UNDERGROUND AND ADULT COMICS 655
enemies, but they also did more than most publishers to force the comic book medium to
mature in the 1980s.
In 1989, Chris Oliveros began the Canadian Drawn and Quarterly to publish an
anthology of art and literary comics in the experimental tradition of RAW. Soon the
company expanded to publish ongoing comic book series and graphic novels by such
notable creators as Adrian Tomine, Chester Brown, and Julie Doucet. Drawn and
Quarterly publishes works that might have occasional sex scenes, but are adult by virtue
of the intelligence with which they examine the human condition.
Top Shelf Productions, which began in 1997, has published work by Eddie
Campbell, Craig Th ompson, Nate Powell and other critically acclaimed cartoonists.
Founders Chris Staros and Brett Warnock feel part of their mission as a publisher is
to change the perception of comic books by getting works of merit into the market-
place. Lost Girls, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s work of erotica featuring the
children’s literature icons Dorothy, Wendy and Alice began in Stephen R. Bissette’s
Ta b o o anthology in 1991 and was eventually collected in three volumes by Top Shelf
Productions. Th e work brings together the traditions and evolving ambitions of
comic books as an outsider art form. Featuring popular culture characters reminis-
cent of the Tijuana Bibles, it blends explicit sex with social commentary reminiscent
of the undergrounds, and aspires to make pornography, the term Moore prefers for
the work, an aesthetic and intellectual experience that can be enriching rather than
soulless or merely escapist.
Underground creators and publishers had a fi erce commitment to freedom of
expression that could produce off ensive work, but also stimulated creativity and experi-
mentation. As the creators matured there developed an impressive variety of work in
the underground comix. Th is work inspired the next generation of cartoonists to create
alternative comic books and graphic novels that, due to their sophistication of theme
and form, are beginning to fi nd acceptance in mainstream culture.
See also: Satire
Randy Duncan
