Week Six: Underground Comix

This week we focused on the underground comics of the '60s. I read a few of Robert Crumb's comics, such as Whiteman and other shorts. I really love the underground comics movement, as I believe it jumpstarted a lot of what I find myself interested in today, being the indie & small-press comic culture. Underground comics were the first time that comics really became open to anyone who wanted to create and publish. No longer did anyone have to depend on big-time comics publishers or newspapers to serialize their comics, as many artists started to show their work in smaller, underground magazines, or simply to self-publish their own work.

That being said, much of the driving force for these creators to make these comics was the Comics Code Authority, which was in essence a censor on comics, not allowing any sort of published comic to show any sort of 'smut'. Underground comics was a way for comics creators to kind of push back and make comics explicitly banned by the code as a way to continue to explore creative freedom through the medium of comics, no matter what the government regulation was. That being said, many underground comics were very explicit, (especially Crumb's) in racial, sexual or drug-related ways. It was the first time that there had been a whole genre of comics that were very strictly for adults; the age-inclusiveness was not at all flexible. I feel that this kind of expanded people's understanding of comics and what they felt could be done in the visual medium of comics.

Crumb created many personal comics as well, which not many creators had done before. He made short comics based on his own personal experience of drug use and otherwise, as well as injected subject matter he found interesting or enthralling into his work (namely, the types of women he seemed to enjoy). This kind of personal touch in comics was something that hadn't been seen as much before this era, and is a trend that continued well into this era of comic creators; many incredible works have been made in the comic field that are memoirs or simply draw on the experience of the artist in a deep way in some form or another.