Going underground
Going underground |
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Page 11 of 36  Cover, Bijou Funnies (Bijou Publishing, 1973). Self-styled as 'Chicago's Best Under-ground Comic Book'; the cover is unusual in that it is by guest artist Harvey Kurtzman, ex Mad supremo. Though Zap may have been the premier showcase for the movement, there were certainly some other top-notch comix, and some quality creators outside the Zap circle. Bijou Funnies (Bijou Publishing, 1968) was perhaps the second-best known anthology, and hailed from Chicago. Much influenced by Mad, it was edited by Jay Lynch, whose 'Nard 'n' Pat' told the story of two friends (one a bourgeois man, the other a radical cat) who bicker over everything from politics to who's going to do the shopping. Another key contributor was Skip Williamson, whose 'Snappy Sammy Smoot' chronicled the adventures of a besuited ingenue and his surreal encounters with the counterculture. Williamson believed in 'comix as propaganda', but though his strips often featured politicians, such as Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, and had serious themes, the laughs were always paramount: one of his better gags involved an alien that eats only policemen. Young Lust (Company & Sons, 1970) was another San Francisco-based anthology. It was a parody of the 1950s romance genre, which predictably upped the sex. (One spoof of a 1950s cover depicted a distraught woman pondering: 'Last week he was dry-humping me in the lift; now he can't even remember my goddamn name!'). It featured, among others, the remarkable work of Bill Griffith, whose dry, observational wit was complemented by a semi-realistic art style, and Art Spiegelman, whose often very risque strips were laced with liberal helpings of Jewish black humour. Spiegelman was one of the great experimenters of the underground, and on other titles, such as Ace Hole, Midget Detective (self-published, 1974), he developed a revolutionary approach to panel layouts.  Detail from Bijou Funnies (Bijou Publishing, 1971). Art: Skip Williamson. The character is 'Snappy Sammy Smoot', a snappily dressed loser, here having one of his periodic mental crises.  Pages from Bijou Funnies (Bijou Publishing, 1971), featuring Hard 'n' Pat, an update on a vaudevillian double act. Art/ script: Jay Lynch. |