Death Zone #1

Zine: Death Zone

Zine: Death Zone #1
From the collection of John Drummond

Date: June 1985
From: Gütersloh (West) Germany
Format: A-4 sized, folded in half, stapled. White paper with two color cover.
Type: Offset printed, typewritten text, consistent title graphics. lots of photos, very legible.
Pages: 28

By: Magnus Nanneson, Uli Niewoehner, Markus Rieger, Claus Grabke
Art:
Photos: Claus Grabke, Markus Rieger, Ralf Middendorf, Morten Frodin

Featuring: Andreas “Frosch” Gartner, Soren Aby, Martin Van Doren, Bruno Peeters, Markus Meyer. Massimo Van der Plas, Mathias Bauer, Robby Butner, Uli Niewoehner, Pom Fritz, Elger Butner, Ralf Middendorf, Stefan Grohe, Martin Wagner, Florian Boehm, Nicky Guerrero, Magnus Nanneson, B. Dittmann, Lance Mountain, Claus Grabke, John Codrington

Spots: Tropica, Swedish Skateboard Camp, Helsinge ramp, Gütersloh ditch.

Highlights: It looks very proper, with clean layouts and custom typesetting. A very slick product. It’s from the collection of John Drummond, but he must have nicked it from Rick Charnoski, because Rick’s name is written on the cover with a ballpoint pen.

Extras: Death Zone #1 sprang pretty much fully conceptualized from the heads of it’s creators. They aren’t listed in a masthead, but from the names at the end of individual articles, it appears to be the work of Magnus Nanneson, Uli Niewoehner, Markus Rieger and Claus Grabke, with additional photos from Markus Rieger, Ralf Middendorf and Morten Frodin. Death Zone is nicely printed in black and white with a two color cover. Issue one already has a masthead logo and unified title graphics. Almost all the text is typewritten and there is very little hand drawing in there.

The content is pretty much exclusively vert ramp action, with the exception of a selection of almost street spots deemed “disappointments” because they have things like banks that don’t drop all the way to the flat, leaving a gap. Ironically, they actually build spots like that on purpose in some skateparks these days. There is also a short section of ditch skating.

One thing very much on the minds of the creators, the U.S. skateboarding industry’s involvement in promoting and sponsoring skaters in Europe, and it’s not all positive. Also very interesting, an editorial Death Zone Says:

…fake skaters are:

People who once skated back in ’78 and now want to buy one of your used decks becasue “It’s happenin’ again Dude!”

People who tell you not to touch their brand new day-glow fish-tail becasue “it might look ugly when it’s scratched!”

People who have never skated alone.

Then it goes on to say:

Due to some strange reasons some guys keep thinking that more and more humans should start to skate, so that one day there will be a big skate-population on Earth… “Death Zone” asks: What for? we skate for ourselves. We don’t want to share our spots with persons in Adidas-tracksuits and a soccer attitude…

Ha! Sounds like it was written in 2004!