In the late spring of 1990, Jake and Anthony were in the 8th grade at Junior High School 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In an effort to impress a girl, they formed a rock band called the Mangled Puppies. In all except name, the Mangled Puppies was not a band. The boys could neither sing, nor dance, nor compose lyrics. Realizing their own shortcomings, they decided to steal the lyrics to "Punk Rock Girl" from the Dead Milkmen, and pass the song off as their own. This ploy was successful for three days, until the girl heard the song at a party and realized she had been had.

The following September, Jake went to Stuyvesant High School on 15th Street in the East Village, while Anthony began school at Bronx Science. In an effort to keep in touch, they formed a zine, and named it for their fake band. Thus, the Mangled Puppies Newsletter was born. After the first issue, Josh joined the staff of the zine as publisher, and Patrick was introduced as art editor. Together with Jake and Anthony, the four comprised the staff of the short lived publication.

The Mangled Puppies Newsletter published a total of seven issues. Content of the zine was mainly satire of the sort popular with 13 and 14 year old boys: drug and sex references, sophomoric humor, allusions to the music of the day. A popular failure, the magazine never found a readership far beyond the fellow students in the Stuyvesant and Bronx Science classrooms of its founders.

The layout and design of the zine grew progressively more complex during the course of its publication. Starting with simple newsletter software, Josh soon discovered the power of desktop publishing, and began introducing more complex layouts and illustrations. At the same time, Patrick began expanding his contribution to the project, creating increasingly more complex covers and comic strips. Jake and Anthony continued to produce the prose pieces for the magazine, and well as short items such as humorous quizzes and classified ads. Printing of the magazine was done at the Park Slope Copy center through the entire run of the project. Stock paper was used for the covers, while normal copy weight paper was used for the inner pages. All issues were printed double-sided to save money, and the longest issue was 14 pages in length.

Issue 6 was the most controversial of The Mangled Puppies Newsletter's short run. In the original version, the boys printed a fairly slanderous prose piece about a couple of girls they had been beefing with at school. The fictional piece involved a number of inflammatory scenes: in one, the girls' mother is depicted as having an extramarital affair. In another, the girls' dog is killed in a ritual sacrifice. Needless to say, when Jake's dad got a look at the original copy, he forced the boys to destroy the issue. Jake saved a single copy, which is reproduced as "Issue 6" on this site. The edited version of the same issue, in which the boys changed the names of their antagonists, is reproduced as "Issue 6A".

The Mangled Puppies Newsletter went on to produce only one more issue, Issue 7, which in many ways represents the culmination of the project. Afterwards, frictions that had been building between the four boys caused the group to split. Jake and Josh went on to produce three issues of "The Maise Men" zine, with content fairly similar to what they had produced for The Mangled Puppies Newsletter. Even in the best light, it must be seen as a poor attempt to continue the same creative magic that imbued the first publication. A creative as well as a popular failure, it ceased publication in late 1991.

In the years that followed The Mangled Puppies Newsletter, Jake and Josh remained close friends, but fell out of touch with Anthony and Patrick. Jake went on to Columbia University and afterwards became involved in the dotcoms, and later got his MBA. After college, Josh got involved in direct marketing and later became a technology millionaire. Anthony graduated from NYU and began working in real estate. Patrick went to the School of Visual Arts and graduated with a degree in animation. Presently, Jake and Josh live in lower Manhattan. Anthony lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Patrick's whereabouts are unknown.