MagBog #6: Paw&Claw Ink
This MagBog's for the ARG-lovers, the late-night itch.io lurkers, the analog horror aficionados; if you're subscribed to Nexpo or Night Mind, you're in the right place at Paw&Claw Ink. Horrors only!
Do I even need to say anything? Look at the cover image.
Paw&Claw Ink is an internet-fluent addition to the horror zine scene. It’s a loving conglomerate of the horror subgenres we, as Gen-Z junkies, grew up with and continue to cultivate. It embodies our fondness for that treasured PS2 vintage and all the carefully corrupted ROM hacks. It’s a love letter to all our favorite ARGs, unfiction series, Blair Witch Project tributes, and indie horror games. It’s Catastrophe Crow, Local 58, Welcome to Night Vale, Shipwrecked 64, This House Has People in It, Unedited Footage of a Bear, and so many others.
One horror project I find particularly Paw&Claw-flavored is the absolutely fantastic (and severely underrated) Valle Verde by Alluvium on YouTube, all cuteness perverted and Bible-infected:
Now, none of this is a surprise — the editing team isn’t shy about their love of online oddities, nor should they be. In my opinion, indie projects produce some of the most creative and original concepts and muscle-clenching scares, because they’re not bound by monetary incentive or conventional rules. This is an opinion I’m sure the folks at Paw&Claw share; their looks aren’t just for market appeal. This is absolutely, and literally, for the love of the game.
Paw&Claw can be a little whimsical at times, a cheeky, rotten smooch — it’s not an absolute punisher, no Tender is the Flesh, it’s not here to ruin your life. But any horror fan knows we’re always in need of the next scream, ever craving our morsels of freak — that tasty little brush with death to get the blood stirring, and the strange, quiet comfort in monsterhood. That’s what Paw&Claw provides; they’re here to stick you with that coveted sense of creep, aiming it straight into your arteries, and they’re going to give it their absolute best effort.
Few other publishing houses would go through the hassle of separating their anthology into two sections, printing the second half upside down to align with its theme. That’s what Paw&Claw did with Above|Below.
That’s not just the back of the book. It’s a second cover — the Below of Above|Below — of course, featuring even more gorgeous and ardently Web-steeped imagery. I can’t say enough good things about this anthology’s creative direction, frankly. It absolutely blew me away when I received it in print.
But Paw&Claw is not simply its YouTube, itch.io, Steam, and Instagram roots, though they love them so. Paw&Claw is searching for your monsters of all kinds; as they declare in their About page, “We cater to the strange and horrific creatures that haunt our nights and days.”
Most prominently (as many of us queer horror fans are), they are curators of folk horror. Here you find bugs. Here you find malformed mammals and the long-dead. Here you find rotten fur and leaking corpses, maggots and eyeless skulls. Here you find a bit of druidry and necromancy.
While not typically known for their poetry submissions, I had to discuss the call-and-response pieces “Sonnet for a January Nightmare / Dream-Moose Replies” by Nóra McIntyre:
WITNESS ME
BLOOD-SOAKED BRISTLE
I HAVE STRIPPED MY BONES
AND WITH A SHAKE OF MY HEAD
FORGOTTEN THE LOSS.—Nóra McIntyre, “Dream-Moose Replies,” Above|Below Anthology
The feeling of ancientness, of genesis, invoked in this piece — it’s quite delicious. So dreamy and lovely and mossy, so old and earthy and unknown. And the call-and-response is brilliant, an excellent use of Above|Below’s theme. This might seem a departure from the digitality of Paw&Claw, but trust me when I say this (and you probably already know): folklore and religion are quite, quite comorbid with digital indie horror. Paw&Claw joins those worlds with reckless abandon.
What Paw&Claw represents is horror’s digital uprising, and its refusal to stay corporatized. Here lie all the technological and syntactical rebels, those who think inside the chatbox, the haunted queer who loves crochet and amphibians and botany and all their ugly sides, the scary things and the cozy cups of cocoa waiting for you after, those who have joined a game with no one in it, and felt their blood run a little bit cold.
Design: Absolutely incredible. The actual website is simple and classic to many publishing sites — Paw&Claw actually has a similar look, vibe, and color scheme to Fish Girl Collective — however, Paw&Claw’s book covers are where its design chops truly shine. Above|Below in particular features one of the best out there; the faithful depictions of the biblically-accurate angel, the noise-filtered woodland, repeated-glitch lettering, the hitbox and error window accents. It demonstrates where Paw&Claw is most effective — its appeal to an indie horror audience. Any Gen-Z reader will recognize the loving hallmarks of analog horror, liminal spaces, and abandoned video games in Above|Below, and throughout Paw&Claw as a whole. Even their Instagram posts are fittingly digital horror-flavored. Again, if you’ve watched Nexpo’s Petscop series, you’re in good company.
Vibe: Horror-exclusive and a child of the internet, Paw&Claw is a playful newcomer with a lot of spunk; it’s having fun, and you’ll have fun with it. It’s the best of Web 1.0 and the best of what came after. It’s horror with heart and heart with a twist — or maybe a twisted aorta. It’s folky, witchy, buggy, and freaky. It’s watching horror movies no one’s ever seen, heard of, or remembers. It’s soap scum mixed with blood. PT clones — a haunted Animal Crossing town. SCP-1762. A freshly killed pixel. Ethically-sourced taxidermy jewelry. Eye shadow in the shape of a spider. Broken turkey necks. Frogs that predict your cause of death, frogs that might actually be human. The concept of a cognitohazard. Ferns with ill intent. So many bugs in your eyes. Error.
Types of Work: Art and short fiction are featured in their biannual anthologies. General works include single-author collections and novels.
Editors: Michael Colk & Lyn Robertson (joint EIC).
Submission Fee: $0!
Cost to Read: Free online! Print editions are $8.99.
Three Paw&Claw Ink Themed Songs From My Playlist
“Little Dark Age” - MGMT
“Ancient Names, Pt. 1” - Lord Huron
“Cocoa Hooves” - Glass Animals
Huge thank you to Paw&Claw for including me in Station Three — its third horror anthology which, appropriately, is themed after horror games and the haunted internet at large.
I can’t wait to see what you do with the design!
Another delicious entry from the bog....