FactSheet 5 History

[Will Dockery]

No history of F5 is complete without the story of Mike Gunerloy,
founder and publisher of F5 from 1982-1991. In the '80s, it was
Gunderloy that kept the small press together. A usenet post from August
28 1991, announcing the change that marked the end of the golden age of
zines:

Anybody know what ever happened to Gunderloy?

15 August 1991
Factsheet Five is changing publishers.
All material, except for Poetry, Comics and Music should go to the

new

Hudson Luce
PO Box 1163
Cincinnati, OH 45201-1163
[phone]
Effective immediately, all Poetry, Comics and Music for review

should

Bill Paulauskas
PO Box 10
Woodhaven, NY 11421
[phone]
Columnists should send sample columns to the Editor-in-Chief *and*

to

Ben Gordon
123 Saratoga Road, #128
Glenville, NY 12302
All inquiries regarding subscriptions, advertising, and

distribution

should go to Hudson. All current subscriptions and prepaid ads

will

continue. Donations are always appreciated and will be

acknowledged in

an appropriate manner.
The basic bulk mail subscription rate will be $20.00 for a

six-issue,

one-year subscription, by bulk mail. A First-Class mail

subscription

will cost $30.00 per year. Other subscription rates are available

upon

request. Sample copies are $4.00 each, which will also be the

cover

price. Ad rates for #45 will be the same as published in #44;

after

that there will be some changes.
#44 is the last issue to be published from Rensselaer, and it was
shipped the week of August 3. #45 will come out from Cincinnati in
late November 1991. It will be dated as January/February 1992,
however. Deadline dates for that issue will be 15 October 1991.
Hudson H. Luce
244 West McMicken St. #1
Cincinnati, OH 45214
Our thanks to all who have supported Factsheet Five over the past

nine

years, and we look forward to a long and fruitful future of

continued

reviewing.

The letter was signed by former co-editors Mike Gunderloy and Cari
Goldberg Janice as well as by Luce and Paulauskas.
Does anyone know the background to this surprise announcement? For
those of you unfamiliar with Factsheet Five, it is a long-running
review of literally thousands of underground and self-published

written

and recorded works from every corner of marginal culture. Its

founding

editor, Mike Gunderloy, has performed miracle after miracle, bringing
Factsheet Five out in his spare time and on no budget to speak of.
Factsheet Five is a major hub in a vast papermail network that rivals
or surpasses Usenet in its diversity.
While I'm encouraged that someone intends to keep Factsheet Five

alive,

I'm disturbed by this announcement because it doesn't give any
explanation of why Mike and Cari have given up the 'zine. Nor does

it

say what will happen to Mike's priceless archives (reportedly Mike

has

kept and loosely cataloged everything he has received in nine years

of

reviewing) or other peripheral projects such as the Factsheet Five

BBS.

I can only hope that Mike is moving on to bigger and better things

and

that Factsheet Five remains in good hands.
Anyone have any more information?
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada")

[k***@yahoo.com]

There was a distinct difference between the two versions of Factsheet
5. I remember first hearing about, then seeing, the Gunderloy version
with its tiny print and underground feel and look. ("Factsheet 5?
What's Factsheet 5?" Even the name was compelling.) It had a sense of
mystery about it, of real samizdat; that something culturally under the
surface was really happening. There was a trade-off in taking it
mainstream-- seeing slick copies on the shelves of monopoly chains took
off most of the edge.
That said, Seth Friedman was a nice guy who put a lot into putting F5
and zinedom on the map.

[f***@yahoo.com]

Post by k***@yahoo.com
There was a distinct difference between the two versions of Factsheet
5. I remember first hearing about, then seeing, the Gunderloy version
with its tiny print and underground feel and look. ("Factsheet 5?
What's Factsheet 5?" Even the name was compelling.) It had a sense of
mystery about it, of real samizdat; that something culturally under the
surface was really happening. There was a trade-off in taking it
mainstream-- seeing slick copies on the shelves of monopoly chains took
off most of the edge.
That said, Seth Friedman was a nice guy who put a lot into putting F5
and zinedom on the map.

I printed up my first poetry chapbook in Summer 1983 and carried them
around person-to-person, and the only thing close to a zine I knew of,
or had contact with, at least, was Trouser Press, which, amazingly, I
could buy right here in Shadowville. I new of comix & sci fi zines from
the 1970s, and still read Comics Journal... I drew comix as much as I
wrote poetry & songs, in those days, hardly at all, now.

Through Comics Journal, I discovered Clay Geerdes' Comix Wave
newsletter, but that focused exclusively on comix, no other zines...
but since the zine I did back then, Shaman Newspaper included
everything, comix, poetry, stories, et cetera, I got involved in 1984,
along with fellow Shadowville artists Tom Snelling, pd wilson, Jonathan
E. Jones.

By 1985, the mini-comix small press was booming, Matt Feazell got that
going, and there was a pretty sucessful reviewzine called S.P.C.E. from
Tim Corrigan, which, though I didn't know at the time, was patterned
closely on Factsheet 5. It was through S.P.C.E. that I learned of F5,
actually, through a small somewhat dismissive review from Tim... and
that's when the lights came on: *here* was full out small press, of
*all* kinds... it turned out that the hundreds of mini-comix were only
a small part of a scene where there were hundreds of poetry zines,
music zines, personal zines, and what were known as "crudzines"...
where at S.P.C.E. there were, that I can remember, about three poets
among the comix creators [Ian Shires with Mysterious Visions, still
being put out today, btw, and Rick Howe, who several years later moved
to Shadowville for a few years, and me] at Factsheet 5 there were at
least hundreds of poets, each issue bringing more in.

1985-1991 were great years for "snail mail", always trading, and once
in a while selling stuff back and forth. It came to a crashing halt in
Summer 1991 when Gunderloy handed it over to Hudson Luce, who put out
one pretty crappy issue, and vanished. By the time Seth took over [I
wonder if anyone remembers Roller's "bootleg" F5 that attempted to fill
the void after Luce? I'm sure Seth does, because it got ugly for a
while, there, legal actions threatened, et cetera...] over, the
momentum was gone for me, and I drifted more and more into the "real
world" again, making music and poetry in the local scene, helping kick
start live music and poetry in Shadowville, eventually leading me to
the place I am now. I avoided the internet until 1998, and didn't run
across Usenet until sometime in 2002... which was as much a revelation
as F5 was in snail mail days.

Hmmm. Pleasant memories of long ago times... Gunderloy's Factsheet Five
and the golden age of small press.

Never surrender! Take no prisoners!
Will
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The Shadowville/Netherlands project:
http://www.kannibaal.nl/shadowville.htm

"Mirror Twins":
<http://www.lulu.com/items/29000/29085/preview/Will_Dockery_-_03_-_Track__3.mp3>

"Black Eagle Lady" by Will Dockery & Henry Conley:
http://www.lulu.com/items/84000/84578/1/preview/Henry_Conley_-_06_-_Black_Eagle_Lady.mp3