Published on Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009 1:10PM EDT
The year 2009 is proving to be one long baby-boomer nostalgia trip. Blame Woodstock, which took place in August of 1969 and is being feted on its welcome-to-your-midlife-crisis 40th anniversary with the release of fulsome new books and a Hollywood movie, as well as the reissue of the original documentary about the musically blessed but climactically cursed rock'n'roll festival.
- Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix, by James Danky and Denis Kitchen, Abrams ComicArts, 144 pages, $32.95
Skinny hippies dancing to The Who in the mud may seem quaint today, but those former kids were banner carriers for a drug-fuelled counter-culture that North America hasn't seen the likes of since. As evidence, and in yet another 2009 boomer moment, an American publisher has released Underground Classics:The Transformation of Comics into Comix, a companion volume to a travelling museum exhibit of the crudest, funniest and downright weirdest comic-book art ever published.
The book's two authors and its various contributing essayists paint a vivid portrait of the history of underground comics – dubbed “comix” because of their raunchy content – and the hairy era in which they began to be circulated in head shops and flea markets and on the street by “hippie street-hawkers.” Most of the comix were never commercial successes – nor were they meant to be – but a few sold extremely well and became iconic representations of the 1960s and '70s. Gilbert Sheldon's Freak Brothers series sold into the millions, while Robert Crumb's Zap Comix and American Splendor series (with the writer Harvey Pekar), as well as works by Art Spiegelman (Maus), are modern classics whose original editions are worth thousands of dollars to collectors.
“Underground comix were the most important art movement of the twentieth century,” Jay Lynch, one of the movement's pioneers, states in the book's introduction. That's a debatable claim, of course, but there were unique aspects of comix that made them remarkable.
As the authors write in their essay: “Unfettered language, graphic depictions of sex, depictions and championing of recreational use, and the sometimes extreme violence in comix were alluring liberations for underground artists and readers alike, but it was also the literate choice of words, the unrestricted range of topics, and the wildly idiosyncratic drawing styles that truly distinguished and distanced comix from their predecessors and their contemporary cousins on newsstands.”
One difference between comix and comics of the day was that comix were treated as books with indefinite shelf lives, the authors note. Issues that did well were reprinted many times; those that didn't disappeared quickly. In that way alone, they were the precursors of today's newly popular graphic novels.
As well, the creators, rather than working for a one-time fee the way the artists who drew mainstream comic did, controlled their own fortunes and earned royalties on their work.
Mostly though, comix introduced a “cheerfully demented” style of satire that has never gone away, and which eventually found its way into animated television shows like Ren & Stimpy and The Simpsons.
Two-thirds of Underground Classics is a series of plates taken from comix that are organized by artist. It's an attempt to display comix as Art with a capital A. It's a bit weird to separate the parts from whole, but it doesn't matter that it doesn't really work except for the most rabid fans of the genre and the artists themselves.
What does matters is that the book is a reminder of the fun those comix provided in their heyday – and of the blow they struck for kids who got to read what looked like a comic book but felt like freedom.
Photo Credit:
Loading images
Join the Discussion: