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Alternative Comics (United States)

Comics have appeared in mainstream newspapers for centuries, but since the 1960s, small press and self-published comics have arisen in the United States to challenge prevailing notions of style, form, and content, ranging from the extremely lowbrow and obscene, to highly intellectual. Sometimes referred to as comix, they represent a diffuse movement of artists, publishing houses, and fan communities that work against the mainstream diet of superhero stories and gag strips. As of the late 2000s, technological advances in printing and computer-aided composition, as well as the Internet's development as a distribution and marketing platform, have led to a significant presence of comics as an intelligent, communicative, and diverse artistic medium.

Underground Comix

Produced on a small scale and with limited resources, the early underground comics were almost always produced by a single person, serving as artist, writer, inker, and the rest. Limited in length, they usually ran fewer than 10,000 copies. They were typified by a low-tech aesthetic, much in the same vein as punk zines. Harvey Kurtzman introduced the idea of comics as an underground movement in Mad magazine in 1954, and the movement was significantly tied to 1960s U.S. counterculture.

These comics primarily relied on head shops and the postal service for distribution, though some appeared in underground publications like the Berkeley Barb and East Village Other. They were produced independently of the large publishing houses, such as DC Comics and Marvel, and were not bound by the Comics Code Authority, the industry's self-regulatory body, leaving them free to tackle taboo subjects, reveling in depictions of sexuality, violence, and drugs.

Important artists of the underground period, lasting until the mid–1970s, included Robert Crumb, Bill Griffith, and Art Spiegelman, whose work appeared in publications like Zap Comix, Armadillo Comix, Doctor Wirtham's Comix & Stories, and Bijou Funnies. The underground comics vilified many aspects of mainstream U.S. life—thegovernment, religion, generaluptightness—often directly parodying mainstream characters and artists in the process. Unlike mainstream comics' fairly staid and recognizable style, the artists ranged from the seemingly amateurish to the highly polished.

Postunderground

With the collapse of the counterculture and economic stagnation in the mid–1970s, the underground comics saw decline. As a result, a new movement of comic creators arose that utilized more mainstream production models and distribution channels to foster alternatives to the mainstream. From its founding in 1976, publisher Fantagraphics Books became the home of several new talents, such as Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and the Hernández brothers, Gilbert and Jaime. Spiegelman started RAW magazine, with his wife Françoise Mouly, as a publishing venue for alternative comics in 1980, and it lasted until 1991. Robert Crumb founded Weirdo magazine, which ran until 1993 and espoused a more low-art outsider aesthetic than RAW. With the growth of comics-specific retailers in the mainstream comics boom of the 1980s, alternative comics found themselves with new outlets for sales alongside their more popular counterparts. As of the late 2000s, many mainstream bookstores also carried alternative comics from publishers like Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, Top Shelf, and Oni Press.

Some alternative works have achieved significant mainstream exposure and success. Spiegelman's Maus, about his father's experiences in the Holocaust, received a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Clowes's Ghost World and Art School Confidential, as well as Harvey Pekar's American Splendor and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, have been adapted into major motion pictures. Alternative publications carry politically and culturally subversive comic strips such as This Modern World, Red Meat, and Dykes to Watch Out For. Alternative book-length comics such as Blankets, Jimmy Corrigan, and Maus are increasingly available in libraries and taught in high school and college as literary texts.

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