The Most Excellent Zine
It's FanArtFriday today and boy oh boy do we have a special one — so special it's creeping onto the blog.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Psychonauts earlier this year, a group of more than 40 fans came together to produce something wondrous: The Most Excellent Zine.
Within its nearly 80 pages lies a cornucopia of art and stories from, and inspired by, the world of Psychonauts, and representing essentially every brain world, character, and major moment from the game.
It's a remarkable collection, and I was keen to find out more from the Zine's chief organiser, Rhia, who spoke to me over the internets, as one does these days.
"It started because I run a little Psychonauts discord server and we were discussing how fun it would be if there was a zine for Psychonauts’ 20th. It didn’t look like there was anyone planning one. So I decided to step up and host it - despite never having hosted a zine before!"
"I believe we have about 43 artists and writers total in the finished zine, with a few who did multiple pieces. Everyone put their absolute all into their pieces which was fun to watch as they were sharing the progress in the server as we went along."
"I let everyone pick their own themes for their pieces and we surprisingly ended up with something for almost every level in the game! The only one that ended up without was Waterloo world but Fred did get featured on a group piece so he didn’t get left out entirely."
Alongside the huge collection of artists and writers, the zine's creation was supported by folks such as Ooliecat who created the backgrounds, and Bumbledee who recreated the original Psychonauts website to host it on. The zine was then given a special cover piece by Technovillain.
We encourage you to download The Most Excellent Zine to enjoy every piece of art, and word of every story, in all its fullscreen glory. But you can peruse a mere teeny selection of the delights below.
Also, stay tuned for more, it sounds like a followup is in the works when Psychonauts 2 turns 5 next year.
