Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality, and violence. They were most popular in the United States and in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.
Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Barbara "Willy" Mendes, Trina Robbins and numerous other cartoonists created underground titles that were popular with readers within the counterculture scene. Punk had its own comic artists like Gary Panter. Long after their heyday, underground comix gained prominence with films and television shows influenced by the movement and with mainstream comic books, but their legacy is most obvious with alternative comics.
History
United States
The United States underground comics scene emerged in the 1960s, focusing on subjects dear to the counterculture: recreational drug use, politics, rock music, and free love. The underground comix scene had its strongest success in the United States between 1968 and 1975, Underground comix often featured covers intended to appeal to the drug culture, and imitated LSD-inspired posters to increase sales.
American comix were strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics and especially magazines edited by Harvey Kurtzman, including Mad (which first appeared in 1952). Shelton's own Wonder Wart-Hog appeared in the college humor magazine Bacchanal #1-2 in 1962. Jack Jackson's God Nose, published in Texas in 1964, has also been given that title. One guide lists two other underground comix from that year, Vaughn Bodē's Das Kampf and Charles Plymell's Robert Ronnie Branaman.
Joel Beck began contributing a full-page comic each week to the underground newspaper the Berkeley Barb and his full-length comic Lenny of Laredo was published in 1965. Another underground paper, the East Village Other, was an important precursor to the underground comix movement, featuring comic strips by artists including Crumb, Shelton, Kim Deitch, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, and Art Spiegelman before true underground comix emerged from San Francisco with the first issue of Zap Comix. Zap and many of the first true underground comix publications began with reprints of comic strip pages which first appeared in underground papers like the East Village Other, the Berkeley Barb, and Yarrowstalks.