Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix - Hardcover

Kitchen, Denis; Danky, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810905981 ISBN 13: 9780810905986

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 2009

Synopsis

The impact of American underground comix is profound: They galvanized artists both domestically and abroad; they forever changed the economics of comic book publishing; and they influenced generations of cartoonists, including their predecessors. While the works of Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman are well-known via the New Yorker, Maus, and retrospective collections, the art of their contemporaries such as Gilbert Shelton, Trina Robbins, Justin Green, Kim Deitch, S. Clay Wilson, and many other seminal cartoonists who came of age in the 1960s is considerably less known.
Underground Classics provides the first serious survey of underground comix as art, turning the spotlight on these influential and largely underappreciated artists. Essays from curators James Danky and Denis Kitchen, alongside essays by Paul Buhle, Patrick Rosenkranz, Jay Lynch, and Trina Robbins, offer a thorough reflection and appraisal of the underground movement. Over 125 original drawings, paintings, sculptures, and artifacts are featured, loaned from private collections and the artists themselves, making Underground Classics indispensible for the seriousminded comics fan and for the casual reader alike.

About this title

About the Author

James Danky is the author of books on topics as varied as African-American newspapers and women's publications. He is on the faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Denis Kitchen, cartoonist, writer, editor, publisher, and entrepreneur, was present at the birth of the underground comics movement. Kitchen has worked with every important artist active in producing underground comix.

Reviews

It’s no longer much of a novelty to see mainstream comics artists’ work in museums and galleries, and now underground comics, the 1960s bastard offspring of comics and the counterculture, are the focus of a traveling exhibition that this book complements. The 50-plus artists represented include seminal figures from the movement’s earliest days, like Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton; second-generation undergrounders like Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns, who would make their biggest mark in the later alternative-comics scene; and 1980s figures working in the underground spirit, such as Drew Friedman and Howard Cruse. Three innovative mainstream comics artists whose freewheeling approach was influential on the movement—Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, and Will Elder—are represented with pages they did for underground zines. Viewing the well-reproduced original drawings reveals a level of craft that belies the underground scene’s scruffy image. It may seem ironic that works by these often-vulgar anti-establishment artists have wound up on gallery walls, but these well-chosen examples, augmented by a handful of informative essays, make a strong case for their legitimacy. --Gordon Flagg

Edition details

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810905981
• ISBN 13: 9780810905986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144