Kurtzman and the Comics

Crumb, Terry Gilliam, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, Denis Kitchen. These and many other artists hail Harvey Kurtzman as a seminal influence on their cartooning careers. The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics (Abrams ComicArts, 2009) by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle demonstrates how Kurtzman transformed the comics landscape forever through his notable work on Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales, Mad and Help!, among other publications.

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman is visually stunning. It provides generous samplings of Kurtzman’s roughs, original line work, and colour reproductions, including:

• The fully penciled layouts for “Corpse on the Imjun!” story from Two-Fisted Tales no. 25 (January-February, 1952)
• Colour reproductions of the first 29 Mad covers
• Colour reproductions of the full “Superduperman!” feature from Mad no. 4 (April-May 1953)
• Colour reproductions of all nine Humbug covers
• Eight pencilled sample pages from Kurtzman’s extended graphic narrative, “Marley’s Ghost”
• Kurtzman’s solo story, “The Grasshopper and the Ant” from Esquire (May 1960)
• All 26 Help! covers in colour
• A detailed close-up of Little Annie Fanny’s breasts (!), and the never-before published Little Annie Fanny “origin story”
• Reproductions of the four vellum roughs and final copy of a “Little Annie Fanny” splash page, demonstrating the level of painstaking detail that led to Hugh Hefner’s agreeing to a $3 000 page rate

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman is divided into five chapters, each of which coincides with Kurtzman’s involvement in various projects: his early army cartoons and “Hey Look!” strips of the 1940s; his E.C. work, in particular Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales; Mad; the relatively short-lived Trump, Humbug, and Help! magazines; and Playboy’s “Little Annie Fanny.”

Hey Look!

Back in the day, Kurtzman created his “Hey Look!” strips as comics filler pages for Stan Lee, who was then editing the Timely Comics line, which would evolve into Marvel. Eventually, these pages were well received by William Gaines, who would hire Kurtzman to work with E.C. Comics. During Kurtzman’s employment with Timely Comics, proofreader Adele Hasan was charged with tallying survey responses sent in by readers, indicating their most and least favourite features in the Timely line. Adele was attracted to Kurtzman, and rigged the results in Kurtzman’s favour by filling the ballot box to the brim with favourable results for her future husband. As a direct consequence, Stan Lee was adamant about finding Kurtzman more work. Adele and Harvey ended up marrying.

It’s all in the details

Kurtzman’s perfectionism is a thread running from his E.C. work all the way through to “Little Annie Fanny.” Many artists resented the amount of control that he exercised over his layouts, for which he sketched out thumbnails and roughs that were then fleshed out by other artists. The library research that Kurtzman conducted to ensure historical accuracy in his war comics ensured that their calibre elevated the comics medium to new heights for the time. Kurtzman was careful not to glamorize war. His stories stood out from the pack due to the fastidious attention to detail that he brought to his pages, and the anti-war message implicit in his work. Unfortunately, Kurtzman’s productivity suffered compared with that of other artists, since he invested so much time in amassing background information.

One especially telling example of Kurtzman’s attention to detail is shown in a 1952 advertisement for fake diamond and gold rings. The ad is a press proof in which Kurtzman has circled a huge number of tiny spots and miniscule broken lines, considered unacceptable for public consumption.

The New Satire

In the introduction to The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, celebrity Harry Shearer suggests that without Harvey Kurtzman, there would be no Saturday Night Live or Simpsons. Kurtzman paved the way for a new type of humour, one which lovingly and scathingly poked fun at its own culture simultaneously.

The overt satire that Mad enjoyed had never been seen before. In that magazine’s pages, Kurtzman and crew took on the comics, but also overtly lampooned the U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Juvenile Delinquency and McCarthy-era paranoia.

Lena the Hyena, initially made famous through Basil Wolverton’s winning the “world’s ugliest woman” competition in Al Capp’s L’il Abner strip in 1946, graced the cover of Mad #11. It was an overt jab at Life’s ubiquitous cover format.

Other covers playfully imitated typesetting and design features found in The New England Journal of Medicine, school composition books, novelty-ad pages (think: Chris Ware and the Acme Novelty Co. ads), connect-the-dots illustrations, and racetrack forms.

The May 1958 issue of Humbug featured a cover drawn by R.O. Blechman, whose cartoons also graced the inside pages of the magazine.

Make way for the underground

In many ways, Help! set the stage for the underground comix movement. Kurtzman has been called the “father-in-law” of underground comix, with some even identifying Help! as the first underground comic. Gilbert Shelton’s “Wonder Warthog” strip first appeared in Help! in May 1963. Crumb’s “Fritz the Cat” appeared in Help! January 1965. Underground cartoonists Joel Beck, Jay Lynch, and Skip Williamson, along with Crumb and Shelton, were all featured in the September 1965 issue of Help! (Crumb was in a fumetti feature).

Kurtzman sent Robert and Dana Crumb to Bulgaria for their honeymoon, on assignment. Crumb would eventually assume Terry Gilliam’s former role as editorial assistant. John Cleese, who was featured in a 1964 Help! fumetti, would eventually team up with Gilliam to found Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

In addition to introducing new cartoonists in the pages of Help!, the February 1962 issue exposed Will Eisner’s The Spirit to an audience of younger readers, largely unfamiliar with the comic, which was originally printed in the 1940s and 1950s.

Ahead of his time

Kurtzman began working on a “graphic novel” treatment of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in 1954. He expected this work to run one hundred pages in length, with as much of the original text as possible included in the book. Simon & Shuster turned Kurtzman down. Comics were still receiving a bad rap, and any respectable publisher wanted nowhere near the comics controversy. He tried with the Saturday Evening Post in 1962, also with no success. Kurtzman’s vision was ahead of its time.

Kurtzman and company

No discussion of Harvey Kurtzman is complete without also acknowledging the work of his compatriots, namely Will Elder, Wally Wood, and Jack Davis. There is an especially direct and dynamic impact in Kurtzman’s illustration. Seth and Spiegelman (2008) have commented on the “visual concision” that allowed Kurtzman to predicate and build upon the language of comics, still very much under construction at the time. Kurtzman reduced visual narrative to a sort of shorthand: a form of “codified…storytelling.”

This is especially true when examining Kurtzman’s storyboards, which he often passed onto other artists to complete. As Kurtzman began to assume more editorial control and became more consumed with comics writing, he let others finalize his projects.

Kurtzman’s most regular creative partner throughout the years was Will Elder. Elder, Kurtzman and Charles Stern formed an art studio in 1947, with Elder joining E.C. in 1951. He contributed to Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales, inking the work of John Severin. His artwork began to flourish with the inception of Mad! in November 1952. Elder is known for the signature visual puns and gags that he added to Kurtzman’s layouts. When Kurtzman left Mad! in 1956, Elder followed. When “Little Annie Fanny” debuted in 1962, Elder was appointed Kurtzman’s finishing artist.  Since this strip was printed in full-process colour, the trademark busyness found in Elder’s earlier work was toned down. This ensured that the richness of these painstakingly illustrated pages was honoured in the final colour reproductions.

Wally Wood began his comics career as a letterer, eventually working in Will Eisner’s studio, inking pages of The Spirit alongside Jules Feiffer. Eventually Wood joined the E.C. line, where he contributed to Kurtzman’s war comics, as well as Mad! Later, Wood worked on many acclaimed strips, including Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, and Skymasters with Jack Kirby (Garriock, 1978).

Jack Davis was equally inspired under Kurtzman’s tutelage. Davis’ first gig as a comics writer was with E.C., where he worked crime and science fiction titles, as well as Al Feldstein’s horror line, and Kurtzman’s war and western titles. He worked on Mad! also contributing to the hectic, cluttered spreads replete with sight gags. Davis also followed Kurtzman when he left Mad!, and was involved with Trump, Help! and “Little Annie Fanny” before returning to work for Mad! under Al Feldstein, who assumed the helm when Kurtzman left.

The Kurtzman Legacy

Maybe The Art of Harvey Kurtzman was written for people like me. Mad. Cracked, and National Lampoon were all part of growing up, but without any cognizance of Kurtzman’s contribution to the evolution of comics and humour magazines. For the Old Guard of comics critics, reviewers, curators and historians, this book will most certainly also be appreciated. But its legacy is most important for educating present and future generations of comics and comix aficionados about Harvey Kurtzman’s enduring influence.

What I found most interesting about this book was the in-depth context that it provided on the evolution of E.C. Comics under Kurtzman’s stewardship. For anyone interested in the history of comics during this period, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman is an important addition.

LINKS:

Inkstuds interview: Denis Kitchen on Harvey Kurtzman

REFERENCES:

“Elder, William W.” The World Encyclopedia of Comics (Ed., Maurice Horn). New York: Avon Books, 1977.

Garriock, P.R. Masters of Comic Book Art. London: Aurum Press Limited, 1978.

“Kurtzman, Harvey.” The World Encyclopedia of Comics (Ed., Maurice Horn). New York: Avon Books, 1977.

Seth and Spiegelman, Art. “Harvey Kurtzman.” Grenville, Bruce et al. (Eds.) Krazy! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art. Vancouver/Toronto: Vancouver Art Gallery and Douglas & McIntyre, 2008.

“Wood, Wallace.” The World Encyclopedia of Comics (Ed., Maurice Horn). New York: Avon Books, 1977.

Crumbtemporaries on the Comix

The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments from Contemporaries, edited by Monte Beauchamp

Let us consider Chris Ware’s contribution to The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments from Contemporaries (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), included among the “Accolades and Reflections on the Controversial R. Crumb,” on the back cover of the book:

I can think of no one more unqualified to say anything about Robert Crumb’s artwork than myself. In fact, it’s useless for most cartoonists of my generation to do so; without him, there wouldn’t be any cartoonists of my generation.

–Chris Ware, The Acme Novelty Library

Maybe he’s right. But we should expect Ware’s self-deprecating comments, in particular when mentioning them in the context of Crumb’s impact on cartooning. Were there no Crumb, certainly the next generation of cartoonists would have looked very different. In fact, were there no crumb, even the cartoonists of Crumb’s generation would have looked very different. Crumb’s “contemporaries” profiled in Beauchamp’s collection include cartoonists, publishers, editors, writers, filmmakers, and others. Below is a list of all the contributors to The Life and Times of R. Crumb, in order of their appearance.

• Matt Groenig (Cartoonist: The Simpsons, Life in Hell)
• Terry Gilliam (Film Director: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Brazil, 12 Monkeys)
• Josh Alan Friedman (Writer: Tales of Times Square, Warts and All)
• Don Donahue (Underground Comix Publisher: Zap, Mr. Natural)
• Jay Lynch (Underground Cartoonist: Bijou Funnies)
• Will Eisner (Cartoonist: The Spirit)
• Spain Rodriguez (Underground Cartoonist: Zap)
• Paul Krassner (Writer: The Realist, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Playboy)
• Jaxon (Underground Cartoonist: Skull, Slow Death, Comanche Moon)
• Robert Armstrong (Musician: The Cheap Suit Serenaders)
• Trina Robbins (Underground Cartoonist: Wimmen’s Comix, Wet Satin)
• The Reverend Ivan Stang (Writer: The Book of the SubGenius, High Weirdness by Mail)
• Jim Woodring (Cartoonist: The Whole Earth Catalog, Frank, Heavy Metal, Jim)
• Al Goldstein (Publisher: Screw Magazine)
• John Thompson (Underground Cartoonist: The Berkeley Barb, Eternal Comics)
• Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, Swamp Thing)
• Drew Friedman (Cartoonist: Howard Stern’s Miss America, The New York Times, Spy)
• Steven Heller (Senior Art Director: New York Times Magazine)
• Daniel Clowes (Cartoonist: Eightball, Ghost World)
• George Hansen (Underground Cartoonist: Choice Meats, Let’s Not’N Say We Did Funnies)
• Charles Alverson (Assistant Editor: Help! Magazine)
• Joel Beck (Underground Cartoonist: Snarf, Lenny of Laredo, Banzai)
• Roger Ebert (Film Critic)
• Charles Plymell (Zap’s First Publisher)
• Eric Sack (Underground Art Collector)
• Kim Deitch (Underground Cartoonist: The East Village Other, Arcade, Raw, Zero Zero)
• Dana Crumb (First Wife of Robert Crumb)
• Tom Veitch (Underground Comix Writer: Deviant Slice, Legion of Charlies)
• Bill Griffith (Underground Cartoonist: Zippy the Pinhead, Arcade, Young Lust)
• George Paulus (Record Producer: The Pretty Things, Big Mojo, El Dorados)
• Mark Landman (Illustrator/Cartoonist: Wired, Time, Mondo 2000, Heavy Metal)
• Frank Stack (Underground Cartoonist: The Adventures of Jesus, Feelgood Funnies)
• Ralph Steadman (Illustrator: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Alice in Wonderland)
• S. Clay Wilson (Underground Cartoonist: Zap, The Checkered Demon)
• Marc Trujillo (Painter/Composer: Hackett Freedman Gallery, El Mariachi)
• Justin Green (Underground Cartoonist: Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary)
• Richard Sala (Illustrator/Cartoonist: MTV’s Liquid Television, Raw, Esquire, Playboy)
• John Pound (Cartoonist/Illustrator: Garbage Pail Kids)
• Jay Kinney (Cartoonist/Editor: Anarchy Comics, Young Lust, Occult Laff-Parade)
• Mary Fleener (Cartoonist: Weirdo, Slutburger, Twisted Sisters, Life of the Party)
• Dame Darcy (Cartoonist: Meatcake)
• Robert Storr (Artist, Critic, and Curator: The Museum of Modern Art)
• Doug Allen (The New Yorker, Steven)
• Peter Kuper (Cartoonist: The New York Times, Details, Rolling Stone)
• Ray Zone (Publisher/Writer: The 3-D Zone)
• Jim Jarmusch (Filmmaker: Dead Man, Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law)

In the first line of the foreword to The Life and Times of R. Crumb, cartoonist Matt Groenig  sums up what it means to be a closet Crumb fan trying to lead a normal (?) adult life: “When I was a kid I had to hide my R. Crumb comics from my parents. Now I’m a parent, and I have to hide my R. Crumb comics from my kids.” So this is perhaps the most pithy statement that could be applied to Crumb’s work. However, many more contributions also found their way into this book, the best of which (in my opinion) have been included below.

Criticising the Critics

Below is an excerpt from The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments from Contemporaries, which frames important questions about the worth of the critical review. “Jabber,” “suspicion of all such analytical exercises,” and “futility of criticism/adulation” indeed.  At least Jaxon’s conclusion is that “it is possible to intellectualize about comics and still retain the primal bliss.”

Jaxon (Underground Cartoonist: Skull, Slow Death, Comanche Moon)

The reader should always remember that the comix work being discussed speaks for itself. Thus, other than providing a little background, historians (even the artists themselves) can’t help a lot by commenting on the whys and wherefores of various creations. Often such jabber only distracts from the personal meaning that these books had for each of us during our first encounter with them…This is the risk we run in dissecting such things, whether in the spirit of rational inquiry, homage rendering, or just plain muckraking. Since we humans are incapable of “leaving it alone,” whatever “it” may be, the topic of comix cannot escape similar scrutiny. I want to express my genuine suspicion of all such analytical exercises before adding more crud. Happily, nothing I’ve ever read about Joe Kubert has ever dimmed the flash that his comic, Tor, beamed at my juvenile brain back in that 1950s Texas drugstore, so I trust that it is possible to intellectualize about comics and still retain the primal bliss.

Before getting sidetracked on this ramble about the futility of criticism/adulation (after all, what’s done is done’ why bother with it?), I was going to try and remember exactly how my brain cells became so befuddled, or, to be precise, how I got mixed up in a crazy business like drawing and producing comic books instead of working in a bank, selling insurance or practicing mortuary science. But it’s not easy—at this stage of terminal mind rot—to recall all the waves that gently slapped against my small boat, driving it ever so imperceptibly toward the swirling maelstrom (26-27).

Through reading one testimonial after another about the impact that Crumb had on the individuals who contributed to this book, it finally started to sink in just how much Zap comix was truly a revolutionary publication back in the day. Justin Green describes how Zap has come to overshadow so many of the other contributions to the comix movement, which are equally important to its history. For an in-depth overview of these additional works, the best place to start is probably Patrick Rosenkranz’ Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution, 1963-1975.

Justin Green (Underground Cartoonist: Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary)

Luckily for Zap, its name got to be a generic term for the movement it spearheaded. To the uninitiated, all titles were called “Zap” comics. The Zap artists became the established orthodoxy of renegade cartooning. Within a very diverse field of talent, they commanded an elite niche. In other words, they got a lot more than the going page rate. They were a bit older than the rest of the cartoonists, too. In terms of artistic skill and business savvy, the gap of a few years was critical.

In the future, any historian wanting to do a glossing over of the heyday of underground comix will have a ready-made leitmotif in the word Zap. As the years go by, that repeated emphasis on Zap will overshadow the dozens of other titles that can legitimately claim to be first-rate (158).

One interesting pattern arising from reading all the positive accounts of Crumb’s influence is just how much idolatry is lathered on Crumb. There is so much high praise for him, in fact, that the more negative treatments of Crumb stand out among all the others, in particular in light of his brutal and readily shared self-honesty regarding his obsessions and neuroses. Take, for example, the treatment of Crumb’s influence by veteran wimmen’s comix creator and chronicler, Trina Robbins:

Trina Robbins (Underground Cartoonist: Wimmen’s Comix, Wet Satin)

I’d been living in Los Angeles before I moved to New York and I returned there to visit friends. While I was there, I took a side trip to San Francisco and was met at the airport by some friends who were aware that I was into underground comic strips and knew that I would react as I did when they did what they did, which was to hand me a copy of Zap #1 without saying a single word. And I reacted as they knew I would—it utterly blew my mind! For the first time, I realized the possibilities. One didn’t have to be restricted to drawing strips for underground newspapers; you could actually do an entire comic book! I can’t begin to describe what a revelation this was to me; probably a lot like what discovering Jesus is to “born-again” Christians. In a way, knowing that I could do a comic book was very much like being “born again” (40).

…My insistence about his hostility to women simply got me into a lot of trouble with the then-underground comix establishment. To these guys, Crumb was sacrosanct, and criticizing him was a sin that earned me ostracism.

I remember an interview with Crumb, written by a guy I new…that appeared in EVO in which Crumb mentions that I accuse him of hostility to women in his work. The interviewer defends Crumb by saying, “Sure you’re hostile, but you’re just putting yourself in the role of a little boy and all little boys are hostile to women.” And Crumb replies, “No, I’m not pretending to be a little boy. I’m just me—twenty-six years old—and I am hostile to women!”

I guess the worst of it to me is that Crumb became such a culture hero that his comics told everybody else that it was okay to draw this heavily misogynistic stuff. The phenomenon of the underground comix of the seventies, so full of hatred toward women, rape, degradation, murder and torture, I really believe can be attributed to Crumb having made this kind of work stylish.

And then, weirdest of all, is People magazine coming out with an article on Crumb in 1985 about how cute his Keep On Truckin’, Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and maybe a naughty naked tit are. But it’s like, these people haven’t really looked a Crumb’s work because there’s no awareness of the really hideous things he drew; of Jumpin’ Jack Flash fucking a mound of dead hippie chicks; of Angelfood McSpade being screwed while her head is submerged in a toilet bowl; of the chicken woman’s head being cut off by the Cute Little Bearzy Wearzies; of Forky O’Donnell stabbing his girlfriend to death with a fork and showing the body to his friend, who in turn says, “Let’s fuck it!”

Ironically, just as R. Crumb was responsible for the birth of the underground comic book, I believe he was responsible for its death. Because he was such a culture hero, his comics became the major inspiration for eager new would-be underground cartoonists who adopted his style, complete with the rampant misogyny, often doing him one better. Soon the stands were loaded down with underground comix that featured graphic rape scenes and every other degration toward women that the writers/artists could think of. Entrails, usually female, were scattered over the landscape in a phenomenon of violence to women that I believe has never been equalled in any other medium. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) these wanna-bes lacked Crumb’s talent, so the stands were loaded down with badly drawn misogyny. The work of some of these people, such as Rory Hayes, was so bad that it was a novelty for a while, but there really is just so much of that stuff that people can take and the comic-reading public soon reached its limit.

I certainly grant Crumb a tip of the hat for getting the underground comix movement started. I’m just sorry that he took a wrong turn in Albuquerque (41-42).

This excerpt characterizes Crumb in terms of the disconnect that he had with his reading audience:

The Reverend Ivan Stang (Writer, The Book of the SubGenius, High Weirdness by Mail)

The most astounding thing I learned about Crumb, during personal meetings, was how ignorant he was of his own audience. He was at a comics convention in Dallas; we sat together at dinner. He kind of whispered to me, “All these nerdy little guys with glasses!! Are these people the ones who’ve been buying my stuff all these years??” He was actually surprised. I said, “Well, yeah, of course! Haven’t you ever been to comic book convention?” “no,” he replied. I was floored. This was in goddam 1984, for god’s sake!! He was appalled to discover the nerdy quality of his fans. “Look who’s taking, Crumb! You’re a nerdy looking guy with glasses; I am, too! Most of ‘em are nerdy geeks, but you can’t second-guess what these people are really like, any better than they can guess what you or I are really like!” That was a weird experience. I can offer no theory to explain this particular hold in Crumb’s knowledge. I mention it only for history’s sake. Surely he must’ve known that most of his readers were Foonts, not Naturals! Yet, I swear, he really seemed to expect his fans to be normal or something. It was very strange (51).

Crumb’s satirical edge has always served as a mirror reflecting back on the counterculture of the 1960’s and the 1970’s. This is reflected in Jim Woodring’s contributions on Crumb:

Jim Woodring (Cartoonist: The Whole Earth Catalog, Frank, Heavy Metal, Jim)

When I was a teenager and the first Zaps were coming out, me and my cartooning pals would gnash our teeth in envy over his work. As a cartoonist he had every virtue we desired for ourselves: his style was fully developed, original, familiar, relaxed, versatile and brilliant, and it was unreservedly praised by art-conscious adults. He himself was, by all accounts, self-deprecating and down-to-earth, an appealing a hip misfit who turned down Playboy’s slavering advances on the grounds of artistic integrity (that really got me). My pals and I knew that if we were going to make our marks as cartoonists we had a long hard road ahead of us, whereas Crumb was obviously a natural whose drawing ability was innate and whose path seemed not only straight but greased.

And was he aware? Did he truly see? Eeyow! During the late sixties it was as if the cosmos had dispatched him to the scene of our crime to record and reflect it for us. At that time, you may recall, tribalism had been introduced into our nontribal culture and there had arisen a hybrid—the Hippie. Crumb was poised to capture and distill their brief flowing and the beginning of their multigenerational decline. In those days, the unbelievably apt images in his comics glowed like charged filaments. We laughed hysterically, we stoned ones, laughed helplessly in wonder at the fantastic consciousness on display in his work (54).

John Thompson speaks for the lost hippies who watched their world crash and burn as the Summer of Love proved impossible to sustain:

John Thompson (Underground Cartoonist: The Berkeley Barb, Eternal Comics)

Depression is a horrible disease that strikes thousands of people in their early twenties each year. Professionally untreated, my disease was a personal agony that just sucked me in deeper. For lots of creative young people, 1967 offered “the Summer of Love” in the Haight; 1968 offered “the Summer of Turmoil” in the Haight and in Berkeley. Like so many others at that time, I wasn’t just suffering severe “male mood cycles,” I was suffering a myriad of symptoms of profound depression.

The year 1968 was one of great turmoil. Instead of being consumed by it, Crumb transmuted his own conflicts into his early Zaps. It’s important to remember that only the first Zap was a product of 1967’s “Summer of Love” and all that buoyant optimism. Crumb’s later work was a product of the troubled and disappointing year that followed—and he spoke to the issues of those times often grotesque and disturbing ways. Late 1968 and early 1969 were difficult times for Crumb and the other underground cartoonists, and those difficulties had a profound effect on their work (68).

A year later (Crumb) introduced me to Terry Zwigoff, who seemed morosely self-obsessed that morning. I could only wonder why Bob was spending time with someone who on first impression seemed a talentless loser. His camaraderie with Terry seemed unexplainable. A quarter century later, Terry’s film about Crumb would reach an audience vaster than anyone ever expected. Bob’s brightness shined from every scene in the well-edited documentary, with no hint of the darkest side I had glimpsed when I first met Terry. Yet even within Bob’s gloomiest and most nightmarish days, he never abused himself, his talent, or anyone else.

Thirty years later, I certainly don’t look back nostalgically on 1968 as the “good old days” in the wild and crazy Haight-Ashbury. Instead, I remember them as very hard times, yet times in which the underground cartoonists were very productive and had a lot to say that was relevant (69).

And lastly, Jay Kinney comments on Crumb’s contribution to confessional comics.

Jay Kinney (Cartoonist/Editor: Anarchy Comics, Young Lust, Occult Laff-Parade)

(Crumb) also pioneered the use of the comics medium as a personal confessional, where the artist bares all for his unseen audience. Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary and Art Spiegelman’s Maus may represent the most fully realized instances of such soul bearing, but year in, year out, no one has been more honest (and ironically amusing) about his neuroses and eccentricities than Crumb—with the possible exception of his wife, Aline!

Last but not least, Crumb set the standard for draftsmanship in comix, and I am hard pressed to name anyone who has topped him in fluid line work or range of styles. Crumb made drawing look easy and fun—an illusion which sustained me for a number of years before I decided it was actually a labor intensive grind. But Crumb draws on, as effortlessly and beautifully as ever.

Of course, no genius is perfect, and Crumb has, at times, been his own worst enemy. As a magazine publisher, I would hesitate to give him a cover assignment unless I was prepared to accept a design from him which seemed guaranteed to kill newsstand sales. Art which springs from his own enthusiasms and motivations can be exquisite, but catch him in a contrary mood (or make him an offer that he can’t refuse) and Lord knows what you’ll get. Crumb is fully capable of taking the worst stereotypes and pushing them to such an extreme that they implode into ridiculousness. However, that can be a joke that not everyone gets and it has earned him his fair share of censure over the years.

All in all, The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments from Contemporaries was an interesting, insightful, and pleasant read. The one necessary omission, due to the book’s publication in 1998, is any commentary on Crumb’s later work, in particular The Book of Genesis. There are twelve pages in the middle of the book that reproduce “Comix and Illustrations” by Crumb, including samples of his cartoon work, assorted comix covers, Crumb’s exquisite “Heroes of the Blues,” “Early Jazz Greats,” “Pioneers of Country Music,” and “Les as du musette” portraits, and album covers.

Long Live Da Comix!

Comix: The Underground Revolution by Dez Skinn

I finished reading Comix: The Underground Revolution (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004) right after reading Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones. The two books are a perfect match for one another. In many ways, Skinn’s work begins where Men of Tomorrow leaves off—with the birth of Mad magazine, and the undergrounds that followed suit from Harvey Kurtzman’s lead.

I am a late arrival on the comix scene, so for me to find what serves both as an itemization and a brief history of the period in the pages of one volume is a real gift. The book is visually rich, including huge amounts of source material, none of which has been watered down for more sensitive audiences.

In the foreward to Comix: The Underground Revolution, Denis Kitchen explains the position of artists who contributed to the underground’s beginnings:

We knew that copyrights to comics were historically—almost without exception—owned not by creators but by publishers or syndicates.

We knew, for example, that Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster signed away their rights as very young men, and over the years received only a pittance in comparison with their publisher, DC Comics. We knew that our creative inspiration, Harvey Kurtzman, left Mad because of an equity dispute with EC publisher Bill Gaines, and we saw that Kurtzman remained financially precarious while Gaines, whose business was saved by Mad, made millions. And we observed that even the most successful newspaper strip artists, with very few exceptions (Al Capp, Will Eisner and Milton Caniff), were unable to wrest ownership of their own famous creations.

From the start, every cartoonist in the counterculture understood that the old economic system was unacceptable. An artist first, and a publisher second, I understood that creators on principle should own their copyrights and trademarks (9).

Enter the new age of comics creation. Between the push for artists’ advocating for their ownership rights and an intense exploration of subjects that were largely taboo in comics previous to this point in history, comix were born—the “x” referring to x-rated comic books catering to a uniquely adult audience.

Comix: The Underground Revolution contextualizes the movement especially in terms of its beginnings in San Francisco with the publication of R. Crumb’s Zap! comics in 1967. The book’s introduction is a high-level overview of underground comics, including their early influences such as the pornographic cartoons called Tijuana Bibles in the 1930s. The Tijuana Bibles were a series of under-the-counter eight-page folded strips, the height and width of a cigarette package, which mocked the most popular newspaper strip features of the of the day, with over a thousand different depictions of ordinarily innocent material rendered sexually explicit.

The chapters in Comix: The Underground Revolution are organized thematically. In Chapter 1, “Heroes of the Revolution” the principal artists (and publishers) involved in the early underground comix scene are featured:

• R.Crumb
• Gilbert Shelton
• Rick Griffin
• Denis Kitchen
• Vaughn Bodé
• S. Clay Wilson
• Spain Rodriguez
• Art Spiegelman
• Hunt Emerson
• Brian Talbot

Chapters 2 and onward, and the themes that each addresses, are listed below:

• Chapter 2: “Can’t Get Enuff: Sex in comix”
• Chapter 3: “Grass Roots: Drugs in comix”
• Chapter 4: “Beyond the Page: Adding music to the movement”
• Chapter 5: “Publish and be Damned: Getting the work out there”
• Chapter 6: “Girls on Top: Wimmen’s comix”
• Chapter 7: “Anarchy in the UK”
• Chapter 8: “Where have all the Flower Children Gone? Long time passing, long time ago”
• Chapter 9: “Children of the Revolution: The kids are alright”

Comix: The Underground Revolution is a solid review of an important era in the history of the comic book and its later cousin, the graphic novel. The scene is described in terms of the myriad influences of the late 1960s and early 1970s, in particular in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, with its sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll creed. The challenges of operating small presses, or alternatively working with larger commercial presses and distributors are well detailed in Chapter 5. Numerous court cases pertaining to obscenity and pornography charges (some of which were successful and others failures) in both the US and the UK are also well described, as well as the implications of these cases on future work. In Chapter 9, the significant contribution of Canadian artists is included as a topic.

A handful of creators whose work is now securely entrenched in the mainstream had their beginnings in the early underground movement. Among them are Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore, and Dave Gibbons. The early pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Liechtenstein’s paintings ran parellel to the underground movement, with their subversive artistic works inspiring a whole generation of pop and commercial artists to follow.

I see only two notable absences in Comix: The Underground Revolution, one of which is out of necessity. First, the danger of providing a broad overview of the comix movement involves not being able to zero in to a meaningful degree on a vast number of the creators whose works are mentioned. For example, I recently read Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life. This volume seriously blew my mind due to the heart-wrenching personal honesty with which it addressed the topics of drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. R. Crumb himself lauds Gloeckner’s work, and yet Dez Skinn only mentions Gloeckner because of her books being confiscated by border guards in the UK. To not have at least have named Gloeckner’s work is an important omission, since for the avid researcher, this can become a point of entry into additional investigation. Obviously, to focus in even greater depth on the many individuals cited would have made publication an even more unwieldy task than the book’s Acknowledgments suggest that it was. I cannot imagine the copyright clearances that must have been necessary to include the images found on virtually every page of Comix: The Underground Revolution. But at least in Gloeckner’s case, I think she deserved greater recognition.

My other main complaint with Skinn’s history has to do with the ending of the book. There was no real conclusion; its last pages address the topics of independent films that have been produced on comix-related themes, with a description of Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon History of the Universe following immediately afterwards. But where is the closure? Perhaps in the author’s mind, there is none. Nonetheless, in the interests of balancing the foreward and introduction at the beginning of Comix: The Underground Revolution with its final moments, I would have liked to see a final reflection on comix, perhaps with speculation on how the presence of Web comics may lead to a diaspora of the form into uncharted territory.

At the end of the book, a “Comix checklist” is included, which lists the vast majority of titles and artists contributing to the movement. A bibliography of critical works and recommended readings provides ample opportunity for the serious comics aficionado to continue researching this fascinating period.

The second to last chapter of Comix traces the demise of the undergrounds; the final chapter of leads us into a new generation of comics, the independents. Pioneered by the likes of Fantagraphics Books and Drawn & Quarterly, the names seen in the last chapter are most likely familiar to more recent followers of the graphic novel, which leads to further explorations in the field…To be continued!

LINKS:

The names of many of the key movers and shakers of the movement are featured in interviews on the Inkstuds radio show. The interviews provide a beautiful symmetry to Comix: The Underground Revolution, since the bulk of the show is dedicated to underground and independent artists, both of the past and the present.