Part One. It's a winter day in Michigan, Christmas, 1965. Sherman Poppen remembers, "My wife was pregnant and told me I had to do something to get my two daughters out of the house or she was going to go crazy. When I looked at that hill, I thought why not?" Having previously watched his daughter's frustrated efforts to stand up on their sleds, Poppen hit the workshop. He bolted two skis together, attached a rope to the nose and a leather strap to fit over the rider's shoes. The "Snurfer"...

Once upon a time in a land far, far away there was a girl who scribbled angry yet incredibly witty passages in her school notebooks. Her friends also made angry scribblings and occasionally drew comics. The girls would furtively compare these rantings, amidst much cackling, in the back row of their Senior Psychology class. But that's as far as it went because they didn't have a book like Zine Scene. All right, I'll admit it: the girl was me, and her friends were my friends, and we were the...