Own a Piece of Zoop
Own a Piece of Zoop
You CAN judge a book by its cover!
A wild celebration of the world of publication, LIBRARY is a semi-moveable feast of bibliomania. Within these covers lurk thousands of books, magazines and pamphlets printed over the last century. Salvaged and archived by Glenn Bray, the contents of LIBRARY celebrate a vast array of high and low art - from a first-edition Hemingway to off-brand adult magazines of the 1960s, with everything sacred and profane in-between.
Reproduced in shocking color, LIBRARY is a cracked kaleidoscope of the world of print, where the cover is king and the stuff inside is just an afterthought.
800 pages of heavy-duty brutal beauty, curated by one of the world's foremost collectors and publishers of the odd, overlooked, and fantastic in comic illustration and art.
$32,271
supported of $25,000
194
supporters
$100
144
claimed
LIBRARY Hardcover book
9x12" hardcover, 800 pages. To all printed media & pop culture fanatics: THIS IS IT - YOUR ONLY CHAN...
$130
41
claimed
LIBRARY Signed by Glenn Bray
9x12" hardcover, 800 pages. Bookplate signed by Glenn to be attached into the book. To all printed m...
$250
23
claimed
LIBRARY Retailer/Museum/Library Bundle
5 copies of LIBRARY at 50% discount. THIS IS IT - YOUR ONLY CHANCE TO OBTAIN COPIES of this historic...
This book project was undertaken partially due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2021. Since we were hunkered down in our bunker (home), I thought it’d be a good time to revisit my library upstairs and eyeball some of the books & magazines that I hadn’t looked at for quite a while.
In doing so, I started seeing visual threads of connections between oddly paired covers. What ended up in book form was the result of an almost year-long pursuit of connecting the dots, visually. Some pairings “make sense” more than others, but some don’t even try. That’s the way it should be, no?
I started sharing review copies with some peers, and will let them take it from here:
"Glenn Bray has a once-in-a-generation eye for the shocking sicko alien beauty/ ugliness that lies at the far edges of 20th century American culture. His LIBRARY will make you feel like you’ve been lied to your whole life, like you’ve seen only what they wanted you to see."
- Dan Clowes
“Glenn Bray puts the ‘F’ in ephemera!”
- Matt Groening
"In my town, growing up, was a scary hole in the wall that was a newsstand. I peeked in a few times. Someone was sitting behind a tattered curtain listening to a ‘learn french’ record with copies of the Midnight News pinned to a clothesline. Little boys and girls went in the door and traded their lunch money for grotesqueries. Glenn must’ve gone in there a bunch."
- Gary Panter
“Glenn Bray—America’s great collector of the 20th century’s Ephemeral Arts—has spent his life (and most of his discretionary income) putting together this Grand Library of Babble. It’s a Library where you’ve gotta judge all the books by their covers, cuz it’s ALL eyeball kicks—an obsessively curated junkyard of book covers, pamphlets and other oddball paper detritus that escaped the recycling bin.
Bray takes you on a totally unguided tour of the inside of his head, and it’s a wild ride down Maim Street! You’ll travel from the perverse underbelly of High Culture to the heights of the Lowbrow-Degenerate-Sleaze Arts. And if you survive the end of our civilization, this giant brick of a book offers all the clues you’ll need to figure out what made it worthwhile and why it crumbled.”
- Art Spiegelman
"There are many different sorts of collectors. Freud attributed the condition to bad toilet training, but he was often something of a kill-joy. Of course, at one end of the spectrum there are The Hoarders, those who turn their homes into dangerous obstacle courses, with treasures and trash combustibly mixed together. Anyone who ever walked through Bill Blackbeard's large Victorian home, The San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, a three-story house with only narrow paths between the stacked-high bound volumes of newspapers absolutely everywhere but the bathroom (for fear of water-damage), might have diagnosed him with that pathology. Though discerning and prescient (Bill knew the difference between trash and treasure better than most everyone) he tried to collect it All... and it has served my art form well.
• Frank Young and I worked on the book for a better part of a year and he produced the first layout.
• Blue Trimarchi went over his layout & made it more regimented.
• Scott Dunbier mainly forced us to stop trying to print the book on demand and approach Zoop instead.
Obviously, I know that much of this material is controversial, but please don’t come crying to me about how racist, sexist, pro-this or anti-that some of the images are. They were produced at a time in history when they were acceptable. I’m not condoning the fact that they were published, but we must acknowledge the fact that they WERE, and rather than hiding these images forever, I feel it’s of the utmost importance that current and future generations get to see them, so they won’t inadvertently repeat history.
This book is complete and will be going to the printer within a month after the end of the campaign. From there, expected delivery time to our fulfillment center is roughly four months from approve-to-print date, but with the current state of international shipping there may be delays. We're aiming for an end-of-2022 delivery date and Zoop will keep supporters updated throughout this process.
Yes! We encourage you to get more than 1 item! That could be multiple copies of the same reward, or you can mix and match rewards! There is no limit, unless otherwise stated in the reward description.
Our campaigns are for a worldwide audience unless stated otherwise in the campaign. All international orders are sold with the terms DAP (Delivered At Place). You are responsible for any duties and taxes required for the shipment's entry into your country. Our carriers may require you to pay taxes and fees related to importation and customs brokerage of your shipment -- but if your item is really low in value, it may fall under the customs de minimis of most countries. For more information, please contact USPS
Zoop does not store or keep your credit card info. Stripe simply holds the credit card info until the end of a successful campaign and then charges it. It is strictly for this one time use and won't charge it ever again.
You can either access the transaction through your account and click the cancel button, or contact us at hello@wearezoop.com and we'll cancel it for you and send back a confirmation email.
Cancellations of rewards or add-ons of $500 or more must be made before there are 72 hours left in the campaign. The reason for this is it can have a negative effect on the tally of the campaign. If it is a limited reward or add-on, there may not be sufficient time for someone else to purchase it, leaving the campaign possibly not funded. We ask for your courtesy of the people running the campaign when making these decisions.
Please use the notes section in the last checkout step or you could e-mail us at hello@wearezoop.com with that info during the campaign if you'd like to get it out of the way. Otherwise, we'll be reaching out to all supporters of rewards that require feedback shortly after the campaign is over.
If you want to make changes, you should first cancel your original order and then start over with a new one. If you don't do that and simply process an additional order, the way our system is currently set up you may end up being overcharged for shipping -- which we could remedy for you, but it just takes that extra step of catching it and crediting you back the extra shipping, so please try the prior way first.
Rewards are the priority items that the creators have chosen for the campaign. Add-Ons are meant to be secondary items that are 'unlocked' after you buy something from the Reward level. There are no restrictions on buying Rewards, but you can only buy Add-Ons if you've bought a Reward. Zoop sets this up under the direction of the creators. Some may choose to only have Rewards, some may choose an even balance of Rewards and Add-Ons, and others may choose to only have one or two Rewards with the rest of the items being Add-Ons.
Since we have an a la carte rewards system, shipping rates will vary from supporter to supporter. We use a weight-based calculation system in your checkout cart, though, so, after you enter your country, you'll be able to see it calculated in real time with each item you add.
No - this is it! We're essentially your in-campaign pledge manager. If you are interested in supporting these creators, this is the time to do it! And it's the exact reason we allow you to purchase as many rewards as you want during the campaign!