Zine Printer Refuses to Work with Any Royal Fonts After Scandal

In a dramatic show of typographic resistance, independent zine printer LeafCycle Press in Burlington, Vermont, has declared a moratorium on all “royal, imperial, or throne-adjacent fonts,” following the Bernie Sanders maple throne zine scandal.

The shop’s founder, Gage (they/them), issued the ban via hand-stamped email: “Effective immediately, we will no longer accept submissions using fonts such as Trajan Pro, Baskerville, Garamond, or any serif that evokes institutional weight or old-world authority.”

Acceptable alternatives include “Liberation Mono,” “Anarcho-Slab,” and a newly developed typeface called “Mutual Sans,” which was hand-drawn by a zine collective in the woods using only charcoal and feelings.

One recent submission was rejected outright for using Times New Roman. “It’s the boot of colonial empire on our linguistic throats,” said LeafCycle’s volunteer layout coordinator, who asked to be identified only as Fern.

Conservatives mocked the ban as “peak progressive insanity,” while local poets hailed it as “a bold dismantling of typographic feudalism.”

To meet demand, LeafCycle now offers a workshop called “Font Liberation: Ending the Crown Glyph Crisis,” which includes meditation, open mic printing, and a group sob over Helvetica’s complicity.

When asked what fonts Bernie himself prefers, one staffer said, “He strikes me as a Courier man. Honest. Monospaced. Anti-elitist.”

As the print revolution continues, a poster near the press reads: “NO THRONES, NO SERIFS, NO PROBLEMS.” Below it, someone scrawled, in Comic Sans: “Long live the lowercase.”