I became acquainted with Renée from Utter Zines after she won the 500 Subscriber Giveaway on my YouTube channel*, and she surprised me by sending some of her own zines to my PO Box. Renée has been participating in Struthless’ Alphabet Superset challenge, creating a set of 26 mini zines exploring the theme of mental health alphabetically. Renée’s zines are easy on the eyes; her clean, digital designs feature simple illustrations emphasized with playful arrows and dot-dash lines, and a soft spring color palette of mint, bottle blue, peach, and sunny yellow. The zines strike a nice balance between analytical fact and honest, perziney stream-of-consciousness, and I appreciate the through lines between each mini, tying the series together. For instance, in “Roger That”, Renée expounds on the metabolic expense of human interaction (fascinating!) and then returns to that concept in “Yielding” to explain how sometimes we make less rational decisions because we default to an easier, less metabolically-taxing decision based on patterns our brain has identified from past experiences. She shared seven letters from the series, and I can’t wait to see what Renée does with the rest of the alphabet!