Possessed Zine Review and Interview

Kill Pretty had a booth at the San Diego Zine Fest and largely went unnoticed. Zine Fairs these days are mostly artists with collections of their art in zine format or comic book artists. Long gone are the days of punk kids with weirdo zines spouting their homegrown philosophy...or so we thought.

Right before we left, we found a copy of Possessed! It harkens to the early days of Kill Pretty when the whole magazine was talking shit and having fun. Possessed has everything you want in a xeroxed zine like malt liquor reviews, shit talking and Misfit trivia. Most importantly it’s honest and has a voice. Even if that voice is screaming into the abyss.

We met up with the creator to get a little more information on this zine from another time...

Kill Pretty: How/why did Possessed first get started?

Possessed: I started Possessed when I was 18, and it was originally started as a local punk zine with contributions from friends of mine. The first one had demo reviews, drawings, and an article about duendes or bigfoot or something. I got over that and just started making Possessed by myself as a vehicle to talk about shit I hate or shit I like and pretty much whatever else. I started tabling at San Diego Zinefest around 5 years ago and just kept doing it since.

KP: How has Possessed grown over the years?

Possessed: Possessed started growing when some random dude from LA (you) hit me up to get interviewed for his website that I'd never heard of. Just kidding, I actually don't really know whether you mean "grown" as in readership or as in improvement, because the readership probably hasn't grown. If anything it's probably shrank, because I print less quantity with every issue. I'll probably change that though. In terms of growth in therms of the writing, Possessed five or six years ago sucked fucking ass. The ideas were really half baked. Now they're about three quarters baked. I'll learn.

KP: Why do you still make them?

Possessed: Every zine I make, I'm asking myself the same fucking thing. When I look at other zines I don't really see other people doing what I'm doing, and when I finally put Possessed out there, I'll see people reading it and laughing. So, those two factors really push me. I also just like making shit, I'm just really bad and getting up and finally doing it.

KP: What's your favorite trivia fact about the Misfits?

Possessed: There's so fucking many. One of them is that at Doyle's high school graduation, him and his older brother, Jerry Only (who was already graduated at that point) walked down the aisle to get Doyle's diploma with big mohawks and leather jackets, flipping off everyone in the student seats. That's gotta be one of the most tryhard, pathetic stories I've ever heard. Another good one is that the only reason Earth AD sounds more hardcore than the rest of their stuff is that Danzig wrote it that way because he thought the band would make more money. That definitely ranks as one of his more deluded decisions. If you look at your punk band, that wears make-up and sings about Elvira, and think the way to make more money is to write music that a large majority of your country thinks is literally just noise, you need to get your head checked.

KP: If someone wanted to start their own zine what advice do you have?

Possessed: If you want to start your own zine just please for the love of God be honest. Put effort into being yourself. Beyond that, just take a piece of paper and write about whatever you want. It doesn't hurt to have a point of view that you haven't found in whatever you're looking at.

KP: If people want to buy Possessed how can they get it?

Possessed: Hit me up at possessedtelevision@gmail.com. I tend to procrastinate on things but if you hit that email with your address then I will for sure send you a zine. If you're in San Diego you can find it at Burn All Books, which is the sickest place to get anything anywhere and you should go there regardless.