Dugan Under Ground: A Novel [Hardcover]

Tom De Haven (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805057412 | ISBN-13: 978-0805057416 | Publication Date: October 11, 2001 | Edition: 1st

In This Issue: Sex! Drugs! Kosmic Trooths! And a Comic Book Rebel Named Looby!

In his earlier novels, Funny Papers and Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, Tom De Haven embarked on a dazzling tour of twentieth-century America, revealed through the world of the comic strips and their creators. Now in Dugan Under Ground, he transports us to explosive underground comics scene of the sixties.

It's 1967, the Summer of Love. Roy Looby, a gifted young cartoonist, deserts his mentor, the legendary strip man Ed Biggs, and heads to join the drop-outs and musicians in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury. In the reckless spirit of the times, Looby creates "The Imp Eugene," a libidinous comic book character who is a far cry from Biggs' signature figure, Derby Dugan--the cheerful icon of a more optimistic generation. Just like his real-world counterpart, hippie cartoonist R. Crumb, Looby is soon celebrated and vilified for his creation. And then he disappears, rumored to have lost his mind during the drug-fueled creation of a cartoon masterpiece.

A fabulous, strange trip across a wildly changing America, Dugan Under Ground is a rich, inventive tale about the suffocations of jealousy, the regrets that kill the spirit, and the mythic qualities of American popular culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The ageless Derby Dugan, comic-strip kid, is back, complete with magic yellow wallet and Fuzzy the talking dog, in this entertaining sequel to Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies. Dugan, passed from artist to artist like a cursed heirloom, has met a hard road in the 1960s, as the hobo adventures that carried him through the Depression and the war years aren't playing to the Kennedy-era nuclear family. Candy Biggs, his current artist (who only received Dugan after being stabbed in the chest with a pencil by his previous creator), drinks his way through Dugan's decline, watching his beloved comic strip vanish from one newspaper after another. Candy's only solace is teaching the Way of the Comic Artist to Roy Looby, a weird, talented neighborhood boy, and his kid brother Nick. In Roy's hand, Dugan morphs into the Imp Eugene, a randy roustabout who epitomizes the late-'60s independent comix craze, smoking dope and gallivanting with chicken-headed busty women. Roy moves to San Francisco and becomes an artist icon, bolstering his fame by disappearing for weeks at a time to produce Eugene's new adventures. Nick, ever the suffering Salieri to Roy's Mozart, is left behind in New Jersey with Roy's abandoned wife and young son. Finally, Nick, who narrates most of the novel, sets off in pursuit of his brother, trying to lay his own claim to Eugene's psychedelic world. This is a nostalgic romp through the funny-book business, as well as a compelling look at the people who struggle to make art out of four-color panels.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-winning Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) wasn't the first novel to depict the bygone world of newspaper comics. De Haven's new novel concludes a trilogy tracing the trajectory of twentieth-century America by portraying the successive creators of a long-running comic strip, "Derby Dugan." In this volume, newspaper comics have entered their decline, and Ed Biggs' best efforts can't prevent the strip's cancellation. Bitter and disillusioned, Biggs discovers teenage cartoonist Roy Looby and pins his hopes for resuscitating Derby on him. But the misanthropic and eccentric Looby, obviously modeled on R. Crumb, has other ideas. He heads for San Francisco and becomes the leading figure in underground comics. By now the saga of Derby, like the comics medium itself, has lost some of its steam. Hippie Haight-Ashbury and suburban Connecticut, where the newspaper strip artists live, lack the romanticism of the New York City setting of this book's predecessors. What remains, though, is the poignancy of the cartoonists' love for a medium that the rest of society has brushed aside. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (October 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805057412
• ISBN-13: 978-0805057416
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,509,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comix Americanus from Walter Geebus to Roy Looby, January 31, 2002

By 

Pete Risley - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dugan Under Ground: A Novel (Hardcover)

'Dugan Under Ground' is a wonderful novel which focuses on the underground comix milieu of the late '60's and early '70's, but covers far more ground in times before and after. It begins with the story of Ed 'Candy' Biggs, his betrayal-ridden personal life, and his trajectory from desperation to success and failure in his career as the inheritor of a classic newspaper strip, 'Derby Dugan.'

Through an odd sequence of events, Biggs takes on a young and brilliant protege, Roy Looby, a character very roughly based on R. Crumb. As Roy's sensibility and fame develop wildly, he's pursued by several fascinating characters, including his resentful and adoring brother who detests and delights in his role as the 'inker' of Roy's demented comix; an ineffectual and obsessive comix fan who becomes a financially hopeless publisher and quasi-academic promoter of comix-as-art; and a cynical hippie vixen whose identity shifts gears repeatedly throughout the chase. The novel itself becomes kaleidoscopic as it barrels on to its heartbreaking finish.

'DUG' will appeal especially to readers interested in the history of comics, of the underground scene in particular, to admirers of Crumb and of the Terry Zwigoff film on Crumb and his family (don't expect the Loobys to be just the same, though!) As a portrait of grand hopes and bitter disappointments in the America of the '50's, '60's and beyond, it stands beside works like 'Vineland' by Thomas Pynchon and 'Underworld' by Don DeLillo. I thought it was great!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost Great, December 23, 2002

By 

Sherry Chiger "schiger" (New Rochelle, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dugan Under Ground: A Novel (Hardcover)

Usually the final book in a trilogy adds resonance to the entire series. In this case, readers may enjoy Dugan Under Ground better if they haven't yet read its predecessors--in particular, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, the second book in the series. Dugan Under Ground is a fun, vibrant romp, full of wonderful period detail. But the characters don't resonate the way characters in an exceptional tale do--or as they do in Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies.
To put it another way: If you read Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, you'll laugh and you'll cry. If you read Dugan Under Ground, you'll laugh. Which in and of itself isn't a terrible thing.

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost great, August 25, 2011

By 

S. Chiger (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dugan Under Ground: A Novel (Hardcover)

Usually the final book in a trilogy adds resonance to the entire series. In this case, readers may enjoy Dugan Under Ground better if they haven't yet read its predecessors--in particular, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, the second book in the series. Dugan Under Ground is a fun, vibrant romp, full of wonderful period detail. But the characters don't resonate the way characters in an exceptional tale do--or as they do in Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies.

To put it another way: If you read Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, you'll laugh and you'll cry. If you read Dugan Under Ground, you'll laugh. Which in and of itself isn't a terrible thing.