Going underground
Going underground |
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Page 32 of 36  Cover Arcade (1975), by Robert Crumb. In addition to this, sections of the counterculture itself were not doing themselves any favours. In the late 1970s, heroin was taking over from marijuana and LSD as the hip substance of choice, and although it is difficult to generalize, it is possible to argue that because of this, the energy of the original movement was sapped. (The Haight Ashbury district became a centre for heroin, as did certain parts of London.) Indeed, the new hard drugs were killers, and many members of the counterculture died at around this time - including some of the underground's finest cartoonists. As if these problems were not enough, hippiedom's self-image took another blow in 1976-7 with the arrival of punk. This was a different kind of counterculture, more of a howl of protest than a movement based on a coherent agenda, and one which characterized all hippies as 'the enemy'. Suddenly, it was no longer cool to have long hair, smoke dope, wear flares or, more to the point, to read comix. As Hunt Emerson put it, when talking about Street Comix: 'In '77 we were overtaken by the punk thing. Before that, quality was what we were looking for - in artwork and production. And, of course, punk ended all that, and we found that all the things we'd been struggling for for three or four years were suddenly negated. People weren't taking comix seriously any more, or didn't think they were important'.27 We shall look at punk in more detail in Chapters 6 and 8, but it is sufficient to say here that it was the coup de grace. It marked a spiritual break with the past, and afterwards there could be no going back.  Arcade Pages (1976), by Aline Kominsky.  Cover Arcade (1976), by Crumb  Page Arcade (1976), by Crumb  Page Arcade (1975), by Art Spiegelman. In many ways. Arcade represented a half-way house between Zap and the outstanding 1980s title. Raw |