ANSWER Me!
ANSWER Me! was a zine published from 1991-94 by Jim and Debbie Goad. Its content was violent, misanthropic and occasionally satirical. It was widely popular and controversial both in and out of the zine community.
Issues #1-3 were published in Los Angeles, CA. Issue #4 was published in Portland, OR.
"ANSWER Me!" became nationally headline news in the late 90s when a man firing an automatic rifle at the White House was arrested and found to be carrying a copy of the zine. It was also the center of a censorship trial in Washington state around the same time.
Issues
Issue No. 1
Released October 31, 1991.
Features interviews, essays, rants and a short story. Topics include Alcoholics Anonymous, Sunset Strip, hip hop, and masturbation in literary history.
Issue No. 2
Released July 17, 1992.
Features a large article on serial killers and mass murderers. The magazine was investigated by the federal government after being quoted in the writings of Francisco Martin Duran, who attempted to assassinate President Bill Clinton in 1994.
Issue No. 3
Released July 19, 1993.
Features the article "100 Spectacular Suicides," which was linked to the deaths of three British tourists, one of whom contacted Jim Goad shortly before killing herself.
Issue No. 4
Released 1994.
Features a variety of articles on the subject of rape. The owners of the bookstore The Newsstand in Bellingham, WA were tried for obscenity after selling the magazine but not convicted, largely because prosecutors could not prove they knew the magazine was "obscene" when they sold it.
The Book
The first three issues were released in a collection with autobiographical introductory pieces by the Goads. It was published as ANSWER Me!: The First Three by AK Press. It was recently reissued, along with 60 pages of new material, by Scapegoat Publishing.
Chocolate Impulse
Chocolate Impulse was a "hoax zine" created by the Goads. Frustrated by the negative feedback they'd received from the zine community, the Goads wrote and distributed a pseudonymous screed against themselves (in which they claimed to be the lesbian couple "Valerie Chocolate" and "Faith Impulse"), going so far as to set up a fake address for it in Kentucky. The zine received some positive response from the publishers of Feminist Baseball and other zines that had negatively reviewed ANSWER Me!. In an article from issue #4 of ANSWER Me!, Jim Goad revealed the prank and insulted those who had taken the bait.
