Review of Dang

Dang
24 pages, stapled, black and white.
April 2012 issue.
It had been awhile since I went to record store. I mean a real record store, where they sell vinyl almost exclusively. There’s a great one called Trailer Space Records on Austin’s east side where I picked up a few 12 inches and my friend bought the new Natural Child album. Roaming around I always check the free section where random people lay down show flyers, stickers, buttons and the occasional zine. Back when I started the zine that is now H&H you would find tons of zines at any record store, pizza shop, coffee shop or random hang out. I was happy to see this one. There’s very little text in this zine other than a few words scrawled over an image or three as it’s mostly collages. The collage work consists of heavy inked images taken from photographs, magazines and various unknown sources. The artist behind Dang is Daniel B. Clark II and has concentrated this issue around motor parts and motorcycles. Carburetors, leaning Hondas and cowboys fill the pages with a mysterious theme that doesn’t take long to flip through if you’re only interested in a glance. Although, like all collages, the longer you look at them the more you’ll enjoy them until you realize that some of the work is actually pretty funny and enjoyable. The style seems to be a true cut and paste, not photoshopped, judging by the heavy cut lines in a few of the collages. There’s also  not much info about the why of the zine other than the author and his location (Corpus Christi, TX).
This is the only issue of the zine I’ve even seen so I’m not sure if the motorcycle theme runs throughout. I guess you can try to get your own copy of this zine by contacting Daniel Clark directly as he’s listed his email on the last page of the zine: dandanclark at gmail.com.
Overall, it was good to find this very simple and image based zine. It’s good to know people are still making them and although we’re not in the zine crazy times of the mid-90’s. Maybe there’s a comeback on the horizon, but it’s going to take a lot more reviews like this to tell the creative people of the world, “Hey, we’re picking up  your zines, reading them and enjoying your efforts.”
-Travis Catsull