textfiles/magazines/MISC/obscure-03

>Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 20:20:48 -0500 (CDT)
From: James P Romenesko <obscure@csd4.csd.uwm.edu>
Subject: Obscure Electronic #3

W e l c o m e     to.......

O  B  S  C  U  R  E       E  L  E  C  T  R  O  N  I  C    # 3
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.............................................................
OBSCURE is edited by Jim Romenesko. This electronic zine of the
publishing underground is also available in print form for $2/issue
from POB 1334, Milwaukee, WI 53201. The print version doesn't duplicate
this electronic zine. Try it out!
.............................................................

## This Issue: Where's Full Force Frank, the psychopathic publisher? ##
           
    FULL FORCE FRANK was the zine world's most notorious publisher --
until his mysterious disappearance in late summer of 1991. In his zines,
SINGIN' DOSE ANTI-PSYCHOTIC BLUES and LIVIN' IN A POWDER KEG AND GIVIN'
OFF SPARKS, he promised to commit a massacre sometime this decade. In
every issue of his popular zine, he ranted and raved about his killing
plans. He was so determined and so outspoken about them that even the FBI
came looking for him -- or so he said. But he stopped publishing without
warning two summers ago. What happened?

-----------
QUOTES FROM FRANK:

    "Nope, this zine ain't the Readers Digest
or the Farmer's Almanac. I offer no limits and I
accept no limits. This zine salutes and pays homage
to violence of all sorts. In particular, this magazine
attempts to acknowledge and glorify the courage of
those rare people that turn their thoughts and dreams and
fantasies into reality, mass and serial killers."

    "I hope everybody who gets this zine will write
and tell me what it did to their minds and souls. I 
want to know. As long as this zine has had some effect
on you, I'm satisfied. The greatest tragedy in the 
world is when a person denies or suppresses his own
reality. I have every intention to fulfill my own
reality [of committing a massacre] during my lifetime.
When and where and who and how is my own private 
business. Meanwhile, I continue to publish these
zines to feed and nourish my own dead soul."
---------------------------------------------------

                   HOW I GOT TO KNOW FULL FORCE FRANK

    In March of 1990, I received an unsolicited package of zines from
Frank -- they were issues of SINGIN' DOSE ANTI-PSYCHOTIC BLUES. He sent
this letter with the publications: "My of my readers suggested that I send
you a copy of my zine for possible review. So, being a sucker for free
publicity, I'm enclosing copies. ....WEll, gotsa go! Take it sleazy dude!
Hope ya find my rag interesting."

    Well...I did. And I found it frightening, too. I read it just before
going to bed and woke up that night screaming. No lie. Frank's zine was
murder-obsessed. What bothered me, I think, was his essay called "Handy
Hints for a Messier Massacre." It was exactly that: a how-to guide for
people thinking about going on a shooting spree.

    A few "handy hints" from Frank:

    * "The making of a successful massacre involves the following: good
guns, a powerful and large quantity of ammunition, good shooting tecnique,
element of surprise attack, inability of victims to escape from confined
area, good mental state of gunman, attacking a poorly defended location,
single-minded and clear-cut goal. In my opinion, this is the basic
checklist of the ingredients needed for a successful massacre. Of course,
there are no guarantees. Hell, you can invade a nunnery and one of the
sisters might have a loaded automatic underneath her habit and blow you
away even before you start your massacre!"

    * "I like the 9mm specialty rounds. These bullets cost $1.25 each, but
if you are going to do a massacre, I cannot see money being a viable
consideration."

    * "It is important that you get people down on the ground as you begin
the massacre. This is so that they cannot try to escape or attempt to
wrestle with your weapon away from you. At the start of a massacre you
never aim at anyone's head. You shoot in wide arcs. Covering all of your
targets and you aim at the midsection of the body. You hit people in the
lower chest, stomach, groin and upper thigh. The midsection. This is the
most effective type of fire at the start of a mass killing."

    * "The next item is 'Good Mental State of Shooter.' To some people it
may sound strange to refer to a 'good mental state' during a mass murder
rampage, but I see nothing strange about it. There is absolutely nothing
inherently insane about mass murder. It is a conscious, rational decision
that a person reaches after considering all his options and deciding that
the act of killing a group of people is a worthwhile and logical thing to
do based on this person's own reality and life experience."


    ----> Reading this for the first time, I wondered: Do I call the FBI
or do I try to interview Frank. I chose the latter and sent him a note
(along with a copy of OBSCURE), asking for his phone number. A few days
later he replied.

    FRANK'S LETTER:
    "I was looking forward to your review of my zine in OBSCURE, but in
the past two weeks a major problem has surfaced! It's the FBI! Yes, the
goddamnded Federal Bureau of Investigation has discovered my zine and they
are fucking me up majorly! Things are still not resolved, but it seems
highly likely that my zine is soon to be dead. I guess it's time for me to
go into 'Deep Cover,' as the spies call it. Sink underground along with my
psychosis! With this fuckin' FBI surveillance and harassment, I plan on
cutting out of this zine publishing scene.
    "I am not a regular publisher. I am, in fact, a psychopath. And if
there is one thing that a psychopath does not need, it's to be harassed by
the FBI. I've got to look out for Number One. And you all know who Number
One is. #1 is me. Nobody on the face of the Earth will cover my ass. I've
got to cover it myself.

    But two weeks later, I received this second letter from Frank:

    "About ten days ago I sent you a letter advising you that my zine was
dead due to a FBI Sting operation. Well, I've just spent the last ten days
talking to my lawyer and getting some legal information...and the bottom
line is this: My zine is reborn! Praise Satan! There are several changes.
I have a new mailing address and I now require a signed disclaimer before
I will send anyone my zines...."

............

    Frank declined to give me his phone number and requested I not write
about him. I went against his wishes, believing that the alleged FBI
pursuit of him made him even more of a story. I HAD to write about Frank.
I told readers this about the self-proclaimed psychopath:

-- He was sexually abused as a child by his father. Because of that, he
claims he can drink white milk because it reminds him of semen.

-- He has a foot fetish. He once said: "I practice only two things within
my mind - killing people and torturing/worshipping women's feet and shoes."

-- That he's in his mid-20s, lives in Brooklyn, and loses money on his
zine. He said in one interview: "I lose about $500 on every issue of my
zine. But that's not a problem. Got plenty of money. Don't ask how I have
plenty of money, but I have it. Never worked a day in my life and never will."


    In my article, I also published excerpts from letters that Frank sent
me. That made him angry and his response to the OBSCURE article about him
came in the form of a ten-page letter to me. He wrote: "I am sitting here
reading over issue #6 of OBSCURE for about the tenth time and lemme tell
you, I am one pissed-off psychopath!!! ...You had absolutely no right to
reprint my private letters to you!! Anything in my zine, yes. But what you
did, by reprinting private letters that I sent you, was compromise my
entire new set-up at this new mailing address. Are you stupid or are you
just a jerk?? How dare you reprint a letter of mine that I had handwritten
to you in which I brag about having defeated the FBI and sign off the
letter with 'Death to the FBI." ...What in the name of Satan possessed you
to reprint such a letter? At best, you are incredibly stupid. At worst,
you are an arrogant piece of pig-licking shit who deliberately printed the
letter in the hope that the FBI would resume their harassment. Effective
immediately, you are being dropped from my mailing list and will never
receive any future zines from me."


    FRANK WAS TRUE TO HIS WORD. He never wrote to me again, or sent copies
of his new zine, LIVIN' IN A POWDER KEG..  He put a few issues of that and
then, without warning, stopped publishing. He also discontinued his
pen-pal relationship with many zinesters, never giving an explanation. His
disappearance fueled considerable speculation. What happened to Frank? I
asked several zine editors who knew Frank what they thought. Here are
their replies:

    SCOTT WILLIAMS, editor of PSYCHO JOE and longtime pen-pal
with Frank, says he has a few ideas. "I can only guess, but I think
probably he just switched lifestyles to become more accepted so he can live
out a life and not worry about being destroyed. I think he could have
gotten married to some psycho girl or gotten in a relationship with some
psychotic woman. I hope he's just in hiding. I hope I hear about him on the
news in the next six months -- hear that he's become the most infamous mass
murderer in the history of the world."

    JULIE LINDEMANN, former editor of CATHOLIC GUILT, believes that Frank
was a federal agent. "What better way for the FBI to gather information on
slippery, subversive individuals than through a zine published by a
self-proclaimed psycho? I found the carefully constructed quality of
Frank's publications disturbing -- everything from content to quality
didn't seem right. Would a true psychopath produce these fastidiously tidy
tomes on murder and mayhem that appeal to quirky characters tucked away in
America's nooks and crannies? It seems perfectly plausible that a
government agency could fabricate a character named Frank to function as
an informant. A stroke of genius! Frank's publications could be
deliberately designed to elicit a response from the target audience of
'psychopaths.'"

    MARK HEJNAR, a videomaker who has a video being released soon that
features Frank prancing around in his apartment, waving an Uzi as he rants
about his massacre-in-the-making. He says this: "It's just my personal
belief that he got sick of it all and that he had too many contacts for
his own good."

    JOE VALIQUETTE, media liason officer for the FBI: "Our office has
never had anything to do with him."

.........

EPILOGUE: Frank's alive! ANSWER ME! publisher Jim Goad reports that he
received a letter from Frank earlier this year. It will be published in
the next issue of ANSWER ME!, due out this month. Frank doesn't offer any
explanation for his disappearance, though, according to Goad. What
happened? We still don't know.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Get the FRANK-PAK from OBSCURE. It includes a copy of Frank's zine, his
interview in APOCALYPSE CULTURE, the OBSCURE feature on Frank, and a Xerox
of his sticker. Just $4 to Jim Romenesko, POB 1334, Milwaukee, WI 53201.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++