“What’s that book about?”, she said while glancing at the title.
“Not what you think”, I answered.
Dirty Pictures is a journalistic history of underground comix, from their inspiration by 1950’s Mad Magazine to the spate of currently published alternative comics.
In between we learn about the lives of the artists, the financial difficulties involved in self publishing comix that had limited distribution outlets, the ways that the artists explored more traditional art careers to help pay their bills, and how they adapted their work to changes in societal norms.
I was exposed to underground comix in high school, I don’t remember how I heard about them, although it was probably from a classmate. As mentioned in the book “the hip kids find each other”. p. 4 “They were mostly a dark secret you needed to stumble across in the search for other quirky or forbidden kicks, or be initiated by a previous acolyte, like some occult rite of passage”
I knew that they were something special because you couldn’t get them just anywhere, you had to go into a head shop and ask for them by name. They were kept under the counter. The artwork was nothing like what you would see in Batman, Archie, Sgt Rock, or Daffy Duck comics. Especially to a teenager, much of the artwork bordered on pornography and the story lines featured topic you could’t find anywhere else: sex, drugs, rock and roll, transcendental meditation, hippies, political commentary, and other elements of the late 60s/early 70’s counterculture. No topic was taboo.
Some popular titles included Zap, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Wimmen’s Comix.
I’m not certain, but Zap 4 was probably my first purchase. Note the cover price of 50 cents. This was substantially more expensive than traditional comic books. Not only that, the art was almost always in black and white, rarely in color (except for the cover). Also note the “Adults Only” label on the front cover. What high school boy could resist that?
Underground comix started declining in the mid to late 1970’s, with two important pressures affecting their publication and distribution: federal and local obscenity laws, and a crackdown on illegal drug use. One of the more interesting things that I learned was that the Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards (1960’s and 1980’s) were conceptualized and drawn by underground artists, often without credit. Other artists worked for greeting card and catalog companies. Some began drawing comix for adult magazines and eventually for magazines like Heavy Metal and The National Lampoon.
Although underground comix are still being published, they are exceedingly difficult to find and they don’t have the same appeal as social norms about sexuality, drug use, and social commentary has greatly changed since the early 1970’s. Many mass marketed alternative comics, along with books, popular music, and social media posts deal with these formerly forbidden topics. Although the artists are much older now, many still draw, write, and publish their work in various formats.
A couple of relatively current examples are shown below
In addition to underground comix, other types of books, such as crime and horror books, rebelled against the 1950’s comics code. An earlier blog post discusses that.