Posted on: June 5, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Proud Disgrace Fanzine #2 / $2.50 / :25 / Blueboy Productions, 4 Fox Run #1, Marshfield, MA 02050 / 

Waste of space. No, the writing isn’t atrocious, but the spacing of this issue is. With fonts that Helen Keller would find annoying large, there is a lot of trees that were needlessly sent to the mill for this issue. Proud Disgrace is a zine that discusses topics that aren’t necessarily covered that often anymore. For example, there is a heavy discussion about early punk that doesn’t take into consideration bands like Fugazi, but rather focuses on those non-political, often non-P.C. bands of the late seventies and early eighties (bands like the Dead Boys and Poison Idea). The editor – Jimmy Reject – had eir named dropped as if I was supposed to know eir, but nothing came to mind. It turns out that ey was a part of The Dimestore Haloes (okay…), but this is not borne out by the materials in the magazine. The entire zine has a feel as if it came from the late nineties; a staple in the corner, an unvarying font and poorly-reproduced photos. Unlike those zines, however, Jimmy goes one step further and dumps an entire story at the end of this issue. The decision to use this story (which, even at its long length is only an excerpt) is a little suspect as it rivals the entire length of the zine up to that point. I know, as someone who works for ever dollar I get, that I want more pieces, more topics and discussions; the story would be more of a success if it was shortened and further serialized in later issues of this zine.

Rating: 5.0/10

Leave a Comment