Dirty Picture: A free-wheeling, frank account of the rise and fall of the underground comic scene. Doherty, a senior editor at Reason magazine and author of This Is Burning Man, serves up a tale of underground comix, “the ‘x’ to mark them as distinct from the mainstream comics to which they were in opposition.” Perhaps the best known of their creators is cartoonist R. Crumb, who, despite what today are considered “problematic” depictions of gender and race, has evolved into an artist taken seriously enough to exhibit at major museums. Doherty’s pioneering players share the idea that just as music and film were breaking free of conventions in the countercultural era of the 1960s, so comix, “born of smartass rebel kids,” could become revolutionary vehicles for the mores and attitudes of the day. A major difference was that music and film had big corporations behind them, while comix were largely homegrown, underfunded affairs. Crumb, through the pages of Zap! and other seat-of-the-pants magazines, became internationally famous. So did Art Spiegelman, who early on “realized he could not make himself draw something he wasn’t intellectually or emotionally drawn to for the rest of his life” and who began to imagine a Holocaust-era tale of cats and mice half a century ago, well beforeMaus brought him to mainstream attention. Doherty pokes into every corner of the scene, recounting how the always entrepreneurial Stan Lee tried to co-opt it with a Marvel sort-of-comix book and noting that where only a few male artists are remembered today, plenty of women such as Trina Robbins made great art and deserve more attention. While the author closes with a grim recitation of artists and publishers who fell victim to drugs, alcohol, or the various ailments of old age, he observes that comix exert cultural influence today. Lively, well researched, and full of telling anecdotes; just the thing for comix aficionados and collectors by Brian Doherty

Rob Salkowitz reviews DIRTY PICTURES by Brian Doherty in ICv2

Rob Salkowitz, author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, reviewed the book in ICv2, the #1 source of news and information for the buyers, gatekeepers, and tastemakers on the front lines of the geek culture business, writing in the review titled “Dirty Pictures Sheds Light on a Corner of the Comics Business that Still Hasn’t Received Its Due:”

…On the comics side, he knows his stuff, and when he doesn’t, he knows who to ask. A lot of his information comes from firsthand interviews with participants in the movement, and he has clearly cross-checked some of the shaggier shaggy dog stories rather than just repeat them for posterity…

…Dirty Pictures is at its best when it connects the dots of the personal and professional relationships, as well as the connections between underground comix and its seemingly very distant cousin, the mainstream comics industry…

…Doherty’s focus on characters and personalities brings the historical details to life. It also illuminates the relative socio-economic diversity of a movement that gets all lumped together, but actually comes from a number of different places: see the book’s hilariously long subtitle for a clue…

…Doherty covers the pivotal role played by publishers, distributors and retailers, using the same thorough journalistic, multi-faceted approach…

…In a valedictory chapter, Doherty touches on the “contested legacy” of the undergrounds, which used shocking imagery to shatter so many boundaries half a century ago, but appear coarse and offensive through the lens of 21st century cultural values and sensitivities…

…If this topic interests you at all, Dirty Pictures is likely to be the most complete and authoritative account we’re going to get, and is well worth a read…

Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix is published by Abrams Press.

Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and is the author of This is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground (Little, Brown, 2004). His reporting, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, and Fantagraphics’s The Best American Comics Criticism, among others. He has also served as a judge for the comics industry’s Eisner Awards.

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