Tboy Mag: Issue #1

Thursday, July 10th, 2025

The front cover of Issue 1 is a collage of images. The background is red and made up of album covers and various images of records and graffiti that is barely visible underneath everything else. There are two people outlined in black like shadows, one of which has a real image of a red, star-shaped guitar surounded by multicoloured lines in front of it and large letters in white crayon are written across the figure spelling out “The Boys Are Alright”. From their head purple, pink and blue lines are bursting out. Behind them and covering the top left side of the image, stars, moons and various planets have been drawn in white to look like space. The second figure, to the right of the first, is standing upright and has a real image of a skateboard embedded in their torso, with white lines drawn around it to look like smashed glass. Instead of the person's head is a multicoloured star. Above them is the multi-gender symbol made to look like the anarchy symbol, and is coloured in pink, white and blue to mimic the trans flag. In the middle of the image, on the right, is a real image of a cigarette with smoke drawn coming out of it and swirling across the entire page. There is a red circle and cross going through the cigarette. On the bottom left of the image is another figure, this time outlined in white and not coloured in like the other two. Behind them is an album cover that depicts a cartoon tiger head eating a cartoon person, and two top surgery scars have been drawn across their chest in white. Beside them is the title of the Zine Tboy Mag which is written in a font that looks like cut out newspaper letters. Beside the writing is a round yellow circle with two crosses and a smiley mouth drawn in black to look like a face. Walking across the title, which is angled across the page, is a shadow figure of a bear.

Cover, created by Jamie (He/Him)

Tumblr: @ghostboyravenight

A large grey square sits in the middle of the white bacground. Within the grey square is a black, stick-figure like drawing of a person. They are sitting down, with their arms resting on their knees. Their face has no features. Next to them, in large, black, hand-written writing is the word “icarus.”
9-panel comic set on a white background. The first panel shows a squiggly mass of black surrounding the tiny figure in the corner, still in the same sitting position. The second panel shows the figure with a white thought bubble next to its head, within which is a drawing of the sun and a pair of wings. Both are colourless and drawn in black. In the third panel, the bubble is growing larger. In the fourth panel, the bubble has now consumed the figure, which is sitting inside. The white bubble takes up half the page, the other half still being black squiggles. The fifth panel is the same, but now the black and white mass, with the person inside, is now growing smaller against a grey background. In the sixth panel, it is a tiny ball within the grey square. The person is just a black dot, next to the small sun and pair of wings. The seventh panel shows the ball has turned into a very tiny, thin oval, almost like a cigarette sitting on the ground. Everything within is too small to see, but from the oval potrudes a large, white speech bubble (square-shaped) that takes up most of the grey background. Within the speech bubble, is the sun and pair of wings again.The eighth panel shows the same thing, but the speech bubble has now disappeared. Finally, the ninth panel shows nine of these oval, black and white masses, all with speech bubbles protruding from them showing some combination of the wings and sun. Some have both, some have one sun or one pair of wings, and some are empty.
Another 9-panel comic. The first panel shows the oval again, tiny against the grey background with nothing but a small, empty speech bubble potruding from it (white and round-shaped). In the second panel, two triangle mountains have been drawn in the left hand corner, snow-capped with white but otherwise grey like the background. The mountains and the tiny oval are having a conversation. Square-shaped speech bubbles potrude from the mountains this time, showing a question mark and an ellipsis. In the third panel, the oval responds. Its round speech bubble now contains the drawing of the sun. In the fourth panel, its speech bubble contains the drawing of the pair of wings. In the fifth panel, its speech bubble contains both the sun and the pair of wings. In the sixth panel, the mountains respond. Their square-shaped speech bubbles now contains the sun and the pair of wings. In the seventh panel, both the tiny oval and the mountains have speech bubbles, this time showing one of the hands from the Creation of Adam painting, in which two hands are reaching out to touch each other. In the eight panel, only the tiny oval has a speech bubble containing a hand, but in the last panel, both speech bubbles appear with hands that are now reaching out far enough to touch each other. The speech bubbles have merged together.
A four panel comic. The first panel returns to the sitting figure, tiny in the right hand corner and surrounded by a black mass of squiggles. A thought bubble potrudes from it, with a sun and a pair of wings drawn inside. The second panel shows the same thing, but within the thought bubble, there is now a hand holding a bottle of pills. The pill bottle has the picture of the sun and wings on its label. The third panel shows the white thought bubble now surrounding the figure, and the two hands from the Creation of Adam are shown once more reaching out towards each other. The last panel depicts the same thing, but above the hands is the bottle of pills with the sun and wings drawn on its label. The figure has a tiny question mark drawn above its head.
A four panel comic, against the white background. The first panel is completely grey, with the same stick figure from the first image still in the sitting position. There has been no change, except that the words have disappeared. The second panel is the exact same, except that a tiny bottle of pills has appeared next to the figure’s head. The third panel is completely grey and shows two hands. The first hand is tipping the contents of the pill bottle into the second hand. The contents are small, black anchors and six of them are falling onto the palm of the second hand. The bottle is labelled with a drawing of the sun and wings. The fourth panel shows the figure again, still in the same sitting position. However, it is now surrounded by black static, which is made up of anchors.

Pages 2-6, created by Zeto (He/They), 25

Tumblr: @missthesnow1533

A poem, written on a background of an image of the night sky. At the bottom of the image, in the foreground, there is a shadowed figure standing with their back to the camera, staring up at the sky. The poem is written in a standard font, in a faint blue, almost white, colour. The title, in much bigger font and underlined, read “Don’t Die Wondering.” At the very bottom of the page, the credits read “— Martin Meinert (He/They), 20.”

Don't Die Wondering

one week, I saw some graffiti;
“don’t die wondering,” scrawled in loud,
messy letters on a park bench,
and I thought of days, years, and months
wondering:

is it worth facing
my dreams and my nightmares to feel whole?
if I cut my hair, if I buy
new clothes, if I bare my soul and 
tell the world-

I wondered if I
would fold, if fear would come, if I
would run, lie and say, “I was wrong,”
hide myself again in shadows. 
But then,
then, I wondered if I
would bloom, if creating myself 
would free my mind from that wrongness,
and if I would stand tall and not
alone.

I stand on the edge of
a leap of faith after many
others. I wonder; if I do
not love and sculpt my heart to his
true shape,
will I die wondering?
Page 7, written by Martin Meinert (He/They), 20
A digital drawing of a masc-presenting person. They are a light blue colour with no visible facial features, except for a stream of white tears falling from where their eyes should be. In front of them are jail-like bars, coloured a light pink, which they are grabbing as if imprisioned within a pink cage. The background is completely white and all three colours make up the trans flag.

Page 8, created by Ethan (He/Him)

Twitter/X: @ethandoes_art

A story written on a dark green background, with faint blue swirly lines like smoke going across the page and light blue stars and small dots scattered around. The font colour is a bright, light blue. The title is underlined and reads “The Princess and The Knight” under which, in slightly smaller font, reads “Part 1”. Both the Title and “Part 1” are written in a more fancy, fairy-tale like font than the rest of the text. Underneath that, in even smaller font, reads “By Forgotten Writer (She/Her). The story then begins and spreads across the entire page. The text is in a standard, Times New Roman font. At the bottom left of the page, the writer’s Tumblr is credited and reads “Tumblr: @/forgottenwriter”.

The Princess and the Knight

Part 1

There once was a princess who wanted to be a knight. Now, in those days of high chivalry, such things were not uncommon. Princesses were raised on stories of mighty and heroic knights going out to fight monsters and slay dragons. Indeed, the kingdom in which she lived had a rather famous story about the greatest of the old dragons, who dwelt on the very borders and clashed with numerous knights only to send them home one after another defeated. It was hoped one day, there would be a knight mighty and heroic enough to slay the dragon.

But the princess was told this knight would not be her.

"You are too small," said her father, an old and weary king. "You cannot wear armour. You will fall off your horse."

"I can learn to wear armour!" She said. "And I can learn to ride a horse! I can be taught!"

"Perhaps you can be," he said. "But you will never be big and strong like a knight. You will always be small, and so, you will always be worse. A knight is a grand thing to be, my love, but it is not your fate. One day, you will rule over the kingdom as a queen. Ladies will look up to you across the land, you will be the very image of grace and poise. Is that not a grand thing to be?"

"I suppose it is," the Princess agreed, though her heart was not in it. It seemed to her that it was a horrid thing to be. She didn't want to be poised and graceful! The thought of balls and dresses filled her with a primordial dread she couldn't put her finger on. But it seemed to her that her path had been chosen before she was even born, and so she saw no point but to argue.

The next day, she went to the champion of her father's knights, the High Lord of the Order of the Broken Horn was a strong, stout man. His face was scarred from when he had encountered a bear in his youth, and his brown hair was streaked with early grey as a result of the stress from the battles he'd fought.

"You cannot be a knight," he said. "For you are already a princess."

"I don't want to be a princess! I want to be a knight!"

"Yet a princess is what you are," he said gruffly. "And you must accept it. You were born to wear that dress and bear that crown. That is your duty. Just as mine is to heft a sword a wage war in the name of your father. I cannot take you and make you into something you are not. You cannot be a knight."

"But... but why?" The princess was in tears now. She heaved and sobbed in desperation and— to his credit— the Knight Commander was not a cruel or callous man. He reached out to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“We cannot always be what we want,” he said softly. “I would not have been a knight, but my father was a knight, and so was his father. I hate war and blood, and I hate killing, even in the name of duty. But war is in my family, and death traces my line. What can I do but follow along? Such as it is with you. You were born for gold and silk. You will have a fine life; a beautiful life. One day, I will die in some muddy field and be forgotten, and you will raise good, strong sons and daughters. Is that truly such a bad thing?”

And the princess had to concede that it was not. At least, not the way that he put it. She didn’t want to die, after all, and the image he conjured made her sad. For though, he was a sad and taciturn man, he had always looked out for her even when her own father didn’t. The Knight Commander was a hero and a legend, and the fact that he did not feel happy made her even more upset.

Yet, for all that, it made her want to be a knight even more. For if even he was not happy, then why should she follow the same steps and condemn herself to a life of this? Silver and gold? It sounded like chains!

Page 9, written by Forgotten Writer (She/Her)

Tumblr: @forgottenwriter

A collage of images on a black background. In the middle of the image, taking up most of the space, is a pencil drawing of a person’s torso. They are very hairy and have two top surgery scars across their chest that have been drawn in red and made to look like heartbeats on a heart moniter. The top of their legs are visible, with ripped jeans and two patches; one of the patches, on the left leg, has the anarchy symbol on it. The sexond patch, on the right leg, is a real image of a patch that says “punch nazis” on it. The middle of their body is covered by large writing set against a neon green background that reads “Get weirder” in all caps. Next to the writing, on the bottom left side of the image, is a clipping from a newspaper article with writing that barely visible underneath a giant anarchy symbol that’s been drawn over it in black crayon. On the bottom right side of the image is a picture of Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the UK, with his eyes crossed out in black ink. Written across him in red crayon are the words “fuck your government” in all caps. The person’s head has been replaced by a large drawing of Saturn, which is coloured purple and blue, which is surrounded by stars. Next to this, on the right, is the multi-gender symbol drawn in green with a cross in the middle. Above the symbol is a real picture of an electricity box, with grafitti on it that reads “Are you who you want to be?” The picture has been outlined in light blue crayon. On the top left side of the page is a square image of the sky with clouds, in pastel blue and pink colours. Written across the picture in white are the words “I’m waiting 4 u”. At the very top left of the image, above the picture of the sky, are the words “You are your creator” in all dark blue caps.

Page 10, created by Jamie (He/Him)

Tumblr: @ghostboyravenight

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