Reading A Book For Specific Content Rebel Visions (Patrrick Rosenkrantz)

Rebel Visions (Patrrick Rosenkrantz)

Today, I spent some time reading Rebel Visions The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975. This book is the history of underground comics. I did not read it for that specific content. I am very interested in "ground level" comics, alternative comics that come in at the ground level to the comic stores, that are not distributed through mainstream channels. These are not necessarily drug comics, or comics about the counterculture.

Quite frankly, drug comics bore me. They are repetitive and they often have a single minded focus of getting high then escaping from the police. The themes are very juvenile. There is not much literary merit in comics like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers . Even Robert Crumb's early comics can get kind of repetitive and boring on occassion. I like some of his stories, but as a person he is quite strange.

The movie Crumb which is an excellent film is a showcase on how disturbing he can get. So can counterculture fantasies with no connection to reality. I think if you are selling underground comics through headshops which were the first venues for these comics, it limits the audience

I like comics with a story like Maus, Slow Death, American Splendor, and similar works. Being able to buy comics out of small stores and bookstores is a tremendous advantage over when underground comics first became available.

Also the shock value in some of the underground comics has worn away. You know what you are getting when you pick up a 1960s style underground comic. Hazy sex filled stories like Fritz the Cat. Even the authors sometime tire of them and let them go. Robert Crumb killed Fritz the Cat.

There is a lot of material on the development of major figures in comics. The book talks about the life of Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Trina Robbins and many contemporary artists who started out as part of the underground comics movement. There are quite a few illustrations in this book which contain extreme sex, violence, and drugs

We also get a sense that a lot of them attempted to emulate Harvey Kurtzman's Mad Magazine, and draw elements from the precode comics like EC comics.

At the same time, there are some very interesting stories spread throughout the book. Not all of the history of underground comics comes from San Francisco and the hippies. The book covers the story of the magazine, The East Village Other in Manhattan, New York which is surprising. Some people like to think of the counterculture coming from San Francisco.

There are also bikers (S. Clay Wilson), hotrodders (Ed "Big Daddy" Roth), and surfers who play a role as well. Rick Griffin who drew underground comics was also instrumental in creating the logo for the Rolling Stone Magazine. Robert Crumb drew record covers for Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The story is one of artists who lived cramped lives working in greeting card companies like American Greetings, doing sign painting, working for bubble gum trading card companies like Topps, then suddenly having a powerful mix of new technology and psychedelic drugs made available to them. The real start of the Underground Comics story is in the creation of new offset printing technology in 1965 which allowed small runs of tabloid newspapers at affordable prices. Add in a strong welfare state with a more permissive society and you get an interesting mix.

The artwork in this book is nothing short of astounding. It contains a very wide variety of artists. There are many full color comic strips in addition to psychedelic rock posters, photographs of the artists, cover art of comic books, and single frame cartoons.

The book is written in chronological order. It is very male oriented like most underground comics with the exception of Trina Robbins who wrote some interesting feminist underground comics. There were not as many lady artists as there are today.

I slogged through the biographies of dozens of artists until I found the bits I wanted. Vaughn Bode who wrote Cheech Wizard did not appear until 1967 which is four years into the underground comics story. I consider him to be one of the founders of the type of comics I am interested in. This is a short animation of Cobalt 60 one of my favorite Vaughn Bode stories. http://www.hollywoodcomics.com/cobalt60.html

In 1970 we see Gary Arlington try to revive the tradition of EC Comics by creating an alternative comic series called Skull. Also at about the same time, we see the arrival of a similar comic called Slow Death. This creates a venue for new science fiction comic books to start appearing. The star of these comics is Richard Corben who is one of my favorite comic book artists. I especially like Corben's work in the comic books called Hot Stuff . This is a gallery of some of Richard Corben's work. http://www.corbenstudios.com/Corbenstudios/comgallery.html

Just prior to this we see a few images of this type of work in the underground comic Gothic Blimp. There are images of the covers in Rebel Visions. There are a few pictures with artists I recognize; Gothic Blimp April 1, 1970 #2, Michael Kaluta, Artificial Limbs, and Gothic Blimp #6, featuring a story by Bernie Wrightson.

In 1973, Bill Griffith lead a backlash against Richard Corben, Slow Death, and Skull. He calls the books juvenile with strong adolescent male sexual fantasies. I have mixed reactions towards Bill Griffith's comic work Zippy the Pinhead and Young Lust. It did however help create a separation between the underground comix and the alternative or ground level comics.

I think this backlash ultimately allowed a separation to occur between very deeply underground works focused on sex, drugs, and the counterculture, and plain alternative comics. What Bill Griffith did may have had unintended consequences but ultimately allowed more variety to flourish in the alternative comics scene.

Also in 1973 we see fanzines like Witzend being produced. Wally Wood is partially absorbing some of the counterculture elements into his work. I have a few copies of Witzend which I have read. It is a mix of alternative and mainstream comics.

The end of the book summarizes in a few paragraphs the biographies of the artists in the book. It tells where they are now. This is interesting if you want to learn who were the people who created the underground comics story. There is a recommended reading list for each artist. I noticed there wasn't much for Richard Corben. If you can find it, Richard Corben Flights Into Fantasy by Fershid Bharucha is an excellent overview of his early works.

This book is for adults. There is a lot of explicit content. It may upset some peoples religious and ethical mores. The comics being talked about in this work almost always break a lot of taboos. However, it does have quite a bit of artistic merit that is quite relevant and valuable. Art Spiegelman wrote Maus which won the Pulitzer prize, Kim Deitch's work has appeared in the New Yorker and Details.