Zines are nonprofessional, anti-commercial, small-circulation magazines their creators produce, publish, and distribute themselves. Typed up and laid out on home computers, zines are reproduced on photocopy machines, assembled on kitchen tables, and sold or swapped through the mail or found at small book or music stores. Today, somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 different zines circulate throughout the United States and the world. With names like Dishwasher, Temp Slave, Pathetic Life, Practical Anarchy, Punk Planet, and Slug & Lettuce, their subject matter ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, making a detour through the unfathomable. What binds all these publications together is a prime directive: D.I.Y.—Do-It-Yourself. Stop shopping for culture and go out and create your own.

While shaped by the long history of alternative presses in the United States—zine editor Gene Mahoney calls Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense "the zine heard 'round the world"—zines as...