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Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix

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As someone who is fairly new to comics I was skeptical when one of my friends suggested I look at this book. I was familiar with R. Crumb but I wasn't even alive when the Underground Comix movement was taking place. But as I started flipping through the art and reading the essays at the beginning, I found myself laughing out loud and nodding my head. It's pretty amazing how much the comics that were made forty years ago are still relevant today. They deal with sex and drugs, but also race, political organizing, money, the lameness of the establishment, all that good stuff. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of the book is the fact that all of the art is shown in its original state, so you get to see some of the artists' thought processes and it just feels more accessible and real.

After hoarding my friend's copy for a while, I not only bought a copy for myself but I gave one to my parents who were actually around for the heyday of the underground movement. They both got all nostalgic about where they were when they first read Zap or Snarf magazine and it sparked some interesting conversations. I highly recommend this book for just about anyone who is interested in not only comics and art, but sarcasm, subversive humor, and fun.

This book is one of a kind. It situates the rise of underground comics into the broader history of the 1960s/1970s (or, with the 1960s/1970s at the center of the narrative -- it really covers the 1950s to the present). There are some superb essays -- one by the editors, one by comix buff and radical historian Paul Buhle. Trina Robbins ties together feminism and comix. The book is worth buying for the written material alone, but the scores of large, colorful pages depicting the work (sometimes in rare original and draft form) of well-known (and less well-known) artists is the real treat. Cumulatively, these images and the text accompanying them provide one of the best surveys of underground comics history. It's a hugely fun read. Anyone interested in comics, the 1960s, art history, feminism, etc., should check this book out.

I always loved comics as a kid, but was really too young (and too naive) to have been exposed to the underground comics movement that started in the late 60 and early 70s. By my day, even Mad magazine had become a rather tame affair. "Underground Classics" was a way for me to fill this gap.

The book's first half includes articles about the genre's history and artists. The focus was on publishing and distribution, which was an important aspect of the movement. But there is precious little about the art itself -- little about the passions driving such craziness as Zap! and Air Pirates and The Fabulous Furry, Freak Brothers. It is obvious that the artists were anti-establishment in orientation and opposed to the saccharine creation of more mainstream comic art. But this was never spelled out. Worse, Paul Buhle's long article on the "undergrounds" was pedantic and full of the kind of bloviating nonsense that the genre itself would have skewered without mercy.

The second half of the book is much more satisfying. We get to see the original art that made it into the comics, complete with erasures and corrections and registration marks. Unfortunately, we get only a panel or two from each artist, hardly enough to appreciate their genius. Bill Griffiths is represented by a couple of covers -- on from Zippy. We get a few covers from the master, Robert Crumb. But we do get page after page of titillating eye candy from a variety of other super-talented and driven comic artists. The art is great -- no holds are barred, and no topic (Jesus at a faculty party?) is taboo. There is plenty of drug use, political commentary, savage satire and wild sex (with a female yeti, no less).

The book left me wanting more -- much more. It's worth it for that. But by the end, and without benefit of an insider's knowledge, I still had little idea of how the roiling passions of the 1960s were transformed into such wild and unrestrained art, and how it might have affected its readers and future generations of artists.

The underground comix of the 1960s and 1970s have always fascinated me for their rule-breaking, ground-breaking attitudes and counterculture artistic sensibilities. I've read more than a few of them over the years, although tracking them down, and understanding their context 20 to 30 years after their publication, has never been as easy task.

That's partly why this oversized book from James Danky and Denis Kitchen is so welcome. It not only presents samples of the best underground art but also gives us a series of informative essays that put the whole underground comix scene in its historical context. With the art and text combined, the book shows how important these publications were in establishing comic books as a legitimate art form.

Underground Classics the book actually got its start as an art exhibit assembled by Danky and Kitchen for the Chazen Museum of Art. As such, the bulk of this book is made up of gorgeous reproductions of original artwork by Robert Crumb, Bill Griffith, Howard Cruse, Gilbert Shelton, and dozens of other artists from the period. Each plate is accompanied by a paragraph of text that presents the history of the piece, the artist, the publication it came from, or the impact the strip had on the broader cultural movement.

The essays--including an introduction by Jay Lynch, a retrospective by the editors, and an essay about the "wimmen's comix" movement by Trina Robbins--put the artwork in further perspective. We see how the movement got its start, how the artists struggled to fulfill their artistic visions in the broader context of the drug-fueled, peace and free-love '70s, and how the undergrounds had both an enormous impact and a limited legacy (they essentially burned themselves out on by 1980).

As a historical document and an art book, Underground Classics is worth a look for any serious lover of the comic arts.
-- John R. Platt

Modern comics have their origin in the newspaper illustrated cartoon strips of the late 19th century and evolved into 'comic books' in the late 1920s, becoming an indispensable part of American popular culture in the 1930s with the introduction of 'Super Hero' characters beginning with Superman and Batman. Comics then began to proliferate at a rapid pace in all the literary genres from Romance, to Westerns, to Crime and Horror. Viewed on as an inferior form of literature that was capable of 'corrupting young minds', attempts to suppress and regulate comic books through the imposition of a comic book code drove a number of innovative and iconoclastic comic book artists 'under ground'. That's when comics became 'comix' and had its own 'Golden Age' in the counter-culture communities of the 1960s and 1970s with such icons as Robert Crumb who work is still considered influential today. In "Underground Classics: The Transformation Of Comics Into Comix" is the collaborative effort of academician James Danky (School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin - Madison) and cartoonist, and publisher Denis Kitchen who has personally worked with every important comix artist the heyday of the underground comics movement. Profusely illustrated throughout, "Underground Classics" is an informed and informative historical overview that is very highly recommended reading for all comic book enthusiasts with an interest in the history of this truly distinctive yet immensely diverse American art form.

I purchased this after seeing the art exhibit at the Chazen Art Museum on campus at University of Wisconsin. The exhibit is terrific. Who would guess that the underground comix I read in alternative press and in comic books would one day be treated as legitimate art? The book comes close to being at the exhibit and does a nice job of displaying the range of items in this exhibit. The show made me go out and by a copy of the Furry Freak Brothers Omnibus which includes all of the Brothers' stories under one cover. The Freak Brothers Omnibus