Best Buy Comics

Last updated
Best Buy Comics
R. Crumb's Best Buy Comics.jpg
Front cover art for Best Buy Comics by Robert Crumb.
Publication information
Publisher Apex Novelties
Formatstandard comic book
Publication dateFeb. 1979
No. of issues1
Creative team
Created by Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky
Artist(s) Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky

Best Buy Comics is a one-shot comic book by Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky (later Crumb), published by Apex Novelties in 1979. All the stories in the book except one were first published by CoEvolution Quarterly . [1]

Best Buy Comics tackles more "serious" subjects than typical Crumb or others underground comix. Subjects include the aerospace program, the eventual fate of humanity, attitudes toward life, death, nuclear war, and historical fiction set at the dawn of the Jazz Age.

Best Buy Comics was the last title published by Apex Novelties. It was republished in 1988 by Last Gasp. [2]

Contents

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Crumb</span> American illustrator and cartoonist (b. 1943)

Robert Dennis Crumb is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contemporary American culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Underground comix</span> Comics genre

Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality, and violence. They were most popular in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s, and in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.

<i>Acme Novelty Library</i> Comic

Acme Novelty Library is a comic book series created by Chicago cartoonist Chris Ware. Its first issue appeared in 1993. Published from 1994 by Fantagraphics Books and later self-published, it is considered a significant work in alternative comics, selling over 20,000 copies per issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Bagge</span> American cartoonist

Peter Bagge is an American cartoonist whose best-known work includes the comics Hate and Neat Stuff. His stories often use black humor and exaggerated cartooning to dramatize the reduced expectations of middle-class American youth. He won two Harvey Awards in 1991, one for best cartoonist and one for his work on Hate. In recent decades Bagge has done more fact-based comics, everything from biographies to history to comics journalism. Publishers of Bagge's articles, illustrations, and comics include suck.com, MAD Magazine, toonlet, Discover, and the Weekly World News, with the comic strip Adventures of Batboy. He has expressed his libertarian views in features for Reason.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Ware</span> American artist

Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.

<i>Fritz the Cat</i> Comic strip created by Robert Crumb

Fritz the Cat is a comic strip created by Robert Crumb. Set in a "supercity" of anthropomorphic animals, it focused on Fritz, a feline con artist who frequently went on wild adventures that sometimes involved sexual escapades. Crumb began drawing the character in homemade comic books as a child. Fritz became one of his best-known characters, thanks largely to the motion picture adaptation by Ralph Bakshi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aline Kominsky-Crumb</span> American cartoonist (1948–2022)

Aline Kominsky-Crumb was an American underground comics artist. Kominsky-Crumb's work, which is almost exclusively autobiographical, is known for its unvarnished, confessional nature. In 2016, Comics Alliance listed Kominsky-Crumb as one of twelve women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition. She was married to cartoonist Robert Crumb, with whom she frequently collaborated. Their daughter, Sophie Crumb, is also a cartoonist.

<i>Weirdo</i> (comics) Magazine-sized comics anthology created by Robert Crumb

Weirdo was a magazine-sized comics anthology created by Robert Crumb and published by Last Gasp from 1981 to 1993. Featuring cartoonists both new and old, Weirdo served as a "low art" counterpoint to its contemporary highbrow Raw, co-edited by Art Spiegelman.

The Ignatz Awards recognize outstanding achievements in comics and cartooning by small press creators or creator-owned projects published by larger publishers. They have been awarded each year at the Small Press Expo since 1997, only skipping a year in 2001 due to the show's cancellation after the September 11 attacks. As of 2014 SPX has been held in either Bethesda, North Bethesda, or Silver Spring, Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Moscoso</span> Spanish artist (born 1936)

Victor Moscoso is a Spanish–American artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters, advertisements, and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s era with formal academic training and experience. He was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage in many of his posters.

<i>Wimmens Comix</i> All-female underground comics anthology

Wimmen's Comix, later titled Wimmin's Comix, is an influential all-female underground comics anthology published from 1972 to 1992. Though it covered a wide range of genres and subject matters, Wimmen's Comix focused more than other anthologies of the time on feminist concerns, homosexuality, sex and politics in general, and autobiographical comics. Wimmen's Comix was a launching pad for many cartoonists' careers, and it inspired other small-press and self-published titles like Twisted Sisters, Dyke Shorts, and Dynamite Damsels.

In the United States, creator ownership in comics is an arrangement in which the comic book creator retains full ownership of the material, regardless of whether the work is self-published or published by a corporate publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rip Off Press</span> Comic book mail order retailer and distributor

Rip Off Press Inc. is a comic book mail order retailer and distributor, better known as the former publisher of adult-themed series like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Rip Off Comix, as well as many other seminal publications from the underground comix era. Founded in 1969 in San Francisco by four friends from Austin, Texas — cartoonists Gilbert Shelton and Jack Jackson, and Fred Todd and Dave Moriaty — Rip Off Press is now run in Auburn, California, by Todd.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mr. Natural (character)</span> Comics character

Mr. Natural is a comic book character created and drawn by 1960s counterculture and underground comix artist Robert Crumb. First appearing in Yarrowstalks (1967), the character gained a following during the emergence of underground comix in the 1960s and 1970s, and has been extensively merchandised in various products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Collier (cartoonist)</span> Canadian alternative cartoonist

David Collier is a Canadian alternative cartoonist best known for his fact-based "comic strip essays."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Donahue</span> Publisher associated with the underground comix movement

Donald Richard Donahue was a comic book publisher, operating under the name Apex Novelties, one of the instigators of the underground comix movement in the 1960s.

<i>Twisted Sisters</i> (comic) All-female underground comics anthology

Twisted Sisters is an all-female underground comics anthology put together by Aline Kominsky and Diane Noomin, and published in various iterations. In addition to Kominsky and Noomin, contributors to Twisted Sisters included M. K. Brown, Dame Darcy, Julie Doucet, Debbie Drechsler, Mary Fleener, Phoebe Gloeckner, Krystine Kryttre, Carol Lay, Dori Seda, and Carol Tyler.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cartoonists' Co-op Press</span> Comics publishing cooperative

Cartoonists Co-op Press was an underground comix publishing cooperative based in San Francisco that operated from 1973 to 1974. It was a self-publishing venture by cartoonists Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Jerry Lane, Jay Lynch, Willy Murphy, Diane Noomin, and Art Spiegelman. Cartoonist Justin Green's brother Keith acted as salesman/distributor, and the operation was run out of Griffith's apartment.

Keith Green was an American publisher, distributor, and art dealer. Starting out in the late 1960s as an underground comix distributor, in the early 1970s, he published comics, and by the mid-1970s he had become a New York City art dealer. He was the younger brother of cartoonist Justin Green.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Snoid</span> Underground comix character created by Robert Crumb

The Snoid, occasionally referred to as Mr. Snoid, is an American underground comix character created by Robert Crumb in the mid-1960s. A diminutive sex fiend and irritating presence, the Snoid often appears with other Crumb characters, particularly Angelfood McSpade, Mr. Natural, and Crumb's own self-caricature.

References

  1. 1 2 Best Buy Comics indicia: "Best Buy Comics, February 1979 — copyright c 1977, 1978, 1979 by R. Crumb. All stories and strips first published in Coevolution Quarterly , except 'Aline and Bob Go To the Whole Earth Jamboree', which was rejected by the magazine and appears here for the first time. Published by Apex Novelties — 353 Frederick St., San Francisco, California, 94117".
  2. "Best Buy Comics" entry, Grand Comics Database. Accessed Oct. 3, 2016.