The ComICs Journal lIbrary Volume 9 The Interviews draw, Write, Talk By Bob Levin In his book Writers’ Fighters, the celebrated sportswriter John For Zap #2, Crumb took an equally unprecedented and impressive Schulian explains his — and other authors — attraction to practi- step. He invited the ofbeat artists S. Clay Wilson, Rick Grifn tioners of Te Sweet Science. “Boxers,” Schulian writes, “not only and Victor Moscoso to contribute stories — and ofered each an lead more interesting lives than any other athletes, they are more equal ownership share. Gilbert Shelton was added to the partner- willing to talk about them too.” I feel similarly about underground ship in #3 and Spain Rodriguez and Robert Williams in #4. (Zap cartoonists. I have found them to be bright, witty, uninhibited remained a closed shop until issue #14, following Grifn’s death conversationalists; and since they came of age in the 1960s — a in a motorcycle accident, when Paul Mavrides, an anarchically time when, it seemed, all apples presented were to be bitten, the inclined, third-generation Greek from Akron, who was a decade only commandment was to break commandments, and the golden younger than the rest but had established his worth assisting rule was to do to yourself what you wished others would do with Shelton on his individual projects, was added to the fold.) Tis you, preferably in a hot tub while slugging Red Mountain wine, mix resulted in what Gary Groth has termed “one of the most — their conversations had much to draw from. individualistic and disparate group of artists of any artistic move- First some history. ment of (the 20th) century.” Crumb was one of fve children raised in a small town in It’s been an oft-told story, but ... Delaware into varying degrees of psychopathology by a career In February 1968, Robert Crumb, a 24-year-old ex-greet- Marine and his speed-addicted wife. Grifn was a SoCal surfer/ ing-card artist, and his wife Dana ambled through a fair on San musician, who had been drawing rock-show posters and would Francisco’s Haight Street selling a comic book of Robert’s creation shortly turn his talents, after spiritual enlightenment, into bearing from a baby carriage. Te comic’s publisher was Don Donohue, witness for Jesus. Moscoso, another poster artist, was a Spanish- a UC — Berkeley drop-out, whose only previous efort toward born, Brooklyn-raised sharpie with a keen business sense, who media-baron-hood, an eight-page newspaper, had been sabotaged had studied color theory with Hans Hofman at Yale. Rodriguez, by a printer who had objected to the sexual organs depicted. For a factory worker/biker/Socialist Workers Party activist had come his comeback, Donohue had swapped a used tape recorder to the out of Bufalo by way of Te East Village Other. Shelton, a prod- Beat poet Charles Plymell for an old Multilith printing press and uct of college humor magazines and the Austin counterculture run of copies of Zap #1. diaspora, had been cast out of the Army for general unsuitability. Which was not, in fact, the frst Zap. Crumb had created Williams, a court-certifed juvenile delinquent from Albuquerque, that earlier at the request of Brian Zahn, whose Yarrowstalks, a had apprenticed by drawing T-shirts and cartoons for the hot- Philadelphia underground newspaper, had published some of his rod-centered empire of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. And Wilson, an cartoons. But that book had not appeared, because Zahn feared ex-Nebraskan, had seasoned in Indian bars and the even wilder and the cover of a nude man with his cock plugged into an electric woolier Lawrence, Kan., assembling a portfolio of battling, sexing socket could lead to an obscenity prosecution, and Crumb refused pirates, space monsters, dykes and demons which, once Crumb had to change it. Business hazards of a particularly 1960s favor, opened the door to what might be permitted within a comic book, involving LSD and trips to India, intervened; and by the time blew of the roof, knocked down the walls, and pissed on the foor. Crumb recalled he had another copy, Donohue’s edition had made Zap became, in Rodriquez’s words, “a collective made up of its debut. To correctly order his creativity sequentially, Crumb the most uncollective guys there were.” Some were character- and dubbed its predecessor Zap #0. story-oriented; others could not have cared less. Some sought sta- From such a mix of talent, desire, eccentricity and coinci- bility in their personal lives; others fed from it. Some had ceased dence is history made. For Zap struck America like a roundhouse formal education when “Pomp and Circumstance” played at their right to the jaw — or maybe a kidney punch or thumb in its eye. high-school graduations; others lasted until graduate school. But Since the institution of the Comic Book Code of 1954, comics all were young, all had drawn since childhood and all had been had been restricted in language and pictorial content to make vastly – vastly – afected by drugs. Most had been raised Catholic, them as safe for children’s consumption as Gerber’s peas. most had been infuenced by EC Comics (plus Carl Barks and Suddenly, they had appeared, re-perceived, as valid a form for Little Lulu) and most had little good to say about art since Picasso adult artistic expression as flms or novels or oils on canvas. Instead went Cubist. None had much good to say about mainstream of cute talking animals, sassy, clean-living teenagers and noble America either, but every one of them was dead serious about his superheroes battling crime, Crumb had flled them with despair, art and his vision, commercial consequences be damned. rage, racist caricatures, dirty words, naked bodies, non-linear stories and the touting of drug consumption as the only sensible Zap was unique among underground comics because its restricted response to a world that was insane. roster of contributors so contradicted the “Hey, man, aren’t we, 7 Left to right: Rick Grifn, Spain like, all one” spirit of the times. Tis exclusivity benefted its fnally to Fantagraphics for issue #16. Rodriguez, Robert Williams, Robert quality. Each member of the Gang of Seven knew and respected Over the decades, some of the Zap artists developed their Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson and Victor Moscoso. Photo by the work of their fellows. Each knew his contribution would be styles and broadened the range of subjects they addressed, while Suzanne Williams. measured each issue against that of other heavyweights, so he had others continued to dance only with the ones what brung ’em. best — to revive my pugilistic metaphor — keep in shape and None, however, lost their commitment to produce work that throw his punches sharp and straight. Each artist brought his own challenged and provoked. Tere was not an obscenity Zap’s word audience to each issue, raising the potential number of future balloons did not welcome, nor a sexual perversion its panels refused consumers for the work of every other artist. And since each had a to embrace. By its demise, Zap was agitating within a cultural stew fnancial stake in the profts of each book, they had equal interest far more accustomed to the transgressive than when it had begun, in keeping the franchise going. but it still took a brave soul to open issue 15 on a café or bus Zap was also special because, while its contemporaries seem- and not shield its pages with one’s shoulders from a neighbor’s ingly had the life span of day dreams, it lasted, albeit with dimin- gaze. Not when it shrieked, “Fucking fuck my goddamned moth- ishing frequency, 36 years. Zap #5 appeared in 1970; then came erfucking cocksucking piss licking shit dick fuck!” and portrayed one apiece in 1973, ’74 and ’75. Tere were only seven more — dripping twats, humping buttocks, walking/talking turds, and a appearances often trumpeted like a rock band’s reunion or the dis- super-powered warthog performing bestial acts on right-wing zeal- covery of a presumed extinct beast — before its fnal manifestation ots before ripping of their limbs. Such eforts had rewarded the in 2004. When, with the second issue, Donohue’s Apex Novelties artists with gallery and museum exhibitions and fve-fgure sales proved too small an operation to handle the demand for Zap, it for original works. It had also targeted Zap for condemnation from moved for publication and distribution to Don Shenkar and Bob both ends of the political spectrum, as well as busts in multiple Rita’s Print Mint. When that venture ran fnancially aground, in jurisdictions. But neither rapped knuckles nor patted backs had the mid-’70s, it moved again, to Ron Turner’s Last Gasp — and infuenced the direction of the artists’ work. 8 The Comics Journal Library Volume 9: The Zap Artists Te interview is a challenging form. Te reporter should famil- iarize oneself with the subject’s background and work. (Often, it seems, when it comes to matters like dates and publications, the reporter is the most knowledgeable person in the room.) Te inter- viewer should read previous interviews with the subject in order to shape the questions to expand upon previous gleanings and defect responses that need not be heard again. Te interviewer must put the subject at ease to encourage free speaking. Te interviewer must balance any fondness for the subject with the responsibility to readers to allow this free speaking to lead to the potentially embarrassing or demeaning. Te interviewer must be aware that his or her desire for such a “scoop” may lead to the memorializa- tion of that which has no value beside the satisfying of the public’s (and the interviewer’s own) taste for the salacious — and that may discourage others from sitting down with the interviewer in the future out of their resentment for these perceived betrayals.