BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Comic Books >

Do Underground comics still exist?

  
 
dlotemp
22:27 / 31.01.03
The other day, I was pondering the work of old school Underground cartoonists (American) like Robert Crumb, Spain, and ilk and wondered if they could still be construed as the Underground. Many of them are now published by established firms like Fantagraphics, alongside their descendents: art spiegelman, Peter Bagge, Dan Clowes, etc. But back in the 70s, these creators and their publishers were only sold in head shops and speciality comic stores, which contributed to the perception that they WERE underground, that only those in the know where able to find and purchase these comics. Now, some of these people can be found in major bookstores. Their publishers are called "Independents." So I wonder if the idea of the Underground has disappeared or morphed.

I for one don't think so-called "Underground" comics need to be strictly sold in head shops or comic shops. Good luck finding those today; although I did find a combination head/comic shop about a year ago, which is a story for another day. I don't think these comics need to be the sole product of Crumb, spiegelman, etc, or need to be produced by Fantagraphics.

But what is the Underground now?
Who is publishing Underground work?
How is it being distributed and is it distributed differently than it was 20-30 years ago?

Any and all comments are appreciated.
 
 
Jacen
23:46 / 31.01.03
Back then, there was no such thing as a secondary market distributor because comics still only existed as newsstand throw aways. Every major comic publisher (along with anyone else who had their ideas printed in comic form) had to contact and ship directly to the outlets they could convince to carry them if they didn't have newsstand deals in place. It was the Underground that created the direct market and the idea that a store selling just comics could exist. Unfortunately, over time, the direct market degenerated into the men-in-tights wankfest it is today and half a dozen independent distributors with various outlets within and outside of the Direct Market have been boiled down to just one that caters only to DM and bookstores. Oh, I know there are a few others but even combined they represent maybe 1/16th of Diamond's presence. What was underground became the norm as far as the business model is concerned. As for content, well, it is easy to argue that content in all pop art forms has gone to complete shit in the last 20 years as the emphasis shifted from expression and satire in the days of the hippie to profitability and trademark licensing even among most indies. How many comics on an average direct market pull-list aspire to be anything more than lowest-common-denominator, disposable, pop entertainment for the sake of either making the corporation more money or giving the creator something to sell to Hollywood? There might not be anything wrong with that, but the underground creators of the late 60's were creating their books with a different mind set and goal which is no where in today's industry. We do still have the Fantagraphics scene but even most of that seems derivative and pretentious with the obvious rare exceptions.

But at least corporate superheroes are better written and drawn these days! *sigh*
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
02:26 / 01.02.03
Well, there's a huge indie underground in comics, and there are a LOT of self-published comics being made every year. I happen to frequent one of the best comic shops on earth as far as carrying DIY and independently published comics goes, Jim Hanley's Universe in Manhattan. Every time I go there, I'm completely overwhelmed, there's so much there that I'm pretty sure that you'd be similarly floored by the sheer number of options that exist.

I've been buying a lot of DIY stuff lately, I'm especially fond of Dash Shaw's selfpublished work, and Cole Johnson's Sugar Free Days. I generally try to give a selfpublished comic a shot every time I find something interesting and I have a couple dollars to spare. There's a lot of stuff that looks good but isn't big on story, and there's other things that are sort of crude but sort of interesting, and a lot of things that are pretty much just promising amateur work, but I usually get a nice little charge out of it even if it isn't so great.

The problem is distribution and the fact that most comics store owners are very reluctant to take risks, and that's why so many comic shops seem so narrow and stifling. It really is just an illusion, though.
 
 
sleazenation
11:03 / 01.02.03
The underground comics scene, the market and politics were all very different in the 70s.

Whilst it is true to say the Underground comics reprisented something of a breakthrough in opening new distribution networks (or rather entering a distribution network that had not previously existed for comics - headshops and psychadelic posters existed before Crumb et al came on the scene), I think it would be a mistke to attribute the emergence of the direct sales market solely to them - remember head shops did not become comic shops. Headshops existed primarily to service the hippie comunity, comics were just part of their out put - When the Anti paraphenalia laws were passed in the US quite a lot of head shops were forced to close - (the laws weren't the only cause for the decline in head shops but they are one of the key influences i think).

The direct market really owes a lot, as Jacen points out, to fandom and the establishment of secondary markets for comics. marts and small shops selling old issues gradually growing into small shops selling old and new comics. In the early eighties Marvel definitely saw this as a new and potentially exciting market and began to sell set up what we would recognise too day as the direct market.

Another thing I'd probably say was important to the underground scene was politics - There was a lot more out there than the zap comics boys doing there stuff - there was also a healthy range of "cause-comics" - lesbian comics, gay comics, women's comics anti nuclear comics.

Its also probably worth noting that there were underground scenes accross the world - in the UK Bryan Talbot and Hunt Emmerson were doing stuff and there is the apocryphal tale of Octobriana and the russian underground comics scene... (very interesting story - ask me about it if you are interested/don't know- or better yet do a google search...)

Where is all this still criminallly over simplified drivel going?
I'm not sure. I think i'm trying to say that the 70s underground scene was a myriad of things that was very much of its time and a reaction to its time. THe world is now a different place to the way it was then - comics are more diverse - comics that would have been at home in the underground head shops are now at home in the indie section of most comic shops (and the graphic novel section of most book shops) but there is also a whole range of other material in comic shops today that wouldn't have fitted either head shops or newstands.

I guess one of the things i'm saying is that while the current comics scene owes a huge debt to the underground scene of the 70s, comics now is a more vibrant and exciting place than it was then, and is now filled with more opportunity, for cartoonists and a diversity of subject matter for readers.
 
 
dlotemp
14:39 / 01.02.03
Jacen, Flux and sleazenation -

Those are all very salient points. Sleazenation's remark about the diversity in today's market really hit me because it is such an obvious difference that surely affects the dynamic of the contemporary scene. We have a plethora of Manga coming over, alongside a healthy dose of European comics, that surely offers a wide variety of stories that was partially sated by the Underground scene in the 70s. Check out EAGLE for a fascinating manga about the American Presidential process for one example. Today, there is an outlet and market for non-superhero and non-Archie books.

I've very lucky to frequent a shop that carries many independents but not enough offbeat stuff so I'll have to keep my eyes better attuned to the stuff that Flux mentions.

PS - the (psuedo) history of Octobriana is very interesting and I recommend it to anyone intrigued by comics history. Many thanks to Bryan Talbot, Triina Robbins, and Billy Idol (!) for spreading Octobriana across the west.
 
 
sleazenation
15:06 / 01.02.03
I guess it all comes back to a quation of distribution. Thanks to the distributor wars kicked off by Marvel in the mid-ninties Diamond has a virtual monopoly on distributing comics and other stuff to comic shops (and increasingly to book shops too). Getting Diamond to carry your book is a long and ardious process ... So many zine scenes are limited to comparatively small geographic locations - often big cities with one or more comicshops that the creator can physically go to and ask the retailler if they will stock their wares.

With the advent of the net hoever there are many places to find about experimental, ideosyncratic and interresting self published and independant comics and zines on of which I would heartily recommend is bugpowder A sort of nexus, news/review blog/info dump for comics experimentation (its a lot better than i'm making it sound)... Bugpowder also has links to TRS2 - a monthly review of all sorts f interesting comics complete with details of where to get them.
 
 
captain yossarian
10:25 / 04.02.03
http://www.prequel.at/citostart_english.html
and
http://www.prequel.at/citoyen_prev/slide_cit.html
and
http://www.prequel.at/new_hope_english.html
 
 
sleazenation
10:45 / 04.02.03
And how is the above is relevant to the discussion?
 
 
grant
12:39 / 04.02.03
it looks like somebody's got a couple comics they're distributing over the net.
it'd definitely be a new shape for the comix underground....
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:23 / 04.02.03
I didn't know innercircle wrote comics.

grant, I don't think it's a new thing - or at least it may be 'new' in terms of arriving in the past couple of years, but it's certainly arrived. Much like zines, underground comics seem to have embraced the net both as a format to publish in and as a means of distro...

Oh - general answer to the question: yes they do, you're just too old/mainstream/uncool to know where to find them.
 
 
grant
15:04 / 04.02.03
It's arrived, but I think it's still taking form... and it's still not quite "establishment," you know.

Most of the net comics I'm familiar with are self-consciously pulpy and nostalgic (by accident of workplace - our layout chief also edits SupernaturalCrime and AdventureStrips.

That second one, though, is part of http://www.moderntales.com/, which sort of *emulates* mainstream comics in themes and stories (some of the time), but has a whole new distribution/subscription system, and a whole new format (more like old fashioned newspaper strips). They're launching a new "edgier" line, http://www.serializer.net/

But as far as webcomics go, that's pretty mainstream.

My favorites are the brilliant Small Stories (some of which are on ModernTales and serializer), and the slightly more off-kilter Wigu (a funny, semi-serialized strip) and Diesel Sweeties (more funnies, less serialized, and very, er, digital).

The thing is, I found out about the second two because they did "crossover days" with Small Stories. Characters guest starring in each other's strips, cross-linking, bigging each other up... all the stuff a cohesive "generation of cartoonists" (to quote the abstract) would do.

The above-linked comics aren't quite doing the same thing, as far as I can tell, but seem to be stabbing vaguely in this direction.
 
 
dlotemp
20:50 / 04.02.03
To Get that Flyboy - "Oh - general answer to the question: yes they do, you're just too old/mainstream/uncool to know where to find them."

You got that right, brother! I turned uncool around 1995 and it's been down hill ever since. Don't let it happen to you.
 
  
Add Your Reply