Cambridge Books Online http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ The Graphic Novel An Introduction Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177849 Online ISBN: 9781139177849 Hardback ISBN: 9781107025233 Paperback ISBN: 9781107655768 Chapter 3 - Underground Comix and Mainstream Evolutions, 1968–c.1980 pp. 54-73 Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177849.004 Cambridge University Press Underground Comix and Mainstream 3 Evolutions, 1968–c.1980 This chapter continues the historical analysis of the development of the graphic novel in further chronological order by taking our narrative for- ward from the 1960s into the 1970s. In it we underline the role of the underground comix in changing the form and the creation of its fi rst cultural star, Robert Crumb. While no clear notion of the graphic novel existed in the public mind for much of this period, one can very clearly put forward for discussion works that would be hugely infl uential on future creativity, such as Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary and Jaxon’s Comanche Moon . 1 Equally, it is important to describe how the pioneer graphic novelists Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman were greatly infl uenced by the milieu of comix. The chapter does not therefore propose any revisionism in the stan- dard history of comics, and in fact we here recommend several impor- tant existing histories written by Jean-Paul Gabilliet, Charles Hatfi eld, Paul Lopes, Mark James Estren, and Patrick Rosenkranz. 2 However, in its concluding paragraphs, we discuss how some parallel developments out- side the world of the comix were also leading to the contribution of long- length, adult-focused comics quite similar to our present-day graphic novels (e.g., newspaper strips in collected editions by Charles Schulz and Garry Trudeau), and how in a corner of the sci-fi community there were 54 Downloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 147.251.225.59 on Tue Mar 08 10:07:56 GMT 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177849.004 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2016 55 Underground Comix and Mainstream Evolutions also ambitions for longer, implicitly more literary works, which gave rise to insiders from this world labeling some works as graphic novels or the similar term “illustrated story.” By the end of the 1970s, there was no full consensus on when to use “graphic novel,” but in works such as Eisner’s A Contract with God: A Graphic Novel (1978) and Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson’s Alien: The Illustrated Story (1979), people were pro- ducing and reading works with close relation to today’s publications. Comix: foundations for the graphic novel We do not propose to write a new history of the underground comix scene but rather to summarize briefl y how that culture fed into the graphic novel. What is important to recognize is that in the mid- to late 1960s, it was on university campuses (Michigan State, University of Texas-Austin, and University of California, Berkeley, to name some of the better-known) and in the radical districts of major urban spaces (includ- ing Haight-Ashbury and the Village in New York) that graphic narratives aimed at adults, and with little or no connection to superheroes (includ- ing pop and the post-pop noir variants) were fi rst circulated, printed on the new off-set presses that facilitated self-publishing and small press endeavors. Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Kim Deitch, Jaxon, and Justin Green, among others, produced new amusing, sexually explicit, and often satirical strips in self-produced magazines or in supplements to student newspapers. Their work was self-conscious, sometimes quasi- autobiographical, and utterly irreverent. For them, no topic was taboo. Sex, race, hippies, old mainstream comics, and the alternative drop-out scene itself, as well as targets in straight and conservative America, were all fair game for satire. College humor magazines created a network of venues and distribu- tion for young satirical cartoonists. Similarly, nationwide humor maga- zines (e.g., Mad and Help! ) featured clever one-to-two-page satires from unknown artists who had not worked for superhero or other mainstream strips (see also Chapter 2 ). In 1965 free newspapers and magazines such as East Village Other , LA Free Press and Oracle developed and provided Downloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 147.251.225.59 on Tue Mar 08 10:07:56 GMT 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177849.004 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2016 56 Historical Context alternative noncommercial newspapers for students and anyone else interested in alternative media perspectives. Momentum was then gained in 1968 when three individual artists self-published landmark comix. In San Francisco, Gilbert Shelton created his Feds ‘n’ Heds and Robert Crumb made Zap , while in Chicago, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson completed Bijou Funnies . These three publications heralded a revolu- tion, and within a relatively short period a booming self-suffi cient mar- ket could sustain three hundred different titles, with new material being printed in runs of twenty thousand. 3 The underground comix changed preexisting assumptions of what comics could achieve. Both in style and in subject, they laid the groundwork for the alternative comics and the breakthrough of the graphic novel in the later years of the 1980s. Charles Hatfi eld explains further in his landmark study Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature that the underground artists addressed topics that would become subjects of graphic novels in years to come; notably, autobi- ography and introspective strips about creators’ lives and outlooks (original exponents being Crumb and Justin Green, as well as wom- en’s underground strips that didactically asserted selfhood and gender interests in counterpoint to the sexist objectifi cations in much of the male-produced work). Hatfi eld also underlines in Alternative Comics that the comix scene created a market of production and consumption outside of mainstream superhero comics. Here the artists owned their own work and were not employees for a commercial comics concern. The underground community demonstrated that artists could achieve success without becoming entangled in the formal comics industry. The comix culture also disproved the notion that comics had to be based on extended runs of serialized plots, either in a daily or weekly newspaper or in a weekly DC/Marvel comic. Hatfi eld implies that this shaking up of the form of comics was signifi cant. It prepared artists, publishers, and readers for graphic narratives to be available in almost any mode, including the longer form of the one-shot “novel.” We can add too that undergrounds – exiled outside of the mainstream comic book industry – could deal directly with literary publishing houses Downloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 147.251.225.59 on Tue Mar 08 10:07:56 GMT 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177849.004 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2016 57 Underground Comix and Mainstream Evolutions that had different distribution approaches and royalty schemes than the old industry did. In other words, the most successful underground titles were carried in some mainstream bookstores as well as the head shops that were the sale points near campus or in the alternative com- munities nearby. Let us next discuss a little further the direct signifi cance of Crumb’s career. Grosso modo , in the fi gure of Crumb the underground and the mainstream media that reported on him created their own star comic art- ist and writer, and in so doing established a public framework for appre- ciating individual creative talent in the fi eld. In short, the very success of Crumb in the late 1960s and early 1970s prompted the idea of the comix artist as a fi gure of comparable signifi cance to a novelist, fi lmmaker, or any other important cultural worker. Though based on his depiction in the biographical movie Crumb (director Zwigoff, 1995) it is easy to imag- ine Crumb as a socially marginalized outsider producing absurdist – and often offensive – comix, it is also the case that his comix broke through from small circulation campus-level material to gain signifi cant national prominence. To put it simply, Crumb became a legend in his own time, a star graphic novelist, avant la lettre . His originally self-published work from venues such as Zap Comix was relatively quickly anthologized and repackaged by mainstream publishing houses. For example, Viking Press brought out a fi rst mainstream anthology in 1968, and then two years later Ballantine provided a new version of the earlier underground col- lection Head Comix . In 1969 Ballantine also marketed its collected edi- tion of Crumb’s infamous Fritz the Cat strips. Simultaneously, Crumb’s work broke into at least the margins of the fi ne art scene. It was exhibited as part of a wider underground art event at Berkeley and was also fea- tured in a Whitney show dedicated to the “Grotesque in American Art” (October 1969–March 1 1970, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley). This fascinating event shows how Crumb and two others were briefl y penetrating the fi ne art circle. Its catalogue, Human Concern/Personal Torment , includes samples of comix from Crumb alongside work from S. Clay Wilson and Spain Rodriguez. 4 Downloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 147.251.225.59 on Tue Mar 08 10:07:56 GMT 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177849.004 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2016 58 Historical Context The music scene was also part of the consecration of Crumb. Famously, Janis Joplin recruited Crumb to provide cover art to her album Cheap Thrills .