Journalist and comic book critic Brian Doherty’s Dirty Pictures is the first complete narrative
history of the weird and wonderful world of Underground Comix—”a welcome addition to an
under-analyzed legacy of the free-spirited 1960s” (San Francisco Chronicle). In the 1950s
comics meant POW!BAM! superheroes family-friendly gags and Sunday funnies but in the 1960s
inspired by these strips and the satire of MAD magazine a new generation of creators set out
to subvert the medium and with it American culture. Their comix”—spelled that way to
distinguish the work from their dime-store contemporaries—presented tales of taboo sex casual
drug use and a transgressive view of society. Embraced by hippies and legions of future
creatives this subgenre of comic books and strips often ran afoul of the law but that would
not stop them from casting cultural ripples for decades to come eventually moving the entire
comics form beyond the gutter and into fine-art galleries. Brian Doherty weaves together the
stories of R. Crumb Art Spiegelman Trina Robbins Spain Rodriguez Harvey Pekar and Howard
Cruse among many others detailing the complete narrative history of this movement. Through
dozens of new interviews and archival research he chronicles the scenes that sprang up around
the country in the 1960s and ‘70s beginning with the artists’ origin stories and following
them through success and strife and concluding with an examination of these creators’
legacies. Dirty Pictures is the essential exploration of a truly American art form that
recontextualized the way people thought about war race sex gender and expression.
