Here’s something about Factsheet Five I got published somewhere, probably in Small Press Review:
Micro-Zine Compendium
Factsheet Five
#47, Spring, 1993, 112pp.;
Box 170099, San Francisco
CA 94117. 6 issues/$20.
For almost two years the bible of the micro-zine world, Factsheet Five, has been an on again, off again, proposition. It seemed not to have much chance of survival when founder Mike Gunderloy abruptly abandoned it in the summer of ‘91 (due mainly, I gather, to overload, and too much generosity with free subscriptions). Some five months later a personage with the intriguing name of Hudson Luce, who had talked Gunderloy into the rights to F5, managed to publish one fairly decent issue of it. He then became only intermittently available, though vowing to continue the magazine for at least five or six more issues. Eventually he sold his rights for a dollar to someone in San Francisco who started an electronic version. I’m not sure how the present editor of the regular version, Seth Friedman, got in on the act, but early this year, when almost no one thought F5 would ever see print again, he got another issue out. And now, against all odds, he’s published his second.
This is cause for celebration for anyone interested in what’s going on in the off-off-Broadway of the publishing world, for Factsheet Five has been covering that world with almost insane thoroughness since 1982. During that time, it has been pretty much the sole general source of information in the U.S. on underground comicbooks, punk rock zines, sci fi fanzines, queerzines (as their own editors call them), conspiracy theory pamphlets, experioddica, animals’ rights magazines, and scores of other equally special-interest publications–including, most estimably, political and religious hate magazines (because, under Gunderloy, F5 was always a courageous champion of freedom of speech, even for those with whom Gunderloy was in violent disagree- ment).
The latest issue is as thorough as any of Gunderloy’s, for it contains over 1300 reviews. It is also indexed, a welcome improvement. Its paragraph-sized reviews tend to summarize contents, not discuss them, but they are informative and well-written. Since Friedman has taken charge, F5 has not printed anything but reviews, aside from Friedman’s editorials, and one short article he wrote on food. Consequently, it can be rather monotonous at times for a non-fanatic. But it includes drawings, cartoons and wacked-out ads, and I’m sure that with time it will bring back at least some of the kinds of columns and features that made Gunderloy’s F5 so sparklingly more than a data-bank. In the meantime, it’s reassuring to those of us who publish or write for micro-zines to know that it will continue to be there to chronicle our doings on a relatively visible, national basis.
Tags: Bob Grumman, Factsheet Five