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Cover to the 'Escape one-shot' Violent Cases (Escape/Titan, 1987). Art: Dave McKean. Script: Neil Gaiman. A graphic novella about, among other things, the unreliability of memory and Al Capone's osteopath, that launched the careers of its creators.

If Raw and Escape were the 'cool and sophisticated' end of the anthology market in the 1980s, Weirdo (Last Gasp, 1981) was the complete opposite. Another American title, it was heir to the more spontaneous 'do what thou wilt' tradition of the underground, which segued perfectly with new punk attitudes. (Indeed, perhaps no comic of the period better reflected the punk worldview.) Originated by the great Robert Crumb, it too had room for veteran underground creators. They included Spain Rodriguez and Aline Kominsky (or rather, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, as she was by now the wife of the editor). The main emphasis, however, was on showcasing fledgling new creators. Thus, the world was introduced to the side-splittingly bitter comedy of JD King and Peter Bagge, and to a roster of new female creators, most notably Dori Seda and Phoebe Gluckner.
As for the contribution of Crumb himself, this was truly remarkable. He seemed to feed off the energy of the younger cartoonists, and went through something of a creative renaissance. He was no longer taking LSD, and was drawing in a much more realistic style: among his best Weirdo strips were 'Trash: What Do We Throw Away?', an ecological protest about the amount of unnecessary garbage produced by American economy, which ended with a pointedly disgusting depiction of a ravaged Mother Earth; 'Mode O'Day, an acid comment on the advent of the 1980s yuppie; and 'Uncle Bob's Midlife Crisis', an autobiographical piece about 'growing up' and having children, told in typically self-loathing fashion.