Going underground
Going underground |
|
Page 2 of 36  Back cover Deviant Slice (Print Mint, 1972). Art: Greg Irons. A Time magazine parody referring to the Vietnam War. Thirdly, there was an anti-Comics Code reaction, which provided a kind of negative impetus to underground creators. As children, these were the very people who had been worst hit by the 1950s scare -sometimes having their comics collections torn up by their parents, or thrown on the playground fires. Now it was time for payback: where the Code had stipulated 'no violence', 'no sex', 'no drugs' and 'no social relevance', the underground comix would indulge themselves to the maximum in every category. If the Code meant, essentially, that a comic was prevented from saying anything meaningful about the real world, then by defying it this possibility was reawakened. But the underground was also an expression of its time politically, and the final essential ingredient in its make-up was a new kind of political awareness. In the mid-to-late 1960s, the hippie movement in America was engaged, to a greater or lesser degree, with protest against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights struggle, Anarchism, Socialism, Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation. Add to this an interest in the spiritual value of taking drugs (marijuana and LSD being the favourites), and of 'free love' (the pill had become widely available a few years before), and you had - very simplistically speaking - a thriving 'counterculture'. Of course, a counterculture had always been present in American society, but at no point in history had it been so focused, or so large, as at this moment. The comix mirrored - albeit distortedly - this unique development, and were at the same time conveyors of the hippie creed. They became a place where the counterculture could debate with itself, and could flex its muscles. In fact they were as much a product of events as the many, and much better-remembered, rock bands that emerged in the same period.  Panel from The People's Comics (Golden Gate, 1972), featuring the artist in typically paranoid frame of mind.  Sketch made by Crumb in 1992, depicting him and his pregnant wife in 1968, selling copies of Zap on the corner of Haight Street, San Francisco. |