U

UNDERGROUND AND ADULT COMICS. Commonly referred to as “comix,” underground

comics are a form of outsider comics art characterized by one or more of the following:
counter-culture ideology, irreverence, and depictions of drug use, graphic sex, and other
subject matters usually taboo in comic books. Because they are usually self-published
or published by a small press, these comics manifest an artistic freedom and personal
vision seldom found in mainstream comic books.
Across the United States, creative and unconventional young people who had grown
up reading the genre fantasies mass produced by the East Coast comic book industry
began to make their own comics with an aesthetic derived from sources as diverse
as Harvey Kurtzman’s EC Comics, Rick Griffi n’s surfer magazine cartoons, Robert
Williams’s dragster illustrations, and even the t-shirt designs of Big Daddy Roth. Th e
content and even the style of the artwork were a conscious rebellion against Comics
Code Authority restrictions, editorial policies, and genre formulas of traditional comic
books. Th ey did not compete with traditional comic books on the newsstands, but devel-
oped a distribution system of alternative bookstores, record stores, and head shops.
Th ese convention-defying, politically charged, and independently produced comic
books eventually became widely known as underground comix.
Th e underground comix movement is strongly associated with San Francisco, but
it has roots in Texas, Cleveland, Wisconsin, New York, and possibly Tijuana. Th ere
is no proof that any of the crude little sex comics that began appearing in the 1930s
and became know as Eight-Pagers or Tijuana Bibles were actually produced in Tijuana.
Th e creators of these wallet-sized sex romps had to be much more underground than
the comix artists of the 1960s and 70s, because the eight-pagers were illegal due to
both obscenity violations and copyright infringement. Th e Tijuana Bibles depicted, in