Dirty Pictures by Brian Doherty

£12.99
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781419750472
Published:
20 Jul 2023
Format:
Paperback
Number of pages:
352 pages
Dimensions:
210x140x30mm
Weight:
0.524kgs
Author:
Author and journalist Brian Doherty tells the wild history of the outlaw, outsider, and sometimes illegal world of Underground Comix. This subterranean subgenre of comic strips and books was printed in lofts on out-of-date machinery, published in handbound zines and underground newspapers, and distributed in headshops, porno stores, and on street corners. Comix presented tales of illicit sex, casual drug use, and a transgressive view of American society that was embraced by hippies, the fine-art world, and legions of future creatives. With a narrative that weaves together the stories of Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, and Art Spiegelman, among many others, Doherty details the local scenes that sprang up in the 1960s and '70s in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Chicago, and provides insight into the rivalries, ideological battles, and conflicts that flourished.

A complete narrative history of the weird and wonderful world of Underground Comix-now in paperback!

In the 1950s, comics meant POW! BAM! superheroes, family-friendly gags, and Sunday funnies, but in the 1960s, inspired by these strips and the satire of MAD magazine, a new generation of creators set out to subvert the medium, and with it, American culture. Their "comix," spelled that way to distinguish the work from their dime-store contemporaries, presented tales of taboo sex, casual drug use, and a transgressive view of society.

Embraced by hippies and legions of future creatives, this subgenre of comic books and strips often ran afoul of the law, but that would not stop them from casting cultural ripples for decades to come, eventually moving the entire comics form beyond the gutter and into fine-art galleries. Author Brian Doherty weaves together the stories of R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Harvey Pekar, and Howard Cruse, among many others, detailing the complete narrative history of this movement.

Through dozens of new interviews and archival research, Doherty chronicles the scenes that sprang up around the country in the 1960s and '70s, beginning with the artists' origin stories and following them through success and strife, and concluding with an examination of these creators' legacies, Dirty Pictures is the essential exploration of a truly American art form that recontextualized the way people thought about war, race, sex, gender, and expression.

About the Author: Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and is the author of This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground (Little, Brown, 2004). His reporting, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, and Fantagraphics's The Best American Comics Criticism, among others. He has also served as a judge for the comics industry's Eisner Awards.

More Information
Number of pages 352

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