164 EDUCATIONAL COMICS
Underground Comix
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, counter-culture artists reinvented the comic book
as a medium for uncensored personal expression. Th e American underground comics,
or “comix” publishers had various connections with educational comics. Last Gasp, for
example, was originally founded to sell Slow Death, a comic Ron Turner assembled to
benefi t the Berkeley Ecology Center; Rip Off Press published Larry Gonick’s Cartoon
History of the Universe series; and Kitchen Sink Press published Corporate CRIME
Comics, and other “political” titles.
By the late 1970s, many of the cartoonists of the underground comix movement
(including Jaxon, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bill Griffi th, Jay Kinney, Justin Green,
Spain, Joyce Farmer, Greg Irons, Trina Robbins, R. Diggs, Diane Noomin, Aline
Kominsky-Crumb, Dan O’Neill and others) were exploring nonfi ction cartooning of
various kinds, and doing so with undiminished commitment to artistic freedom. Art
Spiegelman’s Maus has been the most celebrated achievement to come out of this
movement.
Cartoonists inspired by the underground comix movement have taken this kind
of personally-grounded, nonfi ction cartooning further; prime examples include
Harvey Pekar (most famous for his American Splendor series), Seth Tobocman and
Peter Kuper (cofounders of World War 3 Illustrated), Roberta Gregory, and David
Collier.
EduComics, the educational comic book company founded by Leonard Rifas in
1976, is also an outgrowth of the underground comix movement. EduComics has pub-
lished titles including All-Atomic Comics and Keiji Nakazawa’s Gen of Hiroshima and
I SAW IT. Nakazawa’s Gen of Hiroshima were the fi rst Japanese manga republished
in American comic book format. EduComics also created several titles in collaboration
with sponsoring organizations, and in 1999 began exploring the combination of graphic
narrative and computer-generated “information landscapes” with Th e Big Picture: visualizing
the global economy (a comic to support protests against the World Trade Organization.)
An unrelated “EduComics” company published one language-learning comic in 1982
and disappeared; a third unrelated “EduComics” company operated for a while in Korea,
creating web-based educational comics on various subjects.
Manga
Educational uses for manga (comics) in Japan have ranged from government-
sponsored manga on Japan’s legal system, to manga-format “infomercials” delivered
as newspaper supplements, to thick “study comics” on various subjects. Unusual
educational uses of manga have included sharply-expressed editorials drawn in
comics-format, and proselytizing comics for the cult that later released sarin nerve
gas in Tokyo’s subway.
With manga’s global popularity, “manga-style” comics have appeared around the
world, including Th e Manga Messiah (a proselytizing comic), manga adaptations of
Shakespeare plays, and biography manga. Th e San Francisco company No Starch Press,
