existential, while others are more playful or downright silly (again, that brain-faced woman) and I really enjoyed seeing how Ryan tackled the theme in so many different ways without the zine feeling repetitive. My favorite of the bits was a handwritten note on hot pink paper near the end of the zine, in which Ryan ponders that age-old question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” His answer feels like the perfect coda to the issue, tying up all his musings into a tidy, conclusive bow: “maybe there’s no answering WHO we want to be, because it takes our whole lives to fully discover them.” Hear, hear!