yours”) roots, Moscoso wanted to ensure equitable distribution of profits
and copyright. “After having been burned so much in the poster business,”
he says about his intellectual property travails, wherein he was denied the
rights to many of his images, “I set up a publishing deal with Print Mint,
which was a distributor of my and Rick’s posters already. When Zap #2
came out, here’s Moscoso and Griffin and these two new guys, Crumb and
Wilson, in the same stores where Rick and I were selling very well.” The
poster and head shops that had sprung up in hippie strongholds of big
cities and college towns allowed independent distributors a network that
bypassed the Marvels, DCs, and all the other Comics Code Authority
publishers. By the time Zap #3and #4were published, sales were as high as
50,000copies each for the first printing. (Subsequent printings increased
that number into the six-figure range.) Originally, half of the profits after
expenses were earmarked for the distributor, and half for the artists. In the
meantime, however, the Print Mint changed ownership; after some unfair
dealings on their part, Moscoso renegotiated with Last Gasp (the
distributor of Zap today).
The first two issues of Zapwere fairly innocuous compared to Zap
#3, the special 69 issue (“because it was 1969 ,” explains Moscoso). Rocking
the boat with its risqué content that lived up to its “Adults Only” advisory,
#3was spiritually akin to Tijuana bibles (the cheaply produced, sexually
explicit eight-page comics imported to the United States from Mexico
during the 1930 s and 1940 s). This issue was sandwiched between two
separate front covers designed by Wilson and Griffin, respectively; it could
be read front to back and back to front. The hinge was in the middle, a
Moscoso-designed turnaround center spread that featured drawings of
Daisy and Donald Duck engaged in comic-book hanky-panky.
At the same time that Zap #3was in the works, Crumb revealed a
set of photocopied pages that he had originally prepared for what was to be
the first Zap. Unfortunately, he had given the artwork to a publisher who
disappeared with the originals before publication. “Fortunately, Crumb had
xeroxed the pages, including the covers,” recalls Moscoso. He continues: “In
those days, the xeroxes picked up the line, but not the solid black. So
Crumb had to fill in all the solids.” Moscoso and Griffin agreed that, since
Crumb had this entire comic book together, he should publish it just as it
was, without the other contributors, and they would call it Zap #0. The
only thing he changed from the original was the cover. “We didn’t very
often ask each other for advice,” says Moscoso about the time that Crumb
asked for him for his thoughts about a drawing showing a man floating in a
fetal position with an electric wall cord plugged into his derriere. “I looked
at it and I said, ‘It don’t look right, Robert. The guy is in a fetal position
tuis.
(Tuis.)
#1