Defiance! Redefining the Counterculture
A pleasurable surprise. Defiance! is shocking on the outside (bloody pig with apple in mouth on a spit) and well-written on the inside. The people (Andreas Gripp, Chris Barry and Camille DePutter) who put together this issue of Defiance! really thought about what they were doing. It’s radical, honest, refreshing and earnest. There’s no dogmatic re-gurgitation of political mantra. Instead, this juicy zine is filled with personal manifestos, status-quo-dissolving fiction and thought-provoking poetry. My favourite parts were the fake ads, poetry, and the short story “fag”. Yes, like all good zines, Defiance! has lofty ambitions: there’s fiction, non-fiction, poetry, subvertisements and cartoons. Hence Defiance! defies categorization. It’s neither lit-zine, nor rant-zine, nor comic, but a combination of all of these things, and well worth the four bux. I guess now I have to alter my perception of white-bread university town, London, Ontario. Huh. Two complaints: (1) don’t bother reprinting other people’s writing, stick to the original, personalized stuff; and (2) the plethora of cheesy fonts gave me a headache, stick to a couple per page, and use those creatively. (EPW)