ZAP 729
Zap #4, which contained Crumb’s “Joe Blow,” a simultaneously cute and explicit depiction
of an incestuous all-American family: the issue was the focus of a number of obscenity
trials in various communities, and was for a time prohibited in New York.
By issue #6 Spain Rodriguez joined the group, which remained stable for the next
seven issues. Th e roster only changed with issue #13, which was dedicated to Griffi n,
who had died after a motorcycle accident. Paul Mavrides joined for issue #14 (1998),
which in part chronicled divisions within the group in response to Crumb’s desire to
put the comic to an end. (With wicked wit, Crumb is killed in a visual homage to his
own killing of his most lucrative character, Fritz the Cat .) Issue #15 appeared after
a gap of fi ve years, and though not identifi ed as a fi nal bow, seemed to be a quiet but
redundant return to business as usual, with Mavrides still on board with the core group
of Crumb, Shelton, Wilson, Williams, Moscoso, and Rodriguez.
Always constructed as an anthology (even when Crumb was the sole contributor),
Zap also maintained a degree of continuity due to recurrent characters (noted above,
as well as Spain’s macho Trashman, and even some of Moscoso’s semi-abstract
fi gures) as well as the consistent style and obsessive themes of its artists. For all of its
initial innovations and boldness, there was little experimentation once the formula
for the comic was established, with a few notable exceptions: Crumb, who had moved
increasingly toward autobiographical stories (a genre no other Zap artist embraced)
off ered a serious biography of the blues singer Charlie Patton in #11, rendered in a
richly detailed, semi-realist mode unlike his earlier contributions. In the same issue
Spain provides a strip with detailed renderings of airplanes that suggest he might
have had a career drawing war comics for the mainstream, and in #18 even Shelton
contributes a story on a Paris cemetery with unusually realistic drawings. Otherwise,
the radical cartoonists tended to stick with what was ironically familiar as the series
continued.
Despite its own tendency toward repetition and familiarity, Zap would remain the
model for other underground and independent anthology comics, such as Bijou Funnies
(8 issues, 1968–73), Snarf (15 issues, 1972–90), and the digest-sized Snatch (3 issues,
1968–69), as well as the later magazines Arcade (7 issues, 1975–76) edited by Bill
Griffi th and Art Spiegelman , and Crumb’s own We i r d o (28 issues, 1981–1993). Th e
entirely male, frequently misogynist, and generally heterosexual (if not polymorphously
perverse) perspective of Zap also presumably motivated the creation of the feminist and
gay underground anthologies Wimmen’s Comix (17 issues, 1972–92) and Gay Comix
(25 issues, 1983–98).
Selected Bibliography: Estren, Mark James. A History of Underground Comics. 3rd Edi-
tion. Berkeley, CA: Ronin Books, 1993; Rosenkrantz, Patrick. Rebel Visions: Th e
Underground Comix Revolution 1963–1975. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2002.
Corey K. Creekmur
ZOMBIES. See Vampires and Zombies
