Synopsis
There scarcely was an underground comics world before Robert Crumb’s classic solo first issue ofZap. By Zap #2, he had begun assembling a Seven Samurai of the best, the fiercest, and the most stylistically diversified cartoonists to come out of the countercultural kiln. All of them were extremists of one sort or another, from biker-gang member Rodriguez to Christian surfer Griffin, but somehow they produced a decades-long collaboration: a mind-blowing anthology of abstract hallucination, throat-slashing social satire, and shocking sexual excess, that made possible the ongoing wave of alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Charles Burns. The Complete Zap Comix collects every issue of Zap ― every cover and every story, and even the Zam mini comic jam among the Zap artists ― in a five-volume, slipcased hardcover set. It will also include the 17th unpublished issue with work by Crumb, Moscoco, Wilson, Rodriguez, Shelton, Mavrides, and Williams. Plus, an introduction by founder R. Crumb and an oral history of Zap by Patrick Rosenkranz. Zap is the most historically and aesthetically important comics series ever published.
Also included exclusively in this boxed set is a portfolio of Zap covers by the eight artists, replicated from high resolution scans and proofs, and specially printed for this edition on acid-free, 100% cotton fine-art paper utilizing archival pigment inks.
About the Authors
Born in Philadelphia, Robert Crumb is one of America’s most celebrated artists. Thrust reluctantly into fame as a defining voice of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture with comic strips like Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Keep on Truckin’, then again in the 1990s with the acclaimed documentary Crumb and more recently the 2025 biography Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life, he continues to push himself and his chosen medium from his home in the south of France.
S. Clay Wilson, one of the founding members of the Zap comics collective. (Zap is a seminal underground comic book anthology, with contributors like R. Crumb.) He lives in San Francisco.
Gilbert Shelton (b. 1940, Dallas, Texas), a founding father of the underground comix movement, is the creator of the iconic comix characters The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy’s Cat, and Wonder Wart-Hog. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2012. He has been known to sing and play piano for the Blum Brothers, a Paris-based rhythm and blues group. He lives in Paris, France, with his wife and an ever-changing number of cats.
Manuel Rodriguez (1940–2012), better known as Spain, was one of the great American underground and socially conscious cartoonists.
In addition to being one of the seven, original Zap Comix contributors, Robert Williams’s influence on alternative art is immeasurable. From his endeavors to broaden the possibilities for young artists to gain exposure sprang the well-known art chronicle, Juxtapoz magazine. He is the subject of a recent documentary, Mr. Bitchin’. He lives in Chatsworth, CA with his wife Suzanne.
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