KPFA and The Cartoon Art Museum are thrilled to invite you to a unique, LIVE AND IN-PERSON event on Thursday, July 14th at 6:00 pm when we welcome Brian Doherty to The Cartoon Art Museum in San Fancisco to celebrate the release of his new book, Dirty Pictures, by hosting a panel discussion with living legends of the underground comix movement: Ron Turner, Trina Robbins and Jay Kinney. Book sales and signing to follow.
“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
“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 … Comix fans and artists should make room on their shelves for this one.” Publishers Weekly
A COMPLETE NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF UNDERGROUND COMIX
In the 1950s, comics meant POW! BAM! superheroes, family-friendly gags, and Sunday funnies, but in the 1960s, inspired by these strips and the satire of MAD magazine, a new generation of creators set out to subvert the medium, and with it, American culture.
Their “comix,” spelled that way to distinguish the work from their dime-store contemporaries, presented tales of taboo sex, casual drug use, and a transgressive view of society. Embraced by hippies and legions of future creatives, this subgenre of comic books and strips was printed on out-of-date machinery, published in zines and underground newspapers, and distributed in head shops, in porno stores, and on street corners. Comix often ran afoul of the law, but that would not stop them from casting cultural ripples for decades to come, eventually moving the entire comics form beyond the gutter and into fine-art galleries.
Author Brian Doherty weaves together the stories of R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Harvey Pekar, and Howard Cruse, among many others, detailing the complete narrative history of this movement that came to define “cool.” Via dozens of new interviews and archival research, Doherty chronicles the scenes that sprang up around the country in the 1960s and ’70s and the rivalries, ideological battles, and conflicts that flourished. Beginning with the artists’ origin stories and following them through successes, including Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning Maus and the feminist collective Wimmen’s Comix, 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.
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). 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.
$15.00 tickets in advance / $20.00 at the door – A benefit for KPFA Radio
Get your tickets via Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dirty-pictures-living-legends-of-the-underground-comix-movement-tickets-356731161507