Radical America, a journal affiliated with Students for a Democratic Society published a memorable "underground comix" edition in 1969. Its principal artist and editor, Gilbert Shelton, whose Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers would be enjoyed in many editions across the world, brought to the project his Texas pals Frank Stack and Jack Jaxon. Also on hand, among others, were Chicago comics innovators Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. Together, these and other contributors issued a veritable artistic manifesto: a new vernacular art had arrived A half century after its original appearance, Radical America Komiks retains its rebellious spirit and its rollicking humor.
While most studies of the FBI focus on the long tenure of Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972), The Dangers of Dissent shifts the ground to the recent past. The book examines FBI practices in the domestic security field through the prism of 'political policing.' The monitoring of dissent is exposed, as are the Bureau's controversial 'counterintelligence' operations designed to disrupt political activity. This book reveals that attacks on civil liberties focus on a wide range of domestic critics on both the Left and the Right. This book traces the evolution of FBI spying from 1965 to the present through the eyes of those under investigation, as well as through numerous FBI documents, never used before in scholarly writing, that were recently declassified using the Freedom of Information Act or released during litigation (Greenberg v. FBI). Ivan Greenberg considers the diverse ways that government spying has crossed the line between legal intelligence-gathering to criminal action. While a number of studies focus on government policies under George W. Bush's 'War on Terror,' Greenberg is one of the few to situate the primary role of the FBI as it shaped and was reshaped by the historical context of the new American Surveillance Society.
In four short years (1965–1969), the underground press grew from five small newspapers in as many cities in the U.S. to over 500 newspapers—with millions of readers—all over the world. Completely circumventing (and subverting) establishment media by utilizing their own news service and freely sharing content amongst each other, the underground press, at its height, became the unifying institution for the counterculture of the 1960s. Frustrated with the lack of any mainstream media criticism of the Vietnam War, empowered by the victories of the Civil Rights era, emboldened by the anti-colonial movements in the third world and with heads full of acid, a generation set out to change the world. The underground press was there documenting, participating in, and providing the resources that would guarantee the growth of this emergent youth culture. Combining bold visuals, innovative layouts, and eschewing any pretense toward objectivity, the newspapers were wildly diverse and wonderfully vibrant. Neither meant to be an official nor comprehensive history, On the Ground focuses on the anecdotal detail that brings the history alive. Composed of stories told by the people involved with the production and distribution of the newspapers—John Sinclair, Art Kunkin, Paul Krassner, Emory Douglas, John Wilcock, Bill Ayers, Spain Rodriguez, Trina Robbins, Al Goldstein, Harvey Wasserman, Ben Morea, and more—and featuring over 100 full-color scans taken from a broad range of newspapers—Basta Ya, Berkeley Barb, Berkeley Tribe, Chicago Seed, Helix, It Ain’t Me Babe, Los Angeles Free Press, Osawatomie, Rat Subterranean News, San Francisco Express Times, San Francisco Oracle, Screw: The Sex Review, The Black Panther, The East Village Other, The Realist, and many more—the book provides a true window into the spirit of the times, giving the reader a feeling for the energy on the ground.
In 1974, legendary Marvel Comics publisher Stan Lee approached underground pioneer Denis Kitchen and offered a way for them to collaborate. Their resulting series was called Comix Book and featured work by many of the top underground cartoonists including Joel Beck, Kim Deitch, Justin Green, Harvey Pekar, Trina Robbins, Art Spiegelman (first national appearance of Maus), Skip Williamson, and S. Clay Wilson. The Best of Comix Book showcases 150-pages of classic underground comix (printed on newsprint, as they originally appeared), many never before reprinted.
Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection brings together the legendary four issues of Anarchy Comics (1978–1986), the underground comic that melded anarchist politics with a punk sensibility, producing a riveting mix of satire, revolt, and artistic experimentation. This international anthology collects the comic stories of all thirty contributors from the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, and Canada. In addition to the complete issues of Anarchy Comics, the anthology features previously unpublished work by Jay Kinney and Sharon Rudahl, along with a detailed introduction by Kinney, which traces the history of the comic he founded and provides entertaining anecdotes about the process of herding an international crowd of anarchistic cats. Contributors include: Jay Kinney, Yves Frémion, Gerhard Seyfried, Sharon Rudahl, Steve Stiles, Donald Rooum, Paul Mavrides, Adam Cornford, Spain Rodriguez, Melinda Gebbie, Gilbert Shelton, Volny, John Burnham, Cliff Harper, Ruby Ray, Peter Pontiac, Marcel Trublin, Albo Helm, Steve Lafler, Gary Panter, Greg Irons, Dave Lester, Marion Lydebrooke, Matt Feazell, Pepe Moreno, Norman Dog, Zorca, R. Diggs (Harry Driggs), Harry Robins, and Byron Werner.
The career of Jay Lynch―cartoonist, satirist, and counterculture archivist―spanned more than six decades. All his signature Nard ‘n’ Pat stories from Bijou Funnies are featured in this volume. There are also samples of his trading card illustrations (for Garbage Pail Kids and other Topps Chewing Gum series) and his paintings. Lynch also narrates his life story throughout the book, from his dysfunctional childhood to the day he selected his coffin and headstone, in a half-century series of interviews and correspondence with comic historian Patrick Rosenkranz.
In the land that time forgot, 1960s and 1970s America (Amerika to some), there once were some bold, forthright, thoroughly unashamed social commentators who said things that “couldn't be said” and showed things that “couldn't be shown.” They were outrageous — hunted, pursued, hounded, arrested, busted, and looked down on by just about everyone in the mass media who deigned to notice them at all. They were cartoonists — underground cartoonists. And they were some of the cleverest, most interesting social commentators of their time, as well as some of the very best artists, whose work has influenced the visual arts right up until today. A History of Underground Comics is their story — told in their own art, in their own words, with connecting commentary and analysis by one of the very few media people who took them seriously from the start and detailed their worries, concerns and attitudes in broadcast media and, in this book, in print. Author, Mark James Estren knew the artists, lived with and among them, analyzed their work, talked extensively with them, received numerous letters and original drawings from them — and it's all in A History of Underground Comics. What Robert Crumb really thinks of himself and his neuroses…how Gilbert Shelton feels about Wonder Wart-Hog and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers…how Bill Griffith handled the early development of Zippy the Pinhead…where Art Spiegelman's ideas for his Pulitzer-prize-winning Maus had their origins…and much, much more. Who influenced these hold-nothing-sacred cartoonists? Those earlier artists are here, too. Harvey Kurtzman — famed Mad editor and an extensive contributor to A History of Underground Comics. Will Eisner of The Spirit — in his own words and drawngs. From the bizarre productions of long-ago, nearly forgotten comic-strip artists, such as Gustave Verbeek (who created 12-panel strips in six panels: you read them one way, then turned them upside down and read them that way), to modern but conventional masters of cartooning, they're all here — all talking to the author and the reader — and all drawing, drawing, drawing. The underground cartoonists drew everything, from over-the-top sex (a whole chapter here) to political commentary far beyond anything in Doonesbury (that is here, too) to analyses of women's issues and a host of societal concerns. From the gorgeously detailed to the primitive and childlike, these artists redefined comics and cartooning, not only for their generation but also for later cartoonists. In A History of Underground Comics, you read and see it all just as it happened, through the words and drawings of the people who made it happen. And what “it” did they make happen? They raised consciousness, sure, but they also reflected a raised consciousness — and got slapped down more than once as a result. The notorious obscenity trial of Zap #4 is told here in words, testimony and illustrations, including the exact drawings judged obscene by the court. Community standards may have been offended then — quite intentionally. Readers can judge whether they would be offended now. And with all their serious concerns, their pointed social comment, the undergrounds were fun, in a way that hidebound conventional comics had not been for decades. Demons and bikers, funny “aminals” and Walt Disney parodies, characters whose anatomy could never be and ones who are utterly recognizable, all come together in strange, peculiar, bizarre, and sometimes unexpectedly affecting and even beautiful art that has never since been duplicated — despite its tremendous influence on later cartoonists. It's all here in A History of Underground Comics, told by an expert observer who weaves together the art and words of the cartoonists themselves into a portrait of a time that seems to belong to the past but that is really as up-to-date as today's headl
A complete narrative history of the weird and wonderful world of Underground Comix! In the 1950s, comics meant POW! BAM! superheroes, family-friendly gags, and Sunday funnies, but in the 1960s, inspired by these strips and the satire of MAD magazine, a new generation of creators set out to subvert the medium, and with it, American culture. Their “comix,” spelled that way to distinguish the work from their dime-store contemporaries, presented tales of taboo sex, casual drug use, and a transgressive view of society. Embraced by hippies and legions of future creatives, this subgenre of comic books and strips often ran afoul of the law, but that would not stop them from casting cultural ripples for decades to come, eventually moving the entire comics form beyond the gutter and into fine-art galleries. Author Brian Doherty weaves together the stories of R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Harvey Pekar, and Howard Cruse, among many others, detailing the complete narrative history of this movement. Through dozens of new interviews and archival research, Doherty chronicles the scenes that sprang up around the country in the 1960s and ’70s, beginning with the artists’ origin stories and following them through success and strife, and concluding with an examination of these creators’ legacies, Dirty Pictures is the essential exploration of a truly American art form that recontextualized the way people thought about war, race, sex, gender, and expression.
Shortlisted Finalist for the 2023 Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work American comics from the start have reflected the white supremacist culture out of which they arose. Superheroes and comic books in general are products of whiteness, and both signal and hide its presence. Even when comics creators and publishers sought to advance an antiracist agenda, their attempts were often undermined by a lack of awareness of their own whiteness and the ideological baggage that goes along with it. Even the most celebrated figures of the industry, such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jack Jackson, William Gaines, Stan Lee, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Frank Miller, have not been able to distance themselves from the problematic racism embedded in their narratives despite their intentions or explanations. Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels provides a sober assessment of these creators and their role in perpetuating racism throughout the history of comics. Josef Benson and Doug Singsen identify how whiteness has been defined, transformed, and occasionally undermined over the course of eighty years in comics and in many genres, including westerns, horror, crime, funny animal, underground comix, autobiography, literary fiction, and historical fiction. This exciting and groundbreaking book assesses industry giants, highlights some of the most important episodes in American comic book history, and demonstrates how they relate to one another and form a larger pattern, in unexpected and surprising ways.
Originally published in France and long sought in English translation, Jean-Paul Gabilliet's Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books documents the rise and development of the American comic book industry from the 1930s to the present. The book intertwines aesthetic issues and critical biographies with the concerns of production, distribution, and audience reception, making it one of the few interdisciplinary studies of the art form. A thorough introduction by translators and comics scholars Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen brings the book up to date with explorations of the latest innovations, particularly the graphic novel. The book is organized into three sections: a concise history of the evolution of the comic book form in America; an overview of the distribution and consumption of American comic books, detailing specific controversies such as the creation of the Comics Code in the mid-1950s; and the problematic legitimization of the form that has occurred recently within the academy and in popular discourse. Viewing comic books from a variety of theoretical lenses, Gabilliet shows how seemingly disparate issues—creation, production, and reception—are in fact connected in ways that are not necessarily true of other art forms. Analyzing examples from a variety of genres, this book provides a thorough landmark overview of American comic books that sheds new light on this versatile art form.
