bOING bOING advertisement in Factsheet Five #33 (1989)

I'm having fun going through old zines as part of my research for a book I'm writing on the DIY movement. Here's a page from Mike Gunderloy's zine-of-zines, Factsheet Five #33 (1989), which has an ad for bOING bOING. It also has a review of bOING bOING #1 on the previous page:

BOING BOING #1 ($4 CASH from Mark Frauenfelder, 712 Redacted St, Boulder, CO 80302): A delightful new zine for the neophiliac. Mark apparently was influenced by a lot of the same subversive literature that shaped my life, and now he's done something about it. The first issue features an interview with Robert Anton Wilson, book, zine and software reviews, wild predictions, comics, and much more. Nanotechnology, comics, libertarianism, drugs and sibling rivalry all play a part. An enjoyable romp through memespace.

It sure was fun poring over Factsheet Five with a highlighter. I'd order at least 30 different zines each time a new issue arrived.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

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The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Johnny Cat

I personally blame Harvey Danger for the demise of Zines. You and your cynical lyrics, you.
timquinn

Hey Mark! You lived over on Redacted? I was on Elided Street, couple blocks over. Man those were the days, eh?
grimc

I hate my brain. Is Boing Boing still for me?
The Life Of Bryan

You’ve come a long way, baby.
romulusnr

It is completely inexcusable that not all of these zines are now online.

I mean, if the Internet is going to replace the zine it ought to open up the inherited archives
pinehead

Pretty cool. It’s funny; when I first came across this website, I thought maybe it was a somewhat unknown-but-bookmark-worthy blog. That guess was based on the fact that there weren’t (m)any bottom-feeders clogging up the comments section. 20 years, jeez. That’s amazing.

Also, I look forward to your book, Mark. Pleez poast when it’s out.
maoinhibitor

The New York State Library in Albany, NY has a fanzine library donated by Mike Gunderloy!

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/friends/nysln497.htm#Zine

“The collection was assembled by Mike Gunderloy, editor of Factsheet Five, a newsletter about zines,” explained Billie Aul, senior librarian at the State Library. “When Gunderloy announced his intention to donate his collection to a library, we got real excited. Our Library is right across the river from where Mike published his newsletter so we were the first ones there and got the collection.”

I used to log on to the Factsheet 5 BBS with my Commodore 64, back when I was 16. Oh, underground culture geek joy!
Elayne Riggs

It’s so great that Factsheet Five hasn’t gone down the memory hole! Mike told me its creation was inspired by a feature I did in my zine INSIDE JOKE, but he definitely took it far beyond those humble beginnings!
Mark Crummett

I thought “1989? Why, that was only…20 YEARS AGO!” God, I’m old.
stevehops

I love zines! They are like websites before computers. Check out your local university library, many of them have Zine collections.

Here’s a TVSCIFI Zine from 1966 (a parody, but you get the idea):

http://www.tvscifi.com/content/view/58/28/
Anonymous

Is that a CAPTCHA on the bottom?
Glossolalia Black

Maximum Rock N Roll! Factsheet Five! Cometbus! Not Your Bitch! HOMOCORE! On Our Backs! What a great time the late eighties and early nineties were for zines… all pre-Internetty and whatnot…
eltonbong

very cool…. the zine I miss was BEN IS DEAD …. that was so great
Cat Chew

By the way, here’s a zine wiki:
http://zinewiki.com/
djrobroy

I bought a Fact Sheet Five Reader on Amazon and marveled that BoingBoing was one of the few (only?) zines that make it to the internet and thrived.

Anyone know of something like FF5 but for blogs? I found Ask and Ye Shall Receive… but is that the only legit blog review site?
feralman

What a stretch: from Factsheet 5 to an entire channel on an airline! And all with total integrity intact. That’s really an amazing thing. Congratulations Boing Boing!
Anonymous

Woah, I’m tripping on this. In search of FS5 archives (wishful thinking) because I have an envelope of orders for my indie comic, “The Reason She Left” dated April, 1991, all excited by Mike Gunderloy’s glowing review, but alas, no copy of that review! (I’m re-publishing and wish I had that quote!)

But here’s the weird thing. How did I not know BoingBoing was from Boulder? Mark Frauenfelder? Any relation to Wendy, my 9th grade Biology Lab partner at Boulder High? You moved to Los Gatos, as I vividly recall… “The Cats.”

Kristen Caven
kbc@littlepig.com
Brainspore

I’m not too ashamed to admit that my eye was drawn to the ad for “Boob Girl #1″ before I saw the one for BOING BOING.
Xeni Jardin

F’n awesome.
Anonymous

Oh, the highlighter and F5!! Those were the days.

btw, it doesn’t show up in the search, but there’s at least one copy of Boing Boing in the Duke zine library (and Bonnie, Grrl is in the searchable database!)

@romulusnr: the sad truth is, a lot of zine creators don’t have copies of their own work; and the archives and libraries that may have them don’t have the rights to put them up (or any way to contact the creators for permission). I think it was too ephemeral of a movement. I agree totally, I’d love to see more online from people who do have their own stuff archived though!!
Bonnie

Wow! I miss Factsheet Five! They reviewed every issue of my zine Grrl!
ChrisGrayson

Kudos Mark, that’s frame-worthy.
slobot

nice… blogs before they were blogs. you guys are cool school.
danwarning

Does anyone remember the She’s the Boss zine? Or Evasion?
Yamara

Ah, Factsheet Five. Second only to the Jerryco catalog for idiosyncratic weirdness.

And fish bones! That’s a style that needs to come back.
Cat Chew

20 years ago!? Holy crap! Thanks for the reminder. Nothing has ever beat the excitement of finding a new FS5 in the mailbox. I think I need to start rooting around in the basement archives. If you hear me oohing and aahing and giggling like a mad thing, do not disturb!

Oh, looking forward to your book on the DIY movement, too.
tsdguy

Noooooo. I threw out my collection of Factsheet 5′s many moons ago. This and Locus were my favs way back in the 60s. Fun to read whilst programming on the Processor Tech Sol-20 at “The Computer Store” and wonder how I was so lucky as to have 8K available on the GE timesharing system at school.

I still have his How to Write a Fanzine book. Remember writing to Gunderloy to ask why it was taking 6 months to get a copy. 8-)

Does anyone know of an Interwebs archive of scanned old issues?
fataltourist

I find that BOOB GIRL #1 and HEADLIGHT COMICS #1 description hilarious.
Anonymous

It bugs me in the back of my brain that Freefanzine and other APAs I read and wrote for aren’t googlable.
Anonymous

I really hope that universities and other reference libraries are collecting zines, because they were an absolutely unique form of publishing that existed only for a decade or so, and by their nature were never acquired by public libraries or other respectible institutions. Those of us who sent away for them at the time are now starting to reach “a certain age” and our children and heirs are soon going to have to deal with file boxes of “Grrl” and “Holy Titclamps” in the back of the basement. It would be nice to think that some of them will be saved for posterity rather than just going directly into the recycling bin.
RightReverendRex

wow- FactSheetFive- I had totally forgotten about FF5. I think i may have a couple in storage along with our old underground rag “Too Much Good Air”.

I need to get out there next week after i get back from Seattle this weekend.

cool…
DocBadwrench

This is quite a blast from the past. I still have a copy of a Boing Boing in my closet somewhere from back in the old pre/early-internet zine days. Keep these nostalgia posts coming. :)