issues without incident. Predictably, the attention caused Zap’s reputation
and sales to rise. As for the artists, “I never did an incest story,” says
Moscoso, “and Crumb never did an incest story again, as far as I know...
not for Zap. However, we did not self-censor....It was just after a while
we got it out of our systems.”
Although subsequent issues were spared legal harassment, they
were no less explicit than the offending issue. By the 1970 s the raunch
factor in underground comics was commonplace, and, with the liberal
court’s First Amendment rulings, it was fruitless to expend legal energy in
cracking down on them. Moreover,Zapseemed to serve a purpose in
venting the urges of a generation that needed to push boundaries. In fact,
Zapis today a textbook study of how fringe ideas are no longer mysterious
or threatening when they are unleashed. In Zap #7, for example, Spain
introduced “Sangrella,” which serves as a paean to sadomasochistic lesbian
eroticism with a sci-fi twist, addressing the extremes of such weird
fetishism. In retrospect it is little more than a ribald jab at the sexlessness of
superheroes. In Zap #8Robert Williams’s “Innocence Squandered” is less
prurient than it is a satiric commentary on how pornography is adjudicated
in the courts. Actually, by Zap #11, although sexual references proliferate,
the strips became more experimental in terms of form and content. In this
issue Crumb’s “Patton,” about the great blues performer Charley Patton, is
a masterpiece of comic strip as documentary. In the same issue Spain’s “Lily
Litvak: The Rose of Stalingrad” transforms a little-known historical fact
into a comic strip that is kindred to the heroic comic books of the World
War II era. And in Zap #13even Gilbert Shelton turned his attention from
fantasy to real life in “Graveyard Ghosts,” a brief tour of Père Lachaise
Cemetery in Paris.
Thirty years, fifteen issues, and (according to distribution figures)
millions of copies later,Zaphas not changed all that much. The same
contributors, minus Griffin (who died in 1995 ), are still pumping out an
issue every two years. During a period in American history when political
ultraconservatives are blaming the 1960 s for all social ills, it is interesting
to note that even in maintaining its consistency,Zapis not the wellspring
of radical raunch that it once was. American tolerance for the abhorrent
was long ago stretched beyond Zap’s boundaries. “The fact that we’re even
still selling these things actually is remarkable,” Moscoso admits. “These
things should have gone by the wayside a long time ago, by all logical
standards. But there are people who still read this crap! Not bad for a piece
of trash. Really.”
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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