Cometbus #49 (paperback ) A contributor issue of Cometbus with loads of stuff. Altogether it's a deep dive into Bay Area culture of the turn of the millennium. This was the last issue published before the zine went on its 2004-2006 hiatus. Technically, it's long out of print. Cometbus #53 (Zine) Maddalena Poletta and Aaron trade writing duties in this issue, and their writing styles compliment each other quite nicely. You can always count on Cometbus to provide a good subcultural fable. Where punks are the protagonists, and hippies often the fools. Maddalena tells a series of stories about cancer that will break your heart, one in the form of letters. Nate Powell did the cover. Cometbus #54: In China with Green Day (Zine) After twenty years Aaron returns to his duties as a Green Day roadie and heads to Asia. A few things have changed with the band over this period of time, but, not so much for Cometbus Cometbus #55: Pen Pals (Zine) An insight into unique friendships like the one Aaron has had since 1988 in Berkeley with a woman named Yula and a collaborator named Andy as they shifted and evolved, involving many entertaining side-plots. It's about Aaron finding himself, casting his interests in stone, and friendships maintained through the post. Cometbus #56: A Bestiary of Booksellers (paperback) A loving ethnography of New York City's wild, weird, and bearded used book trade. Aaron writes about his fellow book dealers—and their tribes—with all the unflinching and generous powers of observation that he's applied to every subject. Cometbus #57 NY Comics Scene (paperback) The comics scene is thriving in New York, and comics play an oversized role in the city’s myth. But why? In this special issue of Cometbus we go door-to-door, uptown to downtown, asking the questions that other rags are either too informed or too polite to pose. Cometbus #58: Zimmerwald (Zine) A teenager finds solace in a diner full of grumpy seniors during the heydey of San Francisco punk. It's a mythological place, full of ghostly archetypes, the aging veterans of scenes past and future. Reads like a novel, but is it fiction or barely disguised autobiography? Or is it the obituary of a movement? Cometbus #59: Post-Mortem (Zine) A deep dive into both death and longevity in the underground. In short: what does sustainability look like in counterculture? This question takes Aaron on a journey from the Epitaph Records and Thrasher magazine offices to hanging out at a punk-owned vegan donut shop and a tamale stand at the farmer's market with Allison Wolfe (of Bratmobile and Sex Stains fame).
