Sign-In
Cart
Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Re
Audio Book
Art HistoryGeneral Graphic NovelsGeneral World History
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: Aug 16 2022
Language: English
A complete narrative history of the weird and wonderful world of underground comix
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 Embraced by hippies and legions of future creatives, this subgenre of comic books and strips was printed on out-of-date machinery, published in zines and underground newspapers, and distributed in head shops, in porno stores, and on street corners. Comix 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 out of 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 that came to define cool. Via dozens of new interviews and archival research, Doherty chronicles the scenes that sprang up around the country in the 1960s and '70s and the rivalries, ideological battles, and conflicts that flourished. Dirty Pictures is the essential exploration of a truly American art form that re-contextualized the way people thought about war, race, sex, gender, and expression.
3 different editions
Also available
Also from
Doherty, Brian
Modern Libertarianism: A Brief History of Classical Liberalism in the United States
Doherty, Brian
Hardcover
Also in
General Graphic Novels
Fixing Flamingos: And Other Solutions to the World's Least Pressing Problems
Rea, Brian
Brown, Lucienne
Paperback
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Armageddon Game -- The Alliance
Campbell, Sophie
Burnham, Erik
Paperback