The Unofficial Underground Comix thread... 14 14

[comixbible]

On 6/9/2024 at 1:59 PM, ug18 said:

 

Kennedy 1259, 1260 (below), 1261 (above)  and 1262 are all by Chas Balun.

Google does not return to me a scan of either 1259 and 1262.

Look for at  Spaz Comix #1 and #2 too (Kennedy 1871 and 1872. See at undergroundnewave-comix-post-your-obscure-undocumented-or-rarely-discussed/page/19/)

 

a bio note at https://comicvine.gamespot.com/chas-balun/4040-62114/  and a longer one at https://thebedlamfiles.com/commentary/remembering-chas-balun/

Kennedy didn't even know about all of Balun's comics. There was also Anal Repulsion, Dogbreath and Smoke this Book, all published in the '70s. Of the titles that Kennedy did know about, and list, Van Boogie Comix is the most difficult to come by. I've seen only one come turn up for public sale in the past twenty years.

[FoggyNelson]

On 6/9/2024 at 3:04 PM, comixbible said:

Kennedy didn't even know about all of Balun's comics. There was also Anal Repulsion, Dogbreath and Smoke this Book, all published in the '70s. Of the titles that Kennedy did know about, and list, Van Boogie Comix is the most difficult to come by. I've seen only one come turn up for public sale in the past twenty years.

Neat to see thanks👍‼️🥰

[ug18]

On 6/9/2024 at 9:04 PM, comixbible said:

Kennedy didn't even know about all of Balun's comics. There was also Anal Repulsion, Dogbreath and Smoke this Book, all published in the '70s. Of the titles that Kennedy did know about, and list, Van Boogie Comix is the most difficult to come by. I've seen only one come turn up for public sale in the past twenty years.

Thanks so much, nice to know.

[wpbooks01]

4/15/25

 

 

 

[Yorick]

Any Hans Rickheit fans here?

[wpbooks01]

Kleo (2022) s01e02

 

 

 

 

[FoggyNelson]

On 7/30/2024 at 5:21 PM, Yorick said:

Any Hans Rickheit fans here?

Nice lot‼️👍

[Yorick]

On 8/6/2024 at 2:37 PM, FoggyNelson said:

Nice lot‼️👍

Pretty sure I pulled that pic from the gallery event that he held (I was not there ), but I do have copies of those Chrome Fetus issues.  Still haven't come across #1-3 for sale...

I'll have to take a picture of my CF books.

[Yorick]

Viola!

 

[Jesse-Lee]

Picked up a few books recently:

 

And maybe not quite an "underground," this copy of Lethargic Lad, Weakly #49 - the photocopied version Greg Hyland was making as a student, a year or two before launching the independent Lethargic Lad comics.

[Jesse-Lee]

One more sweet underground haul today:

[Yorick]

On 8/21/2024 at 8:28 PM, Jesse-Lee said:

sweet underground haul

Sweet.  I haven't explored underground enough to know what's out there, and you've posted some I hadn't seen before.  I really love a couple of those covers! 

[Jesse-Lee]

On 8/22/2024 at 12:49 PM, Yorick said:

Sweet.  I haven't explored underground enough to know what's out there, and you've posted some I hadn't seen before.  I really love a couple of those covers! 

Thanks - I got lucky and found a seller with a bunch of underground books priced very low, and I went down a rabbit hole. I'll share a few details on a couple if anyone is interested. Some are probably better known than others:

Dorrgsheett Digest was created by Dave Gibson and Scott Shaw, and debuted at SDCC in (I believe) 1974. Scott Shaw had this to say about it in a Facebook post from a few years ago:

Quote

This was NOT “created at Comic-Con.” I helped Dave Gibson find contributors and have two stories in it. It DEBUTED at SDCC. It’s was intentionally printed on brown paper to literally look like s#!+. We all worked hard on it but Dave. He collated enough to sell at the show. Those are the only ones that got stapled. Dave never collated ‘em all because he was too lazy. The pages sat stacked in his garage until a heavy rainstorm when its roof leaked, destroying the majority of the print-run. That’s why copies are so rare.

 

Bakersfield Kountry Komics is by Larry Welz and Larry Sutherland from 1973 - there were about 40,000 copies made over three printings, but all three printings are indistinguishable from each other. It contains the first prototype of a Cherry Poptart story called "Bakersfield Blues" - it's not Cherry's first appearance (the Cherry character in this story is called Shirley), but the story would set the style and tone for the future Cherry stories and comics.

 

Real Pulp #1 from 1971 has a pretty depraved story by Maus creator Art Spiegelman called "Pop Goes the Poppa," featuring his character The Viper. The issue also included the first appearance of Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead character in a story called "I Gave My Heart to a Pinhead and He Made a Fool Out of Me."

 

Atomic Comix #1 is from the Madison, Wisconsin area from 1975, and has parodies of super heroes like Batman and the Hulk. Reportedly, the author printed 10,000 copies, but after selling about 3,000 of them he decided he wasn't happy with the work and he destroyed the remaining print run.

 

I could go on and on, I've done a ton of research into these, which has been a lot of fun in itself. I found a great website with a bunch of recaps of underground books, which is where I got a fair amount of info, but for stuff like Dorrgsheett and Atomic, I had to dig a bit deeper. Here's the site for anyone interested: https://comixjoint.com/underground.html

[Darwination]

I hadn't picked up an underground newspaper in quite some time but noticed this one when I was looking at comps to list a couple on eBay and had to have it.  I'd heard of this paper from my hometown but never actually seen one.  I'd heard of the firebombing (or possibly just fire) in the Student Union in 1970 as town lore but had never really heard about what preceded it.  I've got a scan in progress that will show up at the Internet Archive when it's done.  I was scanning a wide survey of these for a while.  I'm more into the graphics than the politics, but they're damn interesting all around.

I spent a lot of time inside this annex building at my High School but had never heard of any police action there, wowsah

Typical of the undergrounds, there's some comix, too, a little Crumb, a little more Skip Williamson...

Edited August 30 by Darwination

[flashlites]

Does anyone out there know anything about these groovy French Undergrounds I came across this weekend?

[comixbible]

On 9/2/2024 at 6:08 PM, flashlites said:

Does anyone out there know anything about these groovy French Undergrounds I came across this weekend?

Yes! What would you like to know?

Edit: If you're simply looking for a cover gallery and tables of contents, this site should help: https://www.bdoubliees.com/echodessavanes/annees/index.html. You should be able to translate the French easily enough.

Edited Monday at 10:31 PM by comixbible

[flashlites]

I had never seen them before! Thanks for the link! I think Neal Adams did a cover for one of these and Wally Wood did some interior art in the 2 I got this weekend.

[flashlites]

Wow! I did not know Crumb, Adams, Shelton, Wood and Kurtzman were involved in these?! And it ran for decades? Very interesting! I feel like I discovered a new world of Undergrounds! The world of International Undergrounds! Besides France, were there any other major countries doing Undergrounds in the 60's and 70's? I will have to look back in this thread and see if its already been covered. 

[comixbible]

On 9/2/2024 at 7:03 PM, flashlites said:

Wow! I did not know Crumb, Adams, Shelton, Wood and Kurtzman were involved in these?! And it ran for decades? Very interesting! I feel like I discovered a new world of Undergrounds! The world of International Undergrounds! Besides France, were there any other major countries doing Undergrounds in the 60's and 70's? I will have to look back in this thread and see if its already been covered. 

Oh, very many. I primarily collect UK underground comix, from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but I also have many comix from the following countries:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Greece
Italy
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Slovenia (Yugoslavia)
South Africa
Sweden
Spain
Switzerland

And I'm talking about stuff from the '70s, not modern publications. I'll post a few covers.

[comixbible]

As promised, here are a few covers from some international comix in my collection:

Germany
Zomix #1 (D.K.S.A.G., 1979)

Greece
Χαυλιόδοντας

Sweden
Näst Sista Striden (Comix Nostra, 1973)

Switzerland
Paranoia City Anzeiger (1972)

Yugoslavia (Slovenia)
Magna Purga (Študentska Založba, 1977)

I have thousands of other examples. I've been collecting and documenting this stuff for a very long time. Mind you, I mostly ignore the stuff that has American reprints, nice as they are, but there's just so much of that out there and so little space left to stuff! That's to say, I strive to collect comix that were created by people native to the region they were published in.