ZAP COMIX #1
The birth of alternative comics.

Writer & Artist: Robert Crumb Single issue First published independently in 1967; reprinted by various publishers since; reprinted in THE COMPLETE CRUMB VOL. 4, Fantagraphics Books 1989

Reviewed by Pindaros

Late in 1966, a 23 year-old illustrator and cartoonist decided on the spur of the moment to join a couple of acquaintances on their trip from Cleveland to San Francisco. While similar decisions were being made all across America that night and many nights before and after, in this instance the history of comic books was changed forever.

It was in San Francisco that this young artist, Robert Crumb, would develop a radically different view of comics, and of bohemian life itself. He would present his ideas in a comic book, ZAP #1, which laid the foundation for virtually all of the work which has been produced under the label of 'alternative comics'.

"'Underground comix,' however, consisted largely of satirical attacks on mainstream society"

The notion that mainstream society was too limited and pragmatic to support a satisfying and creative life was a constant refrain in the sixties, taken up by many other sequential artists beside Crumb. These 'underground comix,' however, consisted largely of satirical attacks on mainstream society and Rabelaisian fantasies of transgressive pleasure; they tended to look like MAD magazine with nudity, blood and curse words.

Crumb's own work before ZAP certainly came from this vein. His most developed stories were those about Fritz the Cat, in which he used animals to make fun of (and vicariously identify with) various character-types of mid-sixties Greenwich Village. They also included plenty of (female, human-bodied) nudity to engage the attention of his 'hip' (male, presumably) readership.

A number of artists ultimately became quite successful with these sorts of comics, most notably Gilbert Shelton with the FABULOUS FURRY FREAK BROTHERS and there's every reason to believe that Crumb would have been extremely successful had he continued in this direction. He had already established himself as a greeting card artist, and in general his art is strong, in an easily recognizable and humorous style, and he has always had a powerful sense of what his audience would find funny and interesting.

It's perhaps worthy of mention that the two alternative comic creators to break through to the greatest mainstream acclaim, Matt Groening and Art Spiegelman, did so by developing work on more conventional themes (family dynamics, the Holocaust) and presenting it in traditional comics styles (funny animal, precocious and misshapen children). There do seem to be very straight-forward limits to what is permitted to reach the national eye from the hands of sequential artists.

Initially, in fact, the move to San Francisco had a detrimental effect on the quality of his work, as he got caught up in the drug-fueled idealism of the Haight. His work in an underground paper called YARROWSTALKS and in ZAP #0 (written before #1, but published after) showed a definite softening of his satirical bite, and a tendency toward whimsical depictions of acid trips. He seemed on his way to becoming a legend of the 'Summer of Love,' along with Richard Brautigan and the Quicksilver Messenger Service.

ZAP #1 still demonstrated his role as Comic Artist by Appointment to the Court of His Majesty King Hippie, particularly on the covers: the front cover shows a woman being chastised for not getting the meaning of 'Do-wah-diddy,' the back is a mock advertisement for smoking cannabis. In much of the book, however, the lack of commercial pressure from the freak world seems to have offered Crumb an opportunity to work out more idiosyncratic concerns of form and content that would ultimately prove a far more important inspiration than any of his previous work.

The formal concerns are obvious on the covers, where Crumb has put a great deal of effort into parodying the appearance of the comic books of his youth. The front cover includes a mock Comics Code stamp, and a carefully drawn title, while the back cover goes so far as to include 'before and after' pictures of the supposed authors of the testimonials for 'the weed.' Similar play appears at the center of the book, where Crumb has drawn a whole cast of 'Kitchen Cut-Outs' for the reader to cut out and play with.

Aside from these gumbos of nostalgia, homage and parody, Crumb kicks the door to complete formal experimentation wide open with his 'Abstract Expressionist Ultra Modern Comics.' Consisting of three pages of patent surrealism, this piece nevertheless combines enough comic strip convention (panels, word balloons) and repeated imagery to insist on the legibility that the images themselves refuse. Far from mocking the limitations of the medium, the piece reveals the power that comics have to move beyond determinable narrative. Few of the artists who have engaged in similar experiments have possessed that confidence in the conventions of sequential art that makes Crumb's example so striking.

Given such formal experimentation, what is most remarkable in the two longest features of the book is Crumb's engagement with his environment, the real objects of his world. 'Whiteman' is a particularly dated piece of social satire (short, slicked hair and muscles as signs of the 'uptight'), but within his comic distortions, the images often capture emotions that pavement, walls, lights, cars and people's faces actually evoke. Even the final page, in which a bunch of 'niggers' come to draw Whiteman out of his alienation, remains emotionally powerful in spite of (or even because of) Crumb's obvious pleasure in racial stereotypes. (Interestingly, in the documentary CRUMB, the cartoonist is taken to task at length for his portrayal of women, while his equally problematic attitudes towards African-Americans are never mentioned.)

But the tour de force of the book is the second long feature, "Mr. Natural 'Visits the City'." Mr. Natural and his nemesis Flakey Foont had been chasing around for some time in Crumb's sketchbook; essentially a vaudeville act involving a strangely fake guru and an over-obsessed disciple, they were a fascinating convergence of his fascination with old forms and current concerns. But in earlier bits, they had inhabited an almost empty world, in which objects existed to support jokes.

In 'Visits the City,' the background of the relationship begins to slide into view with a materiality that defies the silliness of the interaction between the characters. Framing panels backed with existential white are others filled with the furnishings of Foont's apartment: mismatched chairs, old radio and TV, shelves piled high with books, surreal prints in huge old picture frames. The time of the dialogue is unclear: it could be anytime from 1952 to 1967 (or after, for that matter). What is plain is the material poverty and intellectual excess of Foont's world.

"The most genuinely revolutionary comic since ACTION #1."

Crumb had portrayed, for the first time in comics, the bohemia that has become the standard environment of collegiate and post-collegiate culturati in the modern West. Combining poverty without desperation, unromantic obsession and aimless intellectual activity, this world had been described in literature by Thomas Pynchon in V, and was being evoked in the grim drones of the Velvet Underground at the same time as ZAP was being published. And just as Pynchon and Lou Reed have become models for 'edgy' writers and singers ever since, ZAP, and Crumb's later work, stands at the head of a major strain of alternative cartooning. One might call Crumb 'the godfather of punk comix.'

Add in a number of short features, including a scene from Crumb's childhood and the iconic 'Keep On Truckin' page, and you have the most genuinely revolutionary comic since ACTION #1. When the great cartoonists talk about how the sixties changed everything, they mean this comic. As befits a classic it remains availible at the more ambitious comic shops, and in your Borders as a part of Crumb's collected works. So if you haven't read it yet, what're you waiting for?

Strongly Recommended.

Pindaros is a regular contributor to PopImage.

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