Annotated 1960s UNDERGROUND COMIX: Crumb, Shelton, Bode, Deitch
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Underground Comix were at their most popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. They weren't sold at newsstands or supermarkets. You bought them at head shops which dealt in drug paraphenalia like pipes and rolling papers as well as incense, black light posters, bootleg concert tapes etc.
Comix (with an X) were printed in small numbers, often only distributed locally and were undocumented. There's no way to tell how many different titles popped up for an issue or two and then vanished entirely. When I was actively collecting them at flea markets, yard sales and so forth, I'd constantly be finding Comix no one had ever heard of and which I couldn't find listed anywhere. They were mostly amateur products.
The main appeal of Comix is that they did not answer to advertisers or the Comics Code Authority. They made DC and Marvel look bland and wishy-washy. Comix could and did show extreme gory violence, nudity and sex in graphic detail that sometimes reminded you of a medical textbook, and drug use of every sort. The characters using drugs weren't punished at the end of the story, it was just shown as a part of people's lives.
Even more, many (if not most) Comix were intended to be read by people who were tripping or stoned. There were elaborate intricate drawing, sudden twists and jokes that made more sense if you were high.
One comic had tiny photos of a bug scattered across random pages and I laughed thinking how many readers confusedly tried to brush the damn things off. One comic had its pages out of order, with instructions at the bottom of the page, "Go to Page 11". You can imagine how lost readers became trying to follow that story.
I was looking for comix not too long ago. The way some people like to tell their own deeply personal stories is so different than regular comics its a real shame they go completely unappreciated.
Even more than regular Golden Age and Silver Age comics, Undergrounds did not survive in great numbers or good condition. They were read by many people who had no interest in collecting or preserving them. They were ephemeral. I only have a few left myself and I used to have stacks of them.
A lot of the Comix were misogynistic, and that's not a word I use lightly. Merely criticizing women for their behavior as a group or individually doesn't qualify as misogynism in my opinion. But Undergrounds often showed rape, torture or mutilation as amusing or arousing, which IS misogynistic. To be fair, they just as often depicted the most horrendous fates befalling men as well. No one was safe in Comix.
Their good points? Well, many Comix weren't brutal or mean but they were funny. They were experimental. They were mind-blowing in the sense that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was intended to be. Some the creators, like Gilbert Shelton or Vaugh Bode, were talented storytellers, with an inventiveness that regular comics weren't allowed to try.
Maybe the equivalent today is webcomics? That's not an area I've explored much/
Wonder Wart-Hog Visits the Ghetto (not in Prague)
Again, with Gilbert Shelton's Wart-Hog. Anyway, this is from the first issue WONDER WART-HOG in 1967, a regular magazine which ran a total of two issues because the world was not ready for it. Also because Shelton moved away from the affairs of giant super-powered brutes toward the misadventures of the more human and accessible Freak Brothers.
It'd probably be mini comics at Small Press Expo or something like that.
We might mention here that these are black versions of Snuffy Smith's wife Loweezy and their son Jughaid.
A couple of comments. It was common in 1960s comics, movies etc to blame some social problems on outside forces. I guess it was more comfortable to think that Communist spies or alien invaders (or in this, humanoid rats) were causing the trouble, rather than facing the idea that we had screwed everything up ourselves. I remember stories in comics and TV shows where everything was fine once teen runaways were returned home; the idea that the kids needed to get away from drunken abusive parents was never addressed, it was always just some minor misunderstanding that a hug would smooth over.
If you are a riff-raff criminal, you would probably prefer being punched in the face by Captain America or entangled in Spider-Man's web than to deal with this Wart-Hog guy.,
OP, can you recommend some collected editions of underground comix? Aside from Crumb, whose work is pretty straightforward to get your hands on.
I want that on a t shirt
You can get one with the full six panel page for $25.
I'm afraid not. I used to have a few boxes of Undergrounds but I bought the issues one at a time when I went into head shops FOR RESEARCH ONLY. And I haven't been to the nearest comics shop in over a year now,
Ohh, forgot to post the full page.
But I am impressed that Shelton blames a lot of urban unrest of that era on the media (mostly newspapers back then) deliberately stirring things up with inflammatory headlines. This has been the case as long as there have BEEN newspapers. If you think THE NEW YORK POST is useless biased rag, seeing Hearst papers from the days of yellow journalism makes THE POST look well-researched and thoughtful. Today, cable news seems mostly dedicated to getting people riled up so they keep watching. All the intense coverage of murder trials, especially those which will cause some race-baiting, is just sad. As hour after hour shows infuriated shrews yelling at the camera (not mentioning anyone specificially, you understand, whatever happened to Nancy Grace), what's really going on in the world that affects the lives of millions is never even mentioned.
No wonder fewer people get their news from TV every day. Researching the news online has its own pitfalls, but it's thousands of times better. I don't count on any one source much anymore except for maybe BBC World Service but general searching of topics works well.
That's a shame. I don't get to travel much and my local shop had a grand total of 2 comix. Guess I'm stuck with mycomicshop.
The mayor in this story looked familiar...It's Mr. Bribery, from the Dick Tracy comic strip
. dicktracy.wikia.com
People at the time probably got the reference the way they'd spot that a character in a comic is spoofing someone from GAME OF THRONES. But a few years have passed.
And the libraries are closed! (I miss them more than anything else.)
Amazon might have some collected Kim Deitch, I'm tired of Crumb to be honest,
Seriously, I miss when the news was boring and you didn't turn it on with dread. "Bridge closed for repairs..Heavy rain this weekend..Farmer's Market will open early this year."
Now, turning to the news is like watching the start of a horror movie,
Undergrounds don't seem to have a definitive origin or ending. They just sprouted, flourished and faded away.
From the 1920s to maybe late 1950s, there were these publications called "Tiajuana Bibles." Little black and white pamphelets half as tall as a regular comic. They featured famous comics and cartoons characters (and often real life celebrities) engaging in graphic sex. That was the whole point of the books. Popeye, Moon Mullins, John Dillinger, Mae West. There they were going at it. Usually there was a lame joke or pun at the end. Often, the woman's husband came home and surprised everyone by complaining that now his supper hadn't been made.
I'd love to post some Tiajuana Bibles, great way to be banned in a heartbeat.
So these were one ancestor of the Undergrounds. Then there were college newspapers and magazines which were open to oddball art and stories, as well as the New York EAST VILLAGE OTHER. Some familiar names artists are first encountered there: Robert Crumb, Spain Rodrigues, Vaughn Bode.
By 1967, Undergrounds were well-known even to straight, mundane citizens. ZAP COMIX was the most infamous, partly because of pornography charges brought against it. Robert Crumb's page "Keep On Trucking" was a huge pop culture fad for years, many many posters and T-shirts and truck mudflaps featured Crumb's drawing. There was a Top 40 song. Not that Crumb got royalties, evidently he hadn't enforced a copyright notice on the art.
By the early 1970s, Undergrounds dropped away. Magazines like NATIONAL LAMPOON and PLAYBOY gave better-paying gigs for the cartoonists. Head shops dwindled too. I don't know why. The mid-1970s WAS A depression burned-out era for America. The retreat from Vietnam, Watergate and the President resigning in disgrace, economic mess. Movies were about people trying to survive diasters... THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, EARTHQUAKE.
There are still what amount to Comix today, available from mail-order companies or your local comic book shop. But times change and everything has its day. It's never going to be 1968 again, walking into a dim store reeking of pot barely covered by sandalwood and be surprised by what weird and unexpected Comix are sitting on a counter to be discovered.
>"Tiajuana Bibles." Little black and white pamphelets half as tall as a regular comic.
I've never seen any that big. My LCS has a few and they're all about the size of chick tracts.
You could always storytime them on /aco/.
LUCKY TO BE ALIVE
This alarming vignette is from Lloyd Dangle's "Lucky To Be Alive," a rumination on notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. It appeared in BLAB!# 5, Summer 1990. Now, any way you look at it, BLAB! was an odd little publication. Edited by Monte Beauchamp, it was a digest-sized magazine packed with art and reminiscences from various underground artists. The first issue was a tribute to EC Comics, but this fifth issue was all about true crime and serial killers. To be honest, it scared me more than all the horror movies and pulps I've read over the decades.
A quick look at Snopes leads you to conclude that this story, taken from a 1989 interview with Debbie Harry, is apocryphal. Ted Bundy was never known to operate in New York City. Possibly the story was an example of Debbie Harry's dark sense of humor (I get the impression from various interviews that she has a sharp and mordant mind). But what's even more alarming... If this did happen to her, and it couldn't have been Ted Bundy driving this tricked-up MurderMobile, then who was it? What killer was out there, never to be identified or caught? (brrr)
(brrr)
Before SILENCE OF THE LAMBS came out, I happened to rent an earlier movie called MANHUNTER with Brian Cox as Hannibal Lector. This led me to buy a few books on criminal profilers and true life serial killers, but I soon after sold off the books and didn't do any more research into that area. That's information I don't need in my head.
I might throw in some random pictures of Debbie Harry, just to make everyone sit up and pay attention.
While I don't disagree that historically we Americans like to skirt around such issues, in this case it seems to be more satirizing that tendency than playing it straight
Well, heck. I didn't know there was such a thing as /aco/. And I've been discarding some of the better known Undergrounds before of the nudity and general shenanigans,
anyone have a mega of all the completed crumb comics on them
Vaugh Bode (1941-1975) remains one of my favorite comics creators, Underground or otherwise. He's probably best known for his Cheech Wizard, who reached a mass audience in the NATIONAL LAMPOON. But to be honest, I don't think it's his best work. Cheech Wizard is too obvious and repetitive and even sloppy in storytelling. It worked to keep the readers entertained but it reminds of a band playing their same hits at every concert. Bode's early work is so inventive and highly detailed that it's intriguing. He ran several different series, each with its own backstory and logic. Aside from the anthropomorphic lizards suffering through their version of Vietnam, I love the futuristic war machines destroying each other for no good reason long after the humans who created them are gone.
Yeah, I think Shelton doesn't have a message, he's more an entertainer, One Freak Brothers strip had our heroes discover a vast poppy field in Afghanistan (I think) being worked by the CIA. One of the Freak Brothers said they should quietly sneak away and pretend they never saw the place.
To me, Shelton wasn't doing an expose or anything, the point was the storytelling going on.
Robert Crumb in 1988, being a spellbinder for his interview by THE COMICS JOURNAL.
Big (profitable) movies have always been about spectacles, especially when they had to compete with TV.
Thanks for giving us this Lloyd Dangle work, I missed it when it came out, plus I sold all of my comics when I moved to Texas, so it’s good to see all of this stuff again.