The underground comics (or “comix”) movement presented itself in the late 1960s, a time of abundant volatility, and single-handedly propelled comic art into the spangling arena of Art with a capital “A”. This feat was accomplished by the underground cartoonists connecting their unbridled joy of creating comic strips – free of the extraneous influence of commerce – with the unrestrained manifestation of their esoteric insights and exotic delusions.

A little Historical context: In the 1950s comic books were reaching a more adult audience with cowboy comics, love and romance comics, horror comics and crime comics like Charles Biro’s “Crime Does Not Pay”.

William Gaines, son of Max Gaines, creator of the first newsstand comic book, had inherited his father’s business, Educational Comics. He kept the initials “ EC” but changed the name of the company to “Entertaining Comics”. Gaines published a successful line of crime, horror and science fiction comics with titles like "Weird Science", "The Haunt of Fear" and "Tales from the Crypt".

In 1945 a young cartoonist named Harvey Kurtzman created a syndicated comic strip called “The Silver Linings” for the New York Herald Tribune. Around the same time he began contributing cartoons to comic book publishers. Eventually Kurtzman took a job at Timely Publications, a comic book company, and created “Hey Look!”, a manic satire strip that ran for several years in Timely Publication’s humor line, and a strip that would be the well-spring of an idea that would occur to him several years later when he was hospitalized with jaundice.

After his tenure at Timely Publications Harvey Kurtzman was hired by William Gaines to edit the two EC war titles, "Frontline Combat " and "Two-Fisted Tales". One of the fundamental characteristics of the stories Harvey wrote for the EC war comics was their prevalent anti-war tone. Other war comics of the day were bellicose, gung-ho exercises demonstrating America’s superior firepower over pitifully impotent foreign nationals. Harvey’s stories were more cautionary and ironic. Also Kurtzman’s stories were based on real events not on preposterous fictions. Numerous hours were spent researching the stories to insure that the facts and military armament were correct and exact in every detail.

In 1941 Dr. Frederic Wertham, a senior psychiatrist for New York’s Bellevue mental hospital, authored a book titled “Dark Legend”, the true story of a 17-year-old New Yorker who killed his mother in the late 1930s. Wertham believed the boy lived in a fantasy world created by movies, radio and comics. In 1948 Dr. Werthan wrote an article for the Reader's Digest that said that there was a direct correlation between comics and violence in children.

America was getting riled up. There was anti-comics pressure from religious and community groups. Major cities in some states banned comic books altogether. Comic books fed self-righteous bonfires from coast to coast. Laws were introduced in 18 states restricting the sale of comics, and a Senate panel was convened to investigate the link between comic books and juvenile delinquency.

In 1954 Wertham published, “Seduction of the Innocent ”, his epic treatise on the effects of comics on children. He gave graphic examples of sex and violence, scores of stories awash in dope, sadism, rape and murder. Commonly all thugs and social insubordinates read comic books when they were kids avowed Wertham.

After the Congressional investigation and by the end of 1954 almost three-quarters of the comic book publishing business was gutted by a mass hysteria fueled by a false premise exploited by ravening politicians on the scent of votes. Many publishers didn’t survive the witch-hunt. Atlas Comics (Now called Marvel.) nearly folded. DC Comics seriously scaled back the number of titles it published and EC Comics barely stayed alive.

The comics industry was coerced by Draconian means to self-regulate and to establish an industry-wide set of rules and regulations called “The Comics Code”. The Code carefully explained what was and would no longer be acceptable in comic books. Violence and sex were, of course, a no-no. Certain words like “weird, horror, terror” and “crime” were restricted. Slang terms were controlled and reproach of authority or religion was forbidden. If your comic books didn’t display the Comic Code emblem on its cover, the distributors wouldn’t distribute.

EC Comics had been a specific target during this pogrom. Inarguably filled to the brim with graphic gore, suggestive story lines, violence, drugs and sadism, EC could not get its books distributed after the Comics Code was enacted. Aside from the lurid gore – perhaps partially because of it – EC Comics also published some of the best artists and writers in the history of comics.

Meanwhile, because he was such a slave to the intricate detailing and absolute accuracy he required for “Two-Fisted Tales”, Harvey Kurtzman had let his health slide and was hospitalized with jaundice. While he was bedridden Harvey came up with the idea of a funny funnybook. Kurtzman, using the EC stable of superior artists, would write and edit a comic book that would satirize – through Harvey’s obsessively manic eye – American culture. Mad (first the comic book, then the magazine) would be the one idea that would keep EC Comics afloat. After a short time Mad would become the only title published by EC forevermore.

For awhile Mad survived as a comic book, spoofing comics characters, TV shows, movies, the human race and Life in these United States and, in 1953, in order to escape the censor’s knife, Mad switched to a magazine format and out of the purview of the Comics Code. But after a few issues Kurtzman left the magazined Mad in a dispute, with Bill Gaines, over ownership. Artist’s rights, creator’s rights, the proprietary rights of intellectual property were the issues in this primordial scrimmage. Gaines stood firm and Kurtzman either found or was shown the door. The editorship of Mad was turned over to Al Feldstein, one of the EC stable of artist/writer/editors, who had been editing Panic, a sister humor-comic published by Gaines .

But Harvey Kurtzman ’s talent was not unnoticed. In 1957 Hugh Hefner, the successful publisher of Playboy magazine hired Kurtzman to create Trump, a slick and sexy competition for Mad. Trump was a beautiful magazine, perhaps the most beautiful ever produced with a madman at the helm. Harvey pirated the best artists from Mad, Willy Elder, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Wally Wood and added and Robert Blechman to the mix. Trump had all the bells and whistles, four-color reproduction, centerfolds, and high-end production values. It was a tome of substance proudly representing the magazine patron’s astute hipness, humorwise -- whereas Mad had a bit of a puerile stink about it.

Unfortunately Trump only lasted two issues, but not because it didn’t sell well. It actually sold respectable numbers but Hefner closed down the shop because the magazine business was soft. Trump was sacrificed because Collier’s had gone out of business.

After Trump Kurtzman pooled his money with a couple of his artist friends and they launched Humbug in 1958. Humbug would last 11 issues before throwing in the towel. It was a wonderful satire magazine, intellectually and artistically superior to Mad, but it was small – comic book sized – and printed on crappy paper. The newsstand owners didn’t know whether to display it with comic books or magazines, and people couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. Sales lagged and eventually the ax fell. Kurtzman created, published and edited some of the finest comic art, yet he was never accused of possessing perceptive business acumen. But he did have resilience and a fanatic fan base.

The resilience demonstrated itself when he resurfaced and created Help! magazine in 1960. And the rapt attention of young comic book aficionados who had followed Kurtzman’s vicissitudes since the early EC days. Zealot apostles, they called themselves Kurtzmaniacs and had, in spirit, participated in the skirmishes that became campaigns that became seeming defeat that, in perpetuity, reignited from the ashes. All lead by an impish, deranged major domo in his artistic prime, happily rebuffing decorum while inevitably losing his shirt. Harvey demonstrated to his disciples the seditious notion that Art trumps Property and that unruly Art trumps Propriety. Across the nation unschooled art kids, with Harvey Kurtzman as their inspirational hero, set their sights on the impossible prize of Life as a Cartoonist. And, in the back of their collective minds, one mission would be to redress the emasculation of their precious comic books at the hands of autocratic opportunists and government agents.

Harvey Kurtzman's artistic disposition was brilliantly saw-toothed and raw, but simultaneously comprehensive and full of work-intensive particulars. He was an artist, writer and editor who chose to proffer his manic morality plays panel by panel, and inspired a generation of artists to rattle the cage and taunt the Beast. Kurtzman knew the joyful truths of humor and anarchy. And there is shelter and mitigation from the gloom of mortal reality through the rude auspices of satire.

In 1960 Kurtzman unleashed Help! magazine (Originally titled Help for Tired Minds.). Help! was a departure for Kurtzman, as well as a primordial bouillabaisse in which important cultural talent of the Sixties would coagulate.

With Help! Kurtzman relied heavily on photography. He created fumetties; photo comic strips. And the covers for Help! were photographs, the early issues were staged photos with famous comedians of the day – like Sid Caesar, Ernie Kovacs and Jerry Lewis. He didn’t abandon art, still utilizing the talents of his long-time art buddies Bill Elder, Jack Davis and Arnold Roth. He hired an ambitious young Gloria Steinem as his assistant editor. Also on staff was a young cartoonist named Terry Gilliam.

Actors were always needed to populate Help!’s fumetties. Woody Allen – before he was a film director – appeared in one, and a British actor, John Cleese, in another. Gilliam and Cleese became friends and, after Help! went out of business, Terry Gilliam accompanied John Cleese back to England where Gilliam would become the only American member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, as well as the animator for the show. Gilliam is now an eminent film director; “Brazil ”, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, “12 Monkeys”, etc.

But Help!’s lasting legacy was as the breeding ground for the green cartoon talent that would ripen by the end of the decade, turn the comic book world on its ear and redefine Comic Art.

In 1961 I was a 16-year-old high school student in Canton, Missouri. I had judiciously followed Kurtzman since his Mad comics days, and it was Kurtzman who single-handedly fueled my fledgling cartoonist’s fire. In the Spring of ’61 I received a letter from Gloria Steinem accepting a cartoon of mine for publication in Help! . By 1963 Help! was regularly publishing Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson.

Help! closed its doors in 1965 but the damage was done. We were in incubation, engorging ourselves on the juicy nutrients of insubordination as depraved social undulations sensually heaved in and out of the fabric of a growing consumer class – like a hungry retrovirus ravenously feeding on the collective brainstem of Culture. America’s post-war narrative was backed by the syncopation of bongo drumming and would soon explode, fully orchestrated, as their children danced entwined, excessive and clamorous. From sea to shining sea.

An imposing intellect wasn’t necessary to understand the roiling permutations and exhilarating social sedition at large. We were given it as a cultural rudiment. We could smell its musk like an animal in heat. We could taste the salty, slightly metallic tang of it. It had a backbeat and we could cavort to it. It was a warm and slippery slope. It was made of colors and shapes unimagined. It had sharp edges but was pliant and supple as corrupted flesh. It was a husky whisper, a lewd and angry tongue in our collective ear. It was as sloppy and pungent as ripe cheese, and we wanted to get it all over us. We were tumescent in anticipation. We were,above all, impatient, our pens and brushes at the ready.

In 1967 I drifted upstream from my home in a small river village on the Mississippi river to Chicago in order to publish a magazine with my friend Jay Lynch. Chicago was kind of like Communist Bulgaria then, a gray and oppressive working-class atmosphere ruled by iron-fisted police upon the orders of portly, cigar chomping bureaucrats. A presence of Fear hovered over the lakefront. Brutality was law on the south and west sides of the city. Intimidation reigned glorious north and northwest. It was, in fact, a terrific environment for the novice artist. Plenty of social injustice about which the fledgling crackerjack cartoonist could endlessly harangue and, for fear of bodily harm, no reason to venture outside. This left many hours that would be normally wasted on existential despair during which one could hone the old brain/eye/hand coordination. In San Francisco it was the Summer of Love but in Chicago it was the Summer of Angst. I had been publishing cartoons since 1961 but never with such agitated indignation.

Together Jay Lynch and I produced three issues of the Chicago Mirror, a magazine of paranoia, psychedelia, satire and cartoons. The third issue of the Mirror had letters from Woody Allen and Madalyn Murray O’Hair, an interview with Paul Krassner and a blurb on the inside front cover announcing the first issue of Zap comics.

In San Francisco, the official headquarters of the counterculture, Don Donahue published Robert Crumb’s Zap #1 in February, 1968. Robert and his wife, Dana, hawked copies out of a baby carriage on Haight Street.

In August, 1968, the Democrats brought their big show to the Hogbutcher, and hizzoner, Richard J. Daley, unleashed his hungry dogs upon the flower children. I remember coming home one night after a full day of pitched battles with the police and National Guard. I was stinking of CS gas, my clothes were in rags, I was dirty and beaten down. I staggered into my apartment and there sat Robert Crumb and Jay Lynch.

In the middle of the police riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago -- after completing the cover art for Janis Joplin’s “Cheap Thrills” album – Robert came to visit and make comix.

Jay had decided to change the Chicago Mirror to an all-comics format. That week Crumb, Lynch and I (along with contributions from Gilbert Shelton and Jay Kinney) concocted Bijou #1. From that point on the beast had broken its chains and was at large in the countryside.

Bijou, with its stellar lineup of regulars (Crumb, Lynch, Williamson, Art Spiegelman and Justin Green), lasted 8 issues over four years. A new issue forged whenever Robert rambled back into town.

In 1969 I edited Conspiracy Capers, a comic book published by Susan Sontag and Kathleen Cleaver and financed by Abbie Hoffman in order to raise money for the defense of the Chicago Seven. Meanwhile Robert Crumb wandered the cultural landscape producing a voluminous comic art opus that, to this day, is an inspiration and impetus to those of us who followed in his wake.

In those days who among us knew we were creating “Art”? Certainly not those of us creating it. In fact, as far as we were concerned, these little comic books we cranked out were anti-Art. Not canvasses on a gallery wall viewed by the few, but an ephemeral sheath of newsprint to be read on the toilet and discarded. I’m still not convinced it’s Art (I waver). All we really had in mind was youthful anarchistic fun. And to establish a forum where we could give the finger to the established authorities and moon the vapid Art world, to display a wanton and unbecoming lack of propriety by way of our untrained comix and to release a pathogen targeting the orthodox.

So Underground Comix were a direct descendant of the 1950s E.C. comics line and the government repression of superior comic art that was enforced by the Comics Code, the castration of the medium at the hands of reactionary politicians. As we matured from children to adults our outrage over the censorship of our treasured comic books mutated by way of campus humor magazines and eventually ignited unhinged into the florid sex, violence and anarchy that became the benchmarks of comix during the psychoactive drugs era. But by the mid 1970s fascist power brokers in conspiratorial league with Corporate America put an end to our tomfoolery.

In terms of comics, underground comix didn’t make much of a ripple other than existing in a small-press and unprofitable arena, and for laying the groundwork for the more explicit homogenous sludge pumped out for mass consumption by the likes of Marvel and DC.

Culturally, though, the underground comix were – very briefly – important. Largely because this group of upstart, rag-tag artists had the mettle to suggest that perhaps established convention was not as sophisticated and infallible as it thought it was. Armed with the zealotry of impetuous youth, these cartoonists tested how far the Orthodoxy would really tolerate Freedom of Expression. Historically, other movements in Art (with a capital “A”) have done much the same. This time the blithe bubble of recalcitrant Art was squashed flat under the repressive hobnail boot of Nixon’s unscrupulous gaggle.

As a result the underground comix went belly-up to sea level where they became only comic strips again, taking the form of an aggregation of the largely lackluster independent titles and the tedious comix-like strips that appear in every city’s “alternative” newspaper. There has been fine work in subsequent years. Raw, Blab! and American Splendor, to name a couple. But none speak to the moment with the pulse-quickening immediacy as the originals.

When the Underground Comix movement initially detonated it was asking the didactically loaded question, “Do you really mean Freedom of the Press?” This was a group of artists, working without economic expectation, expressing art without society’s polite restrains, while employing an intrinsically American cultural curiosity, the Comic Book, as its delivery system.

But other than being the most interesting art movement during the last half of the 20th Century, Underground Comix also established the artist’s ownership of his intellectual property – you create it, it’s yours. And graphically demonstrated that the artist’s vision has no restraints no matter how many government stooges and academic morons guard the Gates of Culture.