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.
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.
Art Spiegelman is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker. He is married to designer and editor Françoise Mouly, and is the father of writer Nadja Spiegelman. In September 2022, the National Book Foundation announced that he would receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Maus, often published with the subtitle A Survivor's Tale, is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodern techniques, and represents Jews as mice and other Germans and Poles as cats and pigs. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992 it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Terry Zwigoff is an American filmmaker whose work often deals with misfits, antiheroes, and themes of alienation. He first garnered attention for his work in documentary filmmaking with Louie Bluie (1985) and Crumb (1995). After Crumb, Zwigoff moved on to write and direct fiction feature films, including the Academy Award-nominated Ghost World (2001) and Bad Santa (2003).
Crumb is a 1995 American documentary film about the noted underground cartoonist R. Crumb and his family and his outlook on life. Directed by Terry Zwigoff and produced by Lynn O'Donnell, it won widespread acclaim. It was released in the USA on April 28, 1995, having been screened at film festivals that year. Jeffery M. Anderson placed the film on his list of the ten greatest films of all time, labeling it "the greatest documentary ever made." The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD and Blu-ray on August 10, 2010.
Justin Considine Green was an American cartoonist who is known as the "father of autobiographical comics." A key figure and pioneer in the 1970s generation of underground comics artists, he is best known for his 1972 comic book Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary.
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary is an autobiographical comic by American cartoonist Justin Green, published in 1972. Green takes the persona of Binky Brown to tell of the "compulsive neurosis" with which he struggled in his youth and which he blamed on his strict Roman Catholic upbringing. Green was later diagnosed with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and came to see his problems in that light.
Raw was a comics anthology edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly and published in the United States by Mouly from 1980 to 1991. It was a flagship publication of the 1980s alternative comics movement, serving as a more intellectual counterpoint to Robert Crumb's visceral Weirdo, which followed squarely in the underground tradition of Zap and Arcade. Along with the more genre-oriented Heavy Metal it was also one of the main venues for European comics in the United States in its day.
The East Village Other was an American underground newspaper in New York City, issued biweekly during the 1960s. It was described by The New York Times as "a New York newspaper so countercultural that it made The Village Voice look like a church circular".
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.
Kitchen Sink Press was a comic book publishing company founded by Denis Kitchen in 1970. Kitchen Sink Press was a pioneering publisher of underground comics, and was also responsible for numerous republications of classic comic strips in hardcover and softcover volumes. One of their best-known products was the first full reprint of Will Eisner's The Spirit—first in magazine format, then in standard comic book format. The company closed in 1999.
Arcade: The Comics Revue is a magazine-sized comics anthology created and edited by cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith to showcase underground comix. Published quarterly by the Print Mint, it ran for seven issues between 1975 and 1976. Arriving late in the underground era, Arcade "was conceived as a 'comics magazine for adults' that would showcase the 'best of the old and the best of the new comics'". Many observers credit it with paving the way for the Spiegelman-edited anthology Raw, the flagship publication of the 1980s alternative comics movement.
Bijou Funnies was an American underground comix magazine which published eight issues between 1968 and 1973. Edited by Chicago-based cartoonist Jay Lynch, Bijou Funnies featured strong work by the core group of Lynch, Skip Williamson, Robert Crumb, and Jay Kinney, as well as Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, Justin Green, and Kim Deitch. Bijou Funnies was heavily influenced by Mad magazine, and, along with Zap Comix, is considered one of the titles to launch 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.
Gary Edson Arlington was an American retailer, artist, editor, and publisher, who became a key figure in the underground comix movement of the 1960s and 1970s. As owner of one of America's first comic book stores, the San Francisco Comic Book Company, located in San Francisco's Mission District, Arlington's establishment became a focal point for the Bay Area's underground artists. He published comics under the name San Francisco Comic Book Company, as well as publishing and distributing comics under the name Eric Fromm. Cartoonist Robert Crumb has noted, "Gary made a cultural contribution in San Francisco in the late 1960s, through the '70s, '80s & '90s that was more significant than he realizes."
Hillary Chute is an American literary scholar and an expert on comics and graphic narratives. She is Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design at Northeastern University. She was formerly Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago and an Associate Faculty member of the University’s Department of Visual Arts, as well as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. She was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2007 to 2010.
Armageddon is a 1972–1974 underground comic title published by Last Gasp. Written and illustrated by Barney Steel, the comic expressed an anarcho-capitalist philosophy, influenced by Ayn Rand, and explored sociopolitical themes.
The People's Comics is a single-issue underground comic book drawn and written largely by Robert Crumb, with a young Harvey Pekar writing a back cover feature. The book is notable for containing the death sequence of Fritz the Cat following Crumb's disappointment with Ralph Bakshi's 1972 film involving the character.
Home Grown Funnies is a single-issue underground comic book written and illustrated by Robert Crumb. Containing stories with staple Crumb characters Whiteman, the Snoid, and Angelfood McSpade, Home Grown Funnies went through sixteen printings by Kitchen Sink Press, selling at least 160,000 copies, and has been referred to as one of Crumb's longest-lived comics.
