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Monthly Supplement to the Oregon Daily Emerald
June 1974, Eugene, Oregon
Defining a counterculture
"A History of Underground Comics"
Mark James Estren
Straight Arrow Books, San Francisco
Copyright 1974
For about the past five years, the public has become
increasingly aware of one of the finest and funniest
products of the counterculture, the underground comic.
Publications like Zap, Yellow Dog, Fat Up Funnies and a
host of others, ranging in quality from good to abysmal,
have popped up, florished awhile, and vanished again.
No, these aren't the "comic books" we read when we
were kids-those were full of innocent things like crime,
war, neurosis, horror, monsters, violence, murder,
mutilation, and suchlike chidish things. The modern
undergrounds carry a good healthy dose of sex as well,
and are for adults only.
The field is tremendous, and author Estren, who writes
of comics with respect and affection, has done a good job
of making sure that all the prominent underground artists
are represented here, and many of the obscure ones as
well. Estren's chapters on definition, history, motivations,
contents, subjects, transitions, suppressions and other
oddities are fleshed out by contributions written by the
artists themselves.
The book is, of course, profusely illustrated, but
contains few complete sequences. It is mostly limited to
single panels, or at best single pages.
Robert Crumb, [Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, etc.) gets a
great deal of coverage, as one of the most popular —and
prosperous—of the underground artists. Gilbert
Shelton's Freak Brothers and Wonder Warthog (The Hog
of Steel!) are well represented, along with Will Eisner
(The Spirit), a semi-straight, older artist much respected
by undergound artists. Harvey Kurtzman, a former Mad
artist regarded as the master by many undergrounders,
has a number of early strips reprinted, and provides his
comments on the counterculture comics of today.
Vaughn Bode (Junkwaffel, Cheech Wizard) is, I think,
rather unfairly discounted in this volume.
Then there is a kaleidoscope of work by dozens of
good-to-mediocre young artists, capped off by the grisly
"appendix" of a genuine E.C. "Horror comics" story from
the mid-1950s, when that ghastly genre, supposedly
exercising great influence on the undergrounds, had its
heyday. A valuable index of underground comics and
their publishers, by Clay Geerdes, is also appended.
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Composed of about equal proportions of social protest,
violence, sex and parody, the underground comics can
stand without assistance as works of "art" in their own
right. True "comics," not merely propaganda, most of
them are actually funny, even where the themes they
treat are far from comical.
The Undergrounds' humorous view of the seamy side
of life probably began with Richard Outcault's Yellow Kid
in 1895. The Kid, a tough, moronic-looking warf from the
slums of New York, was vaguely anarchistic and
tremendously popular.
George Herriman's magnificent Krazy Kat, an opus
devoutly followed by poets and presidents during its
thirty-year run in the newspapers, inspired many un
dergrounders with its surreaistic plots and constantly
shifting landscapes.
The Undergrounds' direct ancestors, however, are
probably the old Mad magazine of Harvey Kurtzman and
William M. Gaines - not the slick product of today, but
the old comic book —and the old "monster comics, the
kind our parents told us not to reed, and which a senate
subcommittee accused of causing juvenile delinquency.
The systematic ridiculing of icons and flouting of
taboos to be seen in the Undergrounds probably began in
those old comics, and their preoccupation with sex may
have been influenced by the old "Eight-Pagers (The
Kind Men Like) from the 1930s and '40s.
A great deal of their content and mood, however, was
generated in these times and in today's youth culture.
"The Movement" itself has accused the Undergrounds of
being "counter-revolutionary" and-or "sexist " But it s
hard to depict single-minded fanaticism without making it
either humorous or horrifying, and sex is one of the
primary roots of the Undergrounds—eliminate it and they
d An entire chapter is devoted to the matter of sex in the
Undergrounds (Estren comments waggishly, "If you
looked up this chapter first, you won't be disappointed,
and if you're reading this work sequentially, you won't be
surprised"). Sex in the Undergrounds runs the gamut
from mscheivous lampoons, to the pornographic
parodies of Robert Crumb, to the sadomasochistic orgies
of S. Clay Wilson, in which sex is debased and violence is
as constant and meaningless as the fixed grins of Ns
demonic characters.
Even the liberated female cartoonists, trying to come to
grips with the problem of sex vs. "sexism," are unable to
resolve it, or else lean over so far backwards as to
somehow fal on their faces. Thus it seems that, "causes '
or not causes, sex, parody and violence will remain the
prime ingredients erf the undergrounds.
The Undergrounds are having increasingly rough
sledding today, not only because of flack from the
"Movement," but also because of the mundane matter of
inflation, and a ludicrous decision by the Supreme Court
which enables local communities to decide for them
selves exactly what e "obscene." Naturally, tNs applies
pressure to the small shops which carry the Un
dergrounds, cutting off outlets for the underground
publishers, which must, ironically, be profit-oriented in
order to survive. The "local option nonsense is just as
fooish and probably just as futile as it was in the days
when the Wowsers tried to appy it to Prohibition, and it b
bound to die soon, but the pity is that it may take a lot of
the underground comics with it when it goes.
Walter Wentz
Visitin’ them thar hills
"Mountain People, Mountain Crafts
Elinor Lander Horwitz
Uppincott
Copyright 1974
If you want a good how-to book on mountain crafts
don't get this book. Although this does show the art of
making banjos, dulcimers, pottery, weaving, natural
dying, whittling, spinning, woodcarving, quilting and rug
making that is not what Elinor Horwitz is concerned with.
The book instead is about three "foreigners' " visit to
Mountain country.
Roscoe Russell, Whit Sizemore, Kyle Creed and Edd
Presnell make and play their own banjoes. They talk to
the author, not only on how they do it, but on their
feelings about their music as well. Their style is "just
picking," as relaxed as their step-dancing. "There's no
notes to a banjo, you just play it."
Taft Greer weaves coverlets on a loom built some time
around 1801. His grandmother Nancy Greer was spinning
her own cotton and wool for that loom when she was
over 100 years old. She inherited the loom from her
grandmother. Greer uses natural dyes in his weaving:
"You can get three or four colors of brown out of walnut
hulls, elderberry, and bloodroot," he says. He learned
about weaving and dyeing from his grandmother when
he was a boy. .
William Cody and Lucy Cook weave baskets. He is left
handed and she is right-handed, which they explain is a
great asset in their line of work. A left-handed basket
maker weaves in a counterclockwise direction and a
right-hander weaves clockwise. The bottom of the basket
is worked from the inside, and when a basket-maker
completes it and turn up the ribs to start the sides, there is
a switch from working toward the left, to working toward
the right. "We can do the whole basket of course, but
this way is quicker," he explains.
Doll-making is the most common practice in the
southern Appalachian Mountains today, and contains the
most variables. Dolls are made from wood, corn husks,
with heads made from nuts, corn cobs, white bread
dough, apples or material scraps.
Toy-maker Willard Watson hails from Deep Gap, N.C.
His wooden toys, are flexible, jointed toys, propelled into
motion with a flick of a wrist. Demonstrating one of his
dolls he says, "Some calls him limbergack, some calls him
dancin' doll, and it doesn't matter-he'll answer either
way."
The people give a part of themselves to the land, to
their crafts, and the book, and if that's what you want to
read then it's in "Mountain People, Mountain Crafts."
And maybe you can pick up a couple of their skills along
the way.
Carol McMullen
Chauvinistic ‘guidance’
"Freelance Writing, Advice from the Pros"
Curtis Casewit
Collier Books
Copyright 1974
Casewit's manual for aspiring freelance writers has one
great fault: its title b m isleading. The phrase "advice from
the pro6" would lead any reader to expect short essays
from big-name authors about freelance writing. The
cover of the book even lists the authors who supposedly
contributed to the manual. But Casewit's book isn't any
such “advice from the pros." It's advice from Casewit
sprinkled with a few anecdotes from the proe.
The problem is that Casewit's book presents the
makings for two good books. First, the idea of bringing
together essays about article writing by established
authors is great and if Casewit had pursued it, he coukJ
have compiled a good manual. Secondly, Casewit has
some sound advice for beginning authors and a book
filled only with his ideas and none of this "advice from the
pros" would have been very helpful for aspiring writers.
Here he tries for a combination, but it doesn't come off.
Besides its faults, Casewit's book has several strong
points. He gives excellentexamples of letters of inquiry to
publishers, advises young writers on how to handle
editors and frankly discusses the necessity of having an
agent. Casewit himself has been a successful writer for
several years and he uses h is own experiences for most of
his examples. He deals with article writing and book
authoring of fiction and non-fiction, script writing and
photography, and discusses each area in length.
In his book Casewit shows some male chauvinistic
attitudes towards women and he is going to alienate
many of his female readers, especially the feminists
among them. He assumes that freelance authors will
usually be men who can expect love and support from
their wives. But not all wives are good: “Critics for pay
are a little like wives," he writes. "Some are good,some
are average, and some are bad to horrid." So since such
bad wives exist, some freelance writers may expect
troubles from their wives while the poor men are
struggling with their careers, Casewit warns.
Somebody had better warn Casewit to omit such at
titudes from his writing.
Sandt McDonough