Underground Comix

I always had an affinity to things labeled "underground" and I knew these comics would begin to channel my high school self, even though they were from an era that I didn't have the pleasure of participating in. The shock value of these comics is instantly recognized by the Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll, however I saw most of that as husk. While all those ingredients played a role in shaping the characters and story-lines, the stories themselves dealt with very real issues, both personal and political.

The first samplings I read were Cheech Wizard and Mr. Natural. I enjoyed that they both employed 60's slang into the dialogue and that their character ramblings had the heady and ultimately senseless appeal of someone on acid trying to describe the universe using breakfast cereal, yet with slightly more cohesion. At times, Mr. Natural even turned the medium on it's own audience, by poking fun and exposing the hypocrisy of some Counter-Culture values. The story I read from Cheech Wizard approached the topic of Capitalism vs. Communism in a very zany way. What I found interesting was that, given the era, it didn't set out to demonize one side or the other, as is often seen. Of course instead, the story comes away with the old hippie mantra 'Can't we all just get along?'

The topics really ran the gamut, but I felt if you looked closely you could always find a theme that related back to the hippie or counterculture movement. In Crumb's Whiteman, it tells a bizarre tale about a guy stolen from society by bigfoots and forced to live in the woods and mate with a bigfoot woman. In the end, the guy realizes that this return to nature was all that he was ever searching for and that he desperately wants to return to the woods with his bigfoot lover. To me this drives right back to the idea of the return to the natural world and themes of love for nature, yet tells it in such an awesomely hilarious and raunchy way.

However, not all of the comics were hilarious or attempted to be lighthearted. The sampling of Junk Comix that I read was all about the struggles of drug addicts, in particular heroin. The comic was created by junkies for junkies and the irony is not lost on anyone. Having known a few Junkheads that are no longer around, it was really kind of sad to read, even if its intentions were that of a cautionary tale. The edgy subjects of all the underground comics coupled with their often scratchy drawing styles is what makes them seem more real than some of the professionally published and polished works. It's clear that these stories are meant to appeal to anyone who has ever been a part of street culture and societal underbellies. I would safely assume that folks that have either grown up sheltered from these truths, or who are religious, right-winged or straight edged would have had a hard time understanding what these comics were really getting at besides just gratuitous sex and drugs, but it wasn't for them anyway, so who fuckin' cares.