Zel Hizó, The Next-gen Zinemaker – The People Issue 2024

Zel Hizó (she/her), ten, is a prolific zinemaker, where she details her interests from Freddie Mercury to her dream dog to her favorite stuffed animals. She’s also designed​​ T-shirts and stickers; she hawks many of her projects at zine fairs around the city, as well as at her neighborhood record store, Pinwheel Records. When she’s not putting together zines, you can find Hizó crocheting, reading manga, playing the violin, or writing movie reviews on her secret Letterboxd account. As Hizó’s mom, Alanna Zaritz, says, “It is good to diversify your skills.” 

The reason why I’m mostly making zines is I just needed something to do when I’m alone or when I’m at home and I’m like, ugh [mimes being bored]. 

My first zine was my Freddie Mercury zine. For my school, we were doing, like, “talk about the person.” So I chose Freddie Mercury. I had a whole little board, and I also had my zine with me. I was like, “Oh yeah, if you want some more information, you can also look at this zine too.” I ended up giving some to my classmates. 

Some of the other zines I have made are my mixtape zine[s]. The mixtape zine is about a lot of my favorite songs from different bands. I draw the songs like how I think about them. So for Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling,” I drew the four characters for the Black Eyed Peas as Animal Crossing characters. I had a difficult time doing this one, but it actually turned out pretty good. I did a “I’m Just Ken” one. It was Ken wearing horse sunglasses that were pink, obviously, and his hair was sand, [like] Malibu Beach. That was also pretty fun. 

Now I have another zine, called My Dog Baguette. It’s not a real dog. It’s my dream dog. I’ve always wanted a dog because the sad thing is that we are not allowed to have dogs in our building. So we go through this whole story of me having a dog, but at the end, I don’t have a dog. Maybe someday, once we find the right apartment.

I made one zine about all my favorite buddies [stuffed animals]. I might have to do another one because I have so many favorites. Some were gifts. But one of them we just bought at this cute little shop when I was small. It was a frog. I am so scared to lose this guy. I named her Olympia. Inky is a little squid. Wet Boy is a watermelon. Those are names that I give them. If I get a new buddy, I always have to give them a name. I have one that’s Paprika, because my dad cooks a lot, but also it was orange and it’s a mouse. 

The last thing that I made was the Frogalisa, at the Vietfive cafe. I was there with my dad, and we were eating and stuff, and I have an idea that, what if I drew Olympia—that’s my frog buddy—as the Mona Lisa? But instead I replaced the Mona with the Froga. I was like, “Dad, could you lend me your phone? I need to look at a picture of the Mona Lisa.” He was like, “OK, sure.” I was looking at all the details. I did the hair on the frog. I did the clothing, a little shawl, and all the colors. We’re gonna do those as postcards next. 

The reason why I started doing art is my brain tells me to do it, or, like, I’m kind of fidgety, so I need something to use my hands with. I use clay a lot, or I just use a pen or pencil. Sometimes drawing wears me out. So I just relax my fingers for a little bit, but then I get back to work. 

We go to CAKE [Chicago Alternative Comics Expo], Zine Not Dead, Zine Fest. We go to those every year, and we just get a lot. My mom can’t stop buying stuff. We also go to Quimby’s. We love comic book stores. But my mom got me started with doing a zine. She’s like, “Hey, what if you make a zine, and you could give it to people to learn about Freddie Mercury, and you can also give it to your classmates?” So I made my Freddie Mercury zine on my iPad, [and] we printed it out. It was pretty good. We told about where Freddie Mercury lived, and he also went to the Hall of Rock and Fame when he died. Then we had another idea to do another zine after that. So we started doing more and another one and another one. Then we started doing stuff other than zines, like my stickers and T-shirts. 

If I make any other stuff, it will be sold at or just given to people at zine [fairs]. Last [year], we shared a table with our friend Oscar [Arriola] and his niece. He’s the one who started ZINEmercado. We’re gonna be sharing another table with his niece. Last time I made about 15 bucks. I’m hoping that I can make a tiny bit more—maybe some laundry money. We’re also selling them at our local record shop, Pinwheel Records in Pilsen. We’re also good friends with them. He said the Freddie Mercury zine sold out very fast. He shipped some of them across to a different area, like, I think, New York. I was like, “Oh, this is so cool.” So it’s a lot of fun. 

[I’m inspired by] other artists, artwork, but mostly cartoons, because I grew up watching Adventure Time. I also read manga. I read some of that, and then I’m like, “Whoa, dude, this is so cool.” So I gotta try it. I mostly like to do bubbly stuff because it just feels a little bit better. I do bubbly eyes, little smiley faces, and little rosy cheeks. I try to make any character look good-looking, like my dog in the Baguette thing. I took a really long time learning how to draw dachshunds, because I haven’t drawn dachshunds before, really. Like, oh, the nose looks like this. It’s long. Their legs are short. First, I kind of drew a dalmatian. But then I drew a dachshund after.

I use an iPad and pen, pencil, markers. Sometimes I do photography.

I like to do clay stuff, because I have a dollhouse. There’s this character that I made in preschool, and her name is Bobcat Girl. We made bottle cap people in pre-K. All you need is, like, two pom poms, some little yarn thing, googly eyes, and a bottle cap. For her house, I’m like, “Something’s missing here.” So I was thinking, I have all this clay, I do sculptures. I use air-dry clay. So I make planters for her. I do food for her, because [the] downstairs area is a cafe. She lets too many customers in there, too many spiders. [Laughs.]

I don’t do this as much as I used to, but I still make art out of clay and stuff—oh, and out of garbage. [In the future,] I might do the garbage utopia with bottles, a tower of cans. I say that you can use garbage for something, and you don’t have to just throw it away and forget about it, like, “Ope, done with that bottle.” I think everyone should do art crafts with whatever materials that they can find. Like even wood, you could do a block, just put a smiley face on it—art. 

Chicago is a pretty good spot to be an artist because it does have a lot of museums that have artworks changed. You get to see them change over time. You come back and you’re like, “Wow, new art.”

This was originally published in the 2024 edition of our People Issue, the Reader’s annual special of first-person stories, as told by your neighbors, classmates, and the weirdo at the end of the bar.