The first complete narrative history of Underground Comix, the countercultural movement from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s that forever changed comics

In Dirty Pictures: How Nerds, Feminists, Bikers, and Potheads Revolutionized Comix, author and journalist Brian Doherty tells the wild history of the outlaw, outsider, and sometimes illegal world of Underground Comix. This subterranean subgenre of comic strips and books was printed in lofts on out-of-date machinery, published in handbound zines and underground newspapers, and distributed in headshops, porno stores, and on street corners.

Comix-spelled that way to distinguish the work from its dime-store superhero contemporaries-presented tales of illicit sex, casual drug use, and a transgressive view of American society that was embraced by hippies, the fine-art world, and legions of future creatives. With a narrative that weaves together the stories of Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, and Art Spiegelman, among many others, Doherty details, in the first complete narrative history of this movement, the local scenes that sprang up in the 1960s and '70s in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Chicago, and provides insight into the rivalries, ideological battles, and conflicts that flourished.

The book begins with the artists' origin stories and follows them through major successes, including Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus and Robbins's Wimmen's Comix, and tragedies, from S. Clay Wilson's spiral into alcohol abuse that resulted in career-ending brain damage to Crumb's neurotic running from his own success (and his use of controversial race and gender imagery), and ends with an examination of these creators' legacies.

Dirty Pictures is the essential exploration of a truly American art form that recontextualized the way people thought about war, race, sex, gender, and expression.

A COMPLETE NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF UNDERGROUND COMIX

About the Author
Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and is the author of This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground (Little, Brown, 2004). His reporting, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, and Fantagraphics's The Best American Comics Criticism, among others. He has also served as a judge for the comics industry's Eisner Awards.

Reviews
"Brian Doherty's Dirty Pictures is coming out right when it's needed. As creative expression is increasingly attacked from across the political spectrum, this wonderful book is a reminder of how art, unrestricted and free, helps us process the mess. It's impeccably researched, sharply written, and opens a portal back to that old, weird America that found its mind by losing it a little." -- Reid Mitenbuler, author of Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation
"Tune in, read on, and know all. Brian Doherty's heroic and hilarious Dirty Pictures is a detail-rich history with insight from the giants-Robert Crumb through Art Spiegelman. The story of underground comix is not just important, it's as American as an apple pie laced with LSD." -- Kliph Nesteroff, author of We Had a Little Real Estate Problem and The Comedians
In order to develop the vast field of indie comics available today, where every style and subject under the sun is available to a reader, you need the foundation laid by the underground comix scene of the 60s and 70s. In Dirty Pictures, author Brian Doherty expertly details the players and events that led to an artistic renaissance. -- Ho Che Anderson, creator of King, Sand & Fury, and Godhead
"Dirty Pictures is a fascinating deep dig into a unique subculture populated by screwball eccentrics, whose rude, jarring, and far-out works of art changed the face of American humor in all its incarnations." -- Gregg Turkington, comedian/actor (Entertainment, Ant-Man, On Cinema at the Cinema)
". . .given the exponential reach of this initially tiny cluster of transgressive artists, Doherty's book is a welcome addition to an under-analyzed legacy of the free-spirited 1960s." -- James Sullivan * San Francisco Chronicle *
"A free-wheeling, frank account of the rise and fall of the underground comic scene. . . . Lively, well researched, and full of telling anecdotes; just the thing for comix aficionados and collectors." * Kirkus Reviews *
As Doherty entertainingly traces the movement's rise-from its humble beginnings in the 1960s to its uphill battle to be recognized as an art form-he captures how it perfectly reflected the rapidly changing norms of the baby boomer generation and its enduring impact on pop culture today. Comix fans and artists should make room on their shelves for this one. * Publishers Weekly *
...shines a light on a corner of the comics business that still hasn't received its due . . . If this topic interests you at all, Dirty Pictures is likely to be the most complete and authoritative account we're going to get. -- Rob Salkowitz * ICv2 *
Dirty Pictures is a riveting look at the raunchy history of underground comix -- Thom Dunn * Boing Boing *
The book is simply the best and most comprehensive look at underground comics published to date. -- Alex Dueben * Smash Pages *
Indispensable. * Shelf Awareness, starred review *
An immense work of comics fandom and a labor of love ... the most far-reaching history of underground comix that anyone will ever likely write. -- Keith A. Gordon * Book & Film Globe *



Book Information
ISBN 9781419750465
Author Brian Doherty
Format Hardback
Page Count 448
Imprint Abrams Press
Publisher Abrams