Underground Comix

• Print the interior in black ink only and build tone by hand: model figures, rooms and street scenes with pen hatching and cross-hatching, often dense, instead of colour separations.
• Put colour on the cover only and keep the inside to black ink alone; make the cover sell like a newsstand comic or a ballroom poster: a drawn masthead, a warning banner, a crowded scene in a few loud flat inks.
• Borrow the friendly look of 1940s and 1950s children's comics and newspaper strips, with big floppy noses, huge feet and anthropomorphised animals, then turn it on the reader with exactly the sex, drugs and violence the Comics Code forbade.
• Fill the panel to its borders with detail, figures and lettering; let the drawing grow wobbly, grotesque or exaggerated whenever the story does.
• Letter every balloon, caption, title and parody advertisement by hand, mostly in the cartoonist's own capitals, and let the cartoonists write, draw and own their stories, alone or passing panels back and forth in a jam.

San Francisco and Berkeley, where the comic book that made the underground market went on sale in February 1968 (Robert Crumb's Zap Comix #1, imprint dated November 1967, published by Don Donahue's Apex Novelties and printed by the Beat poet Charles Plymell in a run of about 3,500 copies). Self-published strips and the underground papers came first (Frank Stack's The Adventures of Jesus, begun 1962; Jack Jackson's God Nose, Texas, 1964; East Village Other, Berkeley Barb, Yarrowstalks). The scene grew around a few small publishers and a comic shop, with a second centre in the Midwest (Print Mint in Berkeley; Rip Off Press, San Francisco, 1969; Ron Turner's Last Gasp; Gary Arlington's San Francisco Comic Book Company; Kitchen Sink, first Krupp Comic Works; Jay Lynch's Bijou Funnies), and titles were sold mainly through head shops. Its strongest years were 1968–1975: after a 1973 Supreme Court ruling let local communities set obscenity standards (Miller v. California) and drug-paraphernalia sales were banned, distribution collapsed, and by the early 1980s alternative comics and the direct market took over. A British scene ran through the London underground press (International Times, Oz, Cyclops from 1970, Nasty Tales from 1971, cOZmic Comics 1972–1975)

1. 'Underground comix', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix (small-press or self-published comics on content forbidden by the Comics Code; 'comix' to differ from mainstream comics and to stress X-rated content; precursors from 1962 and 1964; Zap #1 in February 1968 with Charles Plymell and Don Donahue; distribution 'primarily through head shops'; covers imitating LSD-inspired posters; strongest years 1968–1975; Miller v. California, 1973, which 'ruled that local communities could decide their own First Amendment standards with reference to obscenity', and the mid-1970s paraphernalia bans; the publishers Apex Novelties, Print Mint, Rip Off Press, Last Gasp, San Francisco Comic Book Company, Krupp Comic Works/Kitchen Sink; Bijou Funnies 'heavily influenced by Mad'; the British scene from IT and Oz to Cyclops, Nasty Tales and cOZmic Comics; Funny Aminals and Maus; Arcade, 1975–1976)
2. 'Zap Comix', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zap_Comix (Zap #1, Apex Novelties, February 1968, about 3,500 copies printed by Charles Plymell; 'the publishing debut' of 'Keep on Truckin'' and 'an early appearance' of Mr. Natural; cover label 'Fair Warning: For Adult Intellectuals Only'; Wilson, Griffin and Moscoso joining with #2; a group jam from issue #3 on, 'where the cartoonists would pass a story around'; Zap #4, Print Mint, August 1969, the arrest of Don and Alice Schenker and the dropped charges; later contributors)
3. Adler Archive of Underground Comix, Fleet Library Special Collections, Rhode Island School of Design, https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_books_comics/ (catalogue records noting 'Color illustrations on covers, b&w interiors' for Zap Comix nos. 0–15, https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_adlerarchive_undergroundcomix/10 , and colour covers with black-and-white interiors for Subvert Comics no. 1, Rip Off Press, 1970, https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_adlerarchive_undergroundcomix/25 , and Coochy Cooty Men's Comics no. 1, https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_adlerarchive_undergroundcomix/128 , a copy of the Keith Green / Industrial Realities printing, which the record notes was 'First printed, also in 1970, by the Print Mint, Berkeley'; Zap #1 imprint dated November 1967)
4. 'Robert Crumb', Lambiek Comiclopedia, https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/crumb.htm (Zap as 'a mature parody of traditional family-friendly comic books'; characters with 'big floppy noses and huge feet'; comics that 'look like typical 1940s-1950s era children's comic books'; imitators copying 'the black-and-white, cross-hatched lines'; Kurtzman and the MAD artists as models; fake advertisements and topper strips)
5. 'Robert Crumb', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Crumb ('a heavily crosshatched pen-and-ink style inspired by late 19th- and early 20th-century cartooning'; Fritz the Cat in his work from the late 1950s and Mr. Natural as his characters; Angelfood McSpade, a 'large-built black woman drawn as an African native caricature'; criticism of his 'recurring themes of graphic sexual and violent abuse of women')
6. 'Victor Moscoso', Lambiek Comiclopedia, https://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/moscoso.htm (in Zap from 1968: Lambiek says from the first issue, while Wikipedia's Zap issue guide has him joining with #2; 'vibrating colors, illegible lettering and vintage graphics'; alternating panels with Rick Griffin)
7. 'S. Clay Wilson', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Clay_Wilson ('aggressively violent and sexually explicit panoramas of lowlife individuals'; the Checkered Demon; in every Zap from #2)
8. 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers (in The Rag, Austin, 'beginning in May 1968'; their 'first comic book appearance' in Feds 'n' Heads, self-published 'in the spring of 1968', the two dates given in no order; Rip Off Press founded 1969; issue #1 dated February 1971)
9. 'It Ain't Me, Babe (comics)', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Ain%27t_Me,_Babe_(comics) (36-page one-shot, Last Gasp, July 1970; Trina Robbins and Barbara 'Willy' Mendes; the first comic book produced entirely by women; against 'the casual misogyny typical of those stories')
10. 'Wimmen's Comix', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimmen%27s_Comix (issue #1, November 1972, edited by Patricia Moodian; Last Gasp 1972–1985)
11. 'R. Crumb's Underground', Frye Art Museum, Seattle, exhibition 26 January–27 April 2008, https://fryemuseum.org/exhibitions/r-crumbs-underground (Crumb as 'a pioneer of underground comix' who self-published the first Zap in 1968)
12. 'Charles Plymell', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Plymell (he printed 'only the first printing of Robert Crumb's Zap Comix #1', which Don Donahue took over 'when he purchased his Multilith 1250 printing press soon after'); for the Multilith as Addressograph-Multigraph's small offset duplicator, Howard Iron Works, 'AM Multilith Mod. 1211 Offset Duplicator', https://howardironworks.org/assets/img/collection/hiw-op-ammultilith.html
13. 'Mattt Konture', Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattt_Konture (a founder of L'Association who 'later discovered 1960s American underground cartoonists such as R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, who inspired him to create psychedelic and autobiographical comics')

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