Wayback Whensday Underground
Skip to comments
Fifty-five years ago in 1970 Zap Comix #4 (1969) was adjudged to be obscene.
Forty-five years ago (1980) Disney Corp. washed their hands of the Air Pirates Collective (1971).
Brought to mind because today the mailman delivered Dummy #2 – the Air Pirates issue.
John Kelly with the help of Edwin Pouncey, Mark Newgarden, and Patrick Rosenkranz and the Air Pirates themselves Dan O’Neill, Bobby London, Gary Hallgren, Shari Flenniken, and Ted Richards (r.i.p.) tell the tale of when a small group of underground cartoonists spit in the face of America’s giant cartoon corporation.
No review as I have just flipped through it but does tell the tale with interviews of some of the cartoonists. Also a few pages cover Rat Fink and Mickey Rat. Plus the pre-Air Pirates satires of Mickey Mouse in MAD magazine, Wally Wood’s Realist spread, Dan O’Neill’s newspaper Odd Bodkins newspaper comic strip where the Air Pirates conspiracy began, and even back to those 1930s eight-pages (aka: Tijuana bibles).
Which brings us to…
Coming soon is Hogan’s Alley #24 with an “in-depth look” by S. C. Ringgenberg at those infamous Tijuana bibles starring many of our favorite comic strip characters doing unspeakable things to each other. With a sidebar by Philip R. Frey putting Fritzi Ritz in the spotlight.
So after years of waiting for this issue I am now hoping it doesn’t arrive until I finish Dummy #2.
Yeah, there’s a lot more about a wide variety of comics in each and every issue of Hogan’s Alley magazine.
Not as explicit as the Tijuana bibles or the “obscene” underground comics were the girlie gag magazines of the 1940s through the 1970s. Mostly magazine or digest sized there was at least one that was “treasury-sized.” Sex to Sexty was a large tabloid sized stapled magazine that featured raunchy gags and cartoons.
Sex to Sexty was, to put it kindly, a ribald humor or “gag mag” published from 1964–1983 in Arlington, TX, by editors and novelty record producers John W. Newbern Jr. and Peggy Rodebaugh. It was art directed and featured cartoons and covers by a painter named Lowell Davis, who went by the pseudonyms Richard or Dick Rodman, Goose Reardon, and Pierre Davis. I’d never heard of any of them. Moreover, 19 years is a long time for a magazine to run without me noticing—especially this one, owing to its first eight volumes of incredibly off-message optical and abstract covers.
Steven Heller has just discovered the existence of the Sex to Sexty girlie cartoon magazine. And I am as amazed as he is that he never ran across the publication. Those optical covers he shows were before my time, but in some box of comics around here I would guess I have a dozen or so issues with Lowell Davis covers, picked up at the newsstand where I got most of my underground comix..
Steven Heller also recalls what was about the closest early 1970s mainstream comic book publishers got to underground comix in “I Remember ‘PLOP!’”
PLOP! is the name of the 1973 DC Comics series edited by the former MAD editor and then VP at DC, Joe Orlando. PLOP! was an ill-fated attempt to produce a Harvey Kurtzman-esque aesthetic and MAD-like cartoon ecosystem that had all but been erased from comic book publishing, owing to the Comics Code Authority’s draconian restrictions in comic books aimed at kids. No violence, horror, sex whatsoever — no hint of politics. PLOP! (originally slated to be christened ZANY), was given the license to step over the self-imposed industry bounds. Despite having the Code’s approval seal prominently on the cover.
Comments 5
Comments are closed.