Going underground
Going underground |
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Page 27 of 36  Heroine (Arts Lab, 1977). Cover, featuring a defiant 'punkette' by Suiy Varty Cumulatively, these trends were all very disillusioning for those involved. As Art Spiegelman put it some time later: 'The flaming promise of underground comix - Zap, Young Lust, and others - had fizzled into cold, glowing embers. Underground comics had offered something new ... unselfconsciously redefining what comics could be, by smashing formal and stylistic, as well as cultural and political, taboos. Then, somehow, what had seemed like a revolution simply deflated into a lifestyle. Underground comics were stereotyped as dealing only with Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills. They got stuffed back into the closet, along with bong pipes and love beads, as Things Started To Get Uglier.' Things certainly were getting uglier, but it was not all gloom. The underground was suffering, but it was more adaptive to change than the pessimists imagined. The movement in the latter half of the 1970s was nowhere near as moribund as some histories have suggested, and two areas in particular are worthy of comment: the continuing success of the comedy-orientated titles, and the rise of a new(er) sub-genre of more politically focused material. The humorous comix survived by a process of natural selection. One of the more positive outcomes of the slump in America was that weaker material was gradually weeded out. In particular, the surge of opportunistic cash-ins was slowly halted as it became apparent that surviving headshops were not stocking new and untried material. This left the original creators to continue in the vein they had started, and they now went on to produce some of their best, and most commercially successful, work.  Heroine  Heroine |