Underground comix
Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality, and violence. They were most popular in the United States and in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.
Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Barbara "Willy" Mendes, Trina Robbins and numerous other cartoonists created underground titles that were popular with readers within the counterculture scene. Punk had its own comic artists like Gary Panter. Long after their heyday, underground comix gained prominence with films and television shows influenced by the movement and with mainstream comic books, but their legacy is most obvious with alternative comics.
History
United States
The United States underground comics scene emerged in the 1960s, focusing on subjects dear to the counterculture: recreational drug use, politics, rock music, and free love. The underground comix scene had its strongest success in the United States between 1968 and 1975, with titles initially distributed primarily through head shops. Underground comix often featured covers intended to appeal to the drug culture, and imitated LSD-inspired posters to increase sales.These titles were termed "comix" in order to differentiate them from mainstream publications. The "X" also emphasized the X-rated contents of the publications. Many of the common aspects of the underground comix scene were in response to the strong restrictions forced upon mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, which refused publications featuring depictions of violence, sexuality, drug use, and socially relevant content, all of which appeared in greater levels in underground comix. Robert Crumb stated that the appeal of underground comix was their lack of censorship: "People forget that that was what it was all about. That was why we did it. We didn't have anybody standing over us saying 'No, you can't draw this' or 'You can't show that'. We could do whatever we wanted".
Antecedents
Between the late 1920s and late 1940s, anonymous underground artists produced counterfeit pornographic comic books featuring unauthorized depictions of popular comic strip characters engaging in sexual activities. Often referred to as Tijuana bibles, these books are often considered the predecessors of the underground comix scene.American comix were strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics and especially magazines edited by Harvey Kurtzman, including Mad. Kurtzman's Help! magazine, published from 1960 to 1965, featured the works of artists who would later become well known in the underground comix scene, including R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. Other artists published work in college magazines before becoming known in the underground scene.
1962–1968: Early history
Early underground comix appeared sporadically in the early- and mid-1960s, but did not begin to appear frequently until after 1967. The first underground comix were personal works produced for friends of the artists. Perhaps the earliest of the underground comic strips was Frank Stack's The Adventures of Jesus, begun in 1962 and compiled in photocopied zine form by Gilbert Shelton in 1964. It has been credited as the first underground comic. Shelton's own Wonder Wart-Hog appeared in the college humor magazine Bacchanal #1-2 in 1962. Jack Jackson's God Nose, published in Texas in 1964, has also been given that title. One guide lists two other underground comix from that year, Vaughn Bodē's Das Kampf and Charles Plymell's Robert Ronnie Branaman.Joel Beck began contributing a full-page comic each week to the underground newspaper the Berkeley Barb and his full-length comic Lenny of Laredo was published in 1965. Another underground paper, the East Village Other, was an important precursor to the underground comix movement, featuring comic strips by artists including Crumb, Shelton, Kim Deitch, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, and Art Spiegelman before true underground comix emerged from San Francisco with the first issue of Zap Comix. Zap and many of the first true underground comix publications began with reprints of comic strip pages which first appeared in underground papers like the East Village Other, the Berkeley Barb, and Yarrowstalks.
1968–1972: Underground's "Golden Age"
In February 1968, in San Francisco, Robert Crumb published his first solo comic, Zap Comix. The title was financially successful and almost single-handedly developed a market for underground comix.Within a few issues, Zap began to feature other cartoonists — including S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, Spain Rodriguez, and Gilbert Shelton — and Crumb launched a series of solo titles, including Despair, Uneeda, Big Ass Comics, R. Crumb's Comics and Stories, Motor City Comics, Home Grown Funnies and Hytone Comix, in addition to founding the pornographic anthologies Jiz and Snatch.
The San Francisco Bay Area was an epicenter of the underground comix movement; Crumb and many other underground cartoonists lived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the mid-to-late 1960s. Just as importantly, the major underground publishers were all based in the area: Don Donahue's Apex Novelties, Gary Arlington's San Francisco Comic Book Company, and Rip Off Press were all headquartered in the city, with Ron Turner's Last Gasp and the Print Mint based in Berkeley. Last Gasp later moved to San Francisco.
By the end of the 1960s, there was recognition of the movement by a major American museum when the Corcoran Gallery of Art staged an exhibition, The Phonus Balonus Show. Curated by Bhob Stewart for famed museum director Walter Hopps, it included work by Crumb, Shelton, Vaughn Bodē, Kim Deitch, Jay Lynch and others.
Crumb's best known underground features included Whiteman, Angelfood McSpade, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural. Crumb also drew himself as a character, caricaturing himself as a self-loathing, sex-obsessed intellectual. While Crumb's work was often praised for its social commentary, he was also criticized for the misogyny that appeared within his comics. Trina Robbins said: "It's weird to me how willing people are to overlook the hideous darkness in Crumb's work... What the hell is funny about rape and murder?" Because of his popularity, many underground cartoonists tried to imitate Crumb's work. While Zap was the best-known anthology of the scene, other anthologies appeared, including Bijou Funnies, a Chicago publication edited by Jay Lynch and heavily influenced by Mad. The San Francisco anthology Young Lust, which parodied the 1950s romance genre, featured works by Bill Griffith and Art Spiegelman. Another anthology, Bizarre Sex, was influenced by science fiction comics and included art by Denis Kitchen and Richard "Grass" Green, one of the few African-American comix creators.
Other important underground cartoonists of the era included Shelton, Wilson, Deitch, Rodriguez, Skip Williamson, Rick Griffin, George Metzger, and Victor Moscoso. Shelton became famous for his characters Wonder Wart-Hog, a superhero parody, and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, a strip about a trio of "freaks" whose time is spent attempting to acquire drugs and avoid the police, both of which first appeared in the self-published Feds 'N' Heads in 1968. Wilson's work is permeated by shocking violence and ugly sex; he contributed to Zap and created the infamous The Checkered Demon, a portly, shirtless being who is frequently called upon to kill the various demented bikers, pirates, and rapists who populate Wilson's universe. Spain worked for the East Village Other before becoming known within underground comix for Trashman and his solo titles Zodiac Mindwarp and Subvert. Williamson created his character Snappy Sammy Smoot, appearing in several titles.
Underground horror comics also became popular, with titles such as Skull, Bogeyman, Fantagor, Insect Fear, Up From the Deep, Death Rattle, Gory Stories, Deviant Slice and Two Fisted Zombies. Many of these were strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt.
The male-dominated scene produced many blatantly misogynistic works, but female underground cartoonists made strong marks as well. Edited by Trina Robbins, It Ain't Me, Babe, published by Last Gasp in 1970, was the first all-female underground comic; followed in 1972 by Wimmen's Comix, an anthology series founded by cartoonist that featured Melinda Gebbie, Lynda Barry, Aline Kominsky, and Shary Flenniken. Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli's Tits & Clits Comix all-female anthology debuted in 1972 as well.
1972–1975: Controversy and recognition
By 1972–1973, the city's Mission District was "underground headquarters": living and operating out of The Mission in that period were Gary Arlington, Roger Brand, Kim Deitch, Don Donahue, Shary Flenniken, Justin Green, Bill Griffith & Diane Noomin, Rory Hayes, Jay Kinney, Bobby London, Ted Richards, Trina Robbins, Joe Schenkman, Larry Todd, Patricia Moodian and Art Spiegelman.Mainstream publications such as Playboy and National Lampoon began to publish comics and art similar to that of underground comix. The underground movement also prompted older professional comic book artists to try their hand in the alternate press. Wally Wood published witzend in 1966, soon passing the title on to artist-editor Bill Pearson. In 1969, Wood created Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon, intended for distribution to armed forces bases. Steve Ditko gave full vent to his Ayn Rand-inspired philosophy in Mr. A and Avenging World. In 1975, Flo Steinberg, Stan Lee's former secretary at Marvel Comics, published Big Apple Comix, featuring underground work by ostensibly "mainstream" artists she knew from Marvel.
Film and television began to reflect the influence of underground comix in the 1970s, starting with the release of Ralph Bakshi's Crumb adaptation, Fritz the Cat, the first animated film to receive an X rating from the MPAA. Further adult-oriented animated films based on or influenced by underground comix followed, including The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat and Down and Dirty Duck. The influence of underground comix has also been attributed to films such as The Lord of the Rings and Forbidden Zone. The animation sequences – created by Help! contributor Terry Gilliam – and surrealistic humor of Monty Python's Flying Circus have also been partly attributed to the influence of the underground comix scene.
Despite the form's influence on the culture at large, however, by 1972, only four major underground publishers remained in operation: the Print Mint, Rip Off Press, Last Gasp, and Krupp Comic Works. For much of the 1970s, Rip Off Press operated a syndication service, managed by cartoonist and co-owner Gilbert Shelton, that sold weekly comix content to alternative newspapers and student publications. Each Friday, the company sent out a distribution sheet with the strips it was selling, by such cartoonists as Shelton, Joel Beck, Dave Sheridan, Ted Richards, Bill Griffith, and Harry Driggs. The syndicate petered out by 1979; much of the material produced for it was eventually published in the company's long-running anthology Rip Off Comix, which had debuted in 1977. Griffith's strip, Zippy, which had debuted in 1976 as a weekly strip with the syndicate, was eventually picked up for daily syndication by King Features Syndicate in 1986.
Critics of the underground comix scene claimed that the publications were socially irresponsible, and glorified violence, sex and drug use. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Miller v. California, ruled that local communities could decide their own First Amendment standards with reference to obscenity. In the mid-1970s, sale of drug paraphernalia was outlawed in many places, and the distribution network for these comics dried up, leaving mail order as the only commercial outlet for underground titles.
In 1974, Marvel launched Comix Book, requesting that underground artists submit significantly less explicit work appropriate for newsstands sales. A number of underground artists agreed to contribute work, including Spiegelman, Robbins and S. Clay Wilson, but Comix Book did not sell well and lasted only five issues. In 1976, Marvel achieved success with Howard the Duck, a satirical comic aimed at adult audiences that was inspired by the underground comix scene. While it did not depict the explicit content that was often featured in underground comix, it was more socially relevant than anything Marvel had previously published.
By the mid-1970s, independent publishers began to release book-length collections of underground comics. Quick Fox/Links Books released two important collections, The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics, published in 1974, and The Best of Bijou Funnies, released in 1975. The Apex Treasury featured work by Crumb, Deitch, Griffith, Spain, Shelton, Spiegelman, Lynch, Shary Flenniken, Justin Green, Bobby London, and Willy Murphy; while the Bijou Funnies book highlighted comics by Lynch, Green, Crumb, Shelton, Spiegelman, Deitch, Skip Williamson, Jay Kinney, Evert Geradts, Rory Hayes, Dan Clyne, and Jim Osborne. Similarly, and around this time, the publishing cooperative And/Or Press published The Young Lust Reader, a "best-of" collection from Griffith and Kinney's Young Lust anthology, and Dave Sheridan and Fred Schrier's The Overland Vegetable Stagecoach presents Mindwarp: An Anthology. And/Or Press later published the first paperback collections of Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead comics.