Uninhibited ideas and dope comics: A 2025 San Diego Zine Fest photo gallery

Features

Jake Zawlacki | October 30, 2025

Note: All photos are by Jake Zawlacki. Be sure to click on the little circles at the bottom of each gallery to move to the next photo. 

If you’ve been to enough comic book conventions, they all begin to look and feel the same. There are the greasy dealers selling things above market value, claiming, “Hot book! You’ll never see it this low again.” There are the peddlers of alibaba.com, and now AI, trash. There are the jaded creators sitting at tables as far away from the main traffic as possible to not scare off the excited attendees. And there are the featured guests who are “former” somethings, whether that’s professional wrestler, television actor, or famed director of The Room — Tommy Wiseau isn’t still famous, is he?

Admittedly, I might be the one bringing this to my experience at shows I attend, but I always find a hint of sadness, or at the very least ennui, in the necessity of artists to sell their goods in the hopes of making a living in a society that actively shits on them. These creatives have to draw the nth commission of Spider-Man and sell chibi stickers and hollow out their souls for the chance to just exist.

Perhaps it’s too cynical a take, or one shadowed by that other (alleged) comic book gathering in San Diego that occurs at the end of July, but I’ve found that sadness in conventions both large and small across the country, an unease at the whole, “I’ve got to try and sell you this thing even if we’re both not that into it.”

But everyone’s into the San Diego Zine Fest.

There are no market-driven analyses guiding product lines but the simple logic of “I wanted to make a screen print with my friend.” There aren’t concerns over the next possible industry visit that will finally, after all these years, give them a shot at the big leagues, but a meager “hanging out with no pressure.” And there aren’t any middle people, prevaricators, or pap purveyors. There are just uninhibited ideas, creations, and very human creators full of radical politics, provocative essays, killer stickers, and dope comics.

This year Zine Fest moved into Woo! Studios, a gallery space and arts org of the best kind that prides itself on collaboration and a “No-Brow” approach to art, rejecting the capitalist classifications of “high” and “low.” The move gave the exhibitors a little more room to breathe with three large, separate rooms for booths, a zine library, an art space, open galleries, and an outdoor dance area with live screen printing and a DJ stand. Last year’s venue at Bread & Salt, another leading space in the San Diego art scene, was also excellent, but as some zinesters claimed, was a little hot and a little loud. They’re not wrong.

I spent Zine Fest speaking with creators, wandering the halls, and checking out zines of all kinds, of which their subjects included an author’s broken bones, an homage to 1970s graphic erotica, the labor issues of Covid, rejected pro wrestlers, capitalist temporality, bouncing for a gay club in the ‘90s, recounting Star Wars from memory, abstracted photo albums, and the realization of an author’s queer identity, to name only a few of the hundreds and hundreds available. I always buy more than I intend, but it’s so tempting to just give money to a creative for their labors, to maximize their sliding scale prices, and to vote towards the act of creation. So, I walked away with some wonderful prints to hang on the wall, comics to gawk at, and essays to expand my otherwise shriveling mind.

As attendees visited booths and dancers sweated on the back patio, I waited for that familiar sadness to creep in, but it didn’t. Then I remembered to go back and grab that last zine.