#proof i exist

I also wanted to post for Nov 5th but I get no time to really draw because Uni assignments are draining my soul 🥸. Luckily this semester finishes in 3 weeks

Things I found while packing (the mags & zines edition):

Issues 1 & 2 of The Fall (of Culture), c. July & August 2000. It was a newsprint punk rag featuring reviews & interviews & the like; one of the editors was a barista at the Kokomo Caffe in Chicago, which was the nexus of my life between July-December 2000. (Which doesn’t sound like a long time, but so much happened in that timeframe, and a lot of it revolved around the Kokomo.)

The 25th anniversary edition of PUNK Magazine, c. 2001. (Is it giving me feelings that if 2001 was the 25th anniversary, that means next year is the 50th? Yes, and that feeling is, my god, we’re all so old.)

Muckbound, a novel by Liam Idiot and Gen Schock, c. 2001. Gotta love a ‘novel’ that’s Xeroxed like a zine and bound together with staples and duct tape. (I stole that idea for my own zine-novel, a year-ish later.) Liam published War Against the Idiots zine, Gen’s zine I can’t remember the name of, but they were both rad people and friends of mine and this one makes me soooo nostalgic.

The Number One Special. This one makes me hella nostalgic, too, though I never actually met the folks behind this zine, afaik. I found it at Quimby’s in 2001, and it’s all about hanging out at Punkin’ Donuts (the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Clark & Belmont), and other punk stuff, like taking a road trip to Milwaukee to hang out with the punks there.

Proof I Exist issues #1-#3, c. January 2002, June 2002, and February 2003.

And Proof I Exist #17 (March 2014) & #42 (October 2023). Yes, I Know Billy (these aren’t even close to all the issues of PIE I have, not to mention his other zines), and have for a very very long time. In fact, PIE #1 contains a story about the second time he and I hung out.

Safetybin #1. This was by a guy named Shane, from Burlington, IN, whom I met at the Anarchist Bookfair in Chicago in 2002.

Gunmoll #3, by Terra. Another Chicago-based zine friend of mine, in the early ‘00s; another zine that makes me nostalgic.

Crash: The life and death of a GERM. A really excellent comix zine about Darby Crash.

Flirtations for Ladies and Gentlemen. A zine containing excerpts from an antique etiquette book, which I got from a zine vending machine in Montreal in September 2003.

Issue #40 of 'Proof I Exist' - a pocket-sized perzine by zinester Billy McCall.

This issue, they explore themes of fear, loneliness, depression and how to conquer it all!