Kinships Magazine

"Kinships was the first in print magazine for Otherkin and other 'people who exist anyway'" (Joyner, 2006 May 10a).  It was "a quarterly magazine of stories, comics, reviews, and poetry" (Joyner and Silva, 2001 April 7) and ran for eight issues, including Issue #0.

Though plurality was not a focus, otherkin plurals did take part in the magazine--most notably Criss Itterman, AKA the Crisses of Kinhost (Joyner and Silva, 2000 October) and Doltaghey House, writing under the name Ficanoss (Various, 2001 fall).

Quick Details

Creators: Katrina Joyner (AKA Spearcarrier) (Editor, whole series), Gynn Stella (Submissions Editor for Issues #0 and #1) and Rick Silva (Marketing Director, Issues #0-#5)
Time Published: 2000-2002 (original run), then 2004-2007
Location: Originally at spaceports.com/~tocosar/kinships (2001), then Pentegram Komix (2001-2002), and finally anotherotherkin.tripod.com (2006-2008)

Circumstances of Creation

According to Joyner's website, "Kinships started in 1999 when Katrina Joyner and Rick Silva met and decided to form a partnership. Katrina let Rick into her small business, Pentegram Komix and Graphix.  With a public Otherkin demand for their own magazine, Katrina and Rick stepped up to the task and a full-fledged magazine was born" (2006, May 10a).  It's not clear what became of Gynn Stella.

Print Dates and Contributors

Format

Kinships never had an ebook version; it was only print.  Under Joyner and Silva, Kinships printed Issues #0-5, a full-sized, black and white, saddle-stitched magazine filled with comics, fiction, poetry, reviews, and personal experiences.  It also had a lot of ads for various New Age, geek, and otherkin/paranormal websites.

Sometime between February 4 and August 2, 2002, "through unfortunate circumstances, Rick and Katrina had to part ways and Kinships as a magazine ended" (Joyner, 2006 May 10a).  However, in 2004, Joyner set off on her own, and "Kinships made a small comeback as a desktop magazine/newsletter. [...] Kinships remains an Otherkin-friendly paper with emphasis on metaphysical living and philosophies" (ibid).  In this format, another two issues, #6 and #7 were put out, in rougher half-size format, more zine-like.  The last issue came out in July 2007 (Dagstine, 2007).

Kinships seemed to have gotten distributed through a fair number of stores, including Barnes and Noble (Joyner, 2006 May 10), and it paid submitters, though less and less over time.  Originally, the pay rate was 2 cents per word, $10 per poem, and $5-$20 per comics page or for black and white artwork (Joyner and Silva, 2001 April 3).  Later, the prose rate was halved to 1 cent per word, $5 per poem; the art and comics rate remained the same (Joyner and Silva, 2001 November 23).

By the end of its run, Kinships was paying $6 for prose, $6 per page on comics, and $2 per illustration (Joyner, 2006 May 10b).  Despite the cost-cutting, the magazine was not a lucrative endeavor.  According to Joyner, "Kinships and every other part of Angelicpress [Joyner's small press] is not about profit. Maybe someday if enough people read us we can change our minds, but let's face it. We spend 300 percent more than we make off of this baby. Why do we still do it? Because we love it" (2006, May 10b).

Content

Content over time ran mainly towards short speculative fiction, along with some poetry, personal anecdotes, and reviews of various books, games, and magazines.

There were two comics series that ran through multiple issues, including Ficanoss of Doltaghey House's "Casteglan," following the misadventures of an elven bard headmate (Doltaghey House, 2001 July 9), and Joyner's "Battle of Angels," a comic following a tribe of elf-like angels, heavily influenced by Elfquest, of which Joyner was a fan and made her own fancomic, A Bird in the Bush (Joyner, 2001 April 22).

Advertisements

The advertisements in Kinships cover a wide variety of geek, otherkin, and pagan shops and websites from the time, making it a useful time capsule for the culture.  Among them:

Citations

Dagstine, Lawrence. (2007). Kinships #7 (Now Available; Final Issue) [blog post].  Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://lawrencedagstine.com/2007/07/16/kinships-7-now-available-final-issue/

Doltaghey House [Ficanoss]. (2001 July 9).  Casteglan [web page]. www.stormpages.com/wolfglade/arhuaine/casteglan.html Internet Archive.  Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20010709125341/http://www.stormpages.com/wolfglade/arhuaine/casteglan.html

Joyner and Silva. (2000, October) Kinships Magazine Issue #0.  Pentegram Comics.  Cover image retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20010611034738/http://www.spaceports.com:80/~tocosar/kinships/issue0.jpg

Joyner and Silva. (2001 April 3).  Pentegram Komix and Graphix, Kinships Submission Guidelines. http://www.pentegramkomix.com:80/kinships/submission.html Internet Archive.  Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20010430194358/http://www.pentegramkomix.com:80/kinships/submission.html

Joyner and Silva. (2001 April 7).  Kinships: the magazine for people who exist anyway [web page]. www.spaceports.com/~tocosar/kinships/kinintro.htm Retrieved 4/22/2019 from https://web.archive.org/web/20010407004804/www.spaceports.com/~tocosar/kinships/kinintro.htm

Joyner and Silva. (2001 April 19).  Fantasy & Comics Anthology [web page]. http://www.spaceports.com/~tocosar/kinships/kinretail.htm Internet Archive.  Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20010419164702/http://www.spaceports.com/~tocosar/kinships/kinretail.htm

Joyner and Silva. (2001 November 23).  Pentegram Komix and Graphix, Kinships Submission Guidelines. http://www.pentegramkomix.com:80/kinships/submission.html Internet Archive.  Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20011123072202/http://www.pentegramkomix.com:80/kinships/submission.html

Joyner, Katrina. (2002, February 4). Kinships Magazine [web page]. www.pentegramkomix.com/kinships/kinships.html Internet Archive.  Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20020204152114/http://www.pentegramkomix.com:80/kinships/kinships.html

Joyner, Katrina. (2002, April 22). A Bird in the Bush: An Elfquest Worldpool tale [web page]. http://www.pentegramkomix.com/elfquest/bird.html Internet Archive.  Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20010901092500/http://www.pentegramkomix.com/elfquest/bird.html

Joyner, Katrina. (2002, August 2). Kinships, The Magazine for People Who Exist Anyway, is no longer in publication. We regret the inconvenience. [web page]. www.pentegramkomix.com/kinships/kinships.html Internet Archive.  Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20020802201304/http://www.pentegramkomix.com:80/kinships/kinships.html

Joyner, Katrina. (2006, May 10a). Kinships [web page]. http://anotherotherkin.tripod.com/angelicpress/Kinships/index.htm Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20060510111138/http://anotherotherkin.tripod.com/angelicpress/Kinships/index.htm

Joyner, Katrina. (2006, May 10b). Submissions Guidelines [web page]. http://anotherotherkin.tripod.com/angelicpress/submission.htm Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/04/22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20060510111015/http://anotherotherkin.tripod.com/angelicpress/submission.htm

Various. (2000, October).  Kinships Magazine Issue #0.  Self-published.

Various. (2001, fall).  Kinships Magazine Issue #4.  Pentegram Komix and Graphix.

Various. (2001, winter).  Kinships Magazine Issue #5.  Pentegram Komix and Graphix.

Revision #2
Created 2019-04-22 14:39:19 UTC by LB Lee
Updated 2019-04-22 23:25:21 UTC by LB Lee