Fourth Edition
Comics/History 
320 pp 
Line drawings 
Index, bibliography 
ISBN 0-914171-64-X 
$35.00

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"Enthusiastic and intelligent homage to the scabrous, anarchic outrageous adults-only comics . . . An excellent slice of 1960s Americana as well as unique pop-cultural history."

- Booklist

- Midwest Book Review

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ince the genre first emerged in the late 1960s, underground comics (or "comix") have delighted and outraged millions of people. The exploits of such characters as Mr. Natural and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers embodied the psychedelic era and continue to attract loyal readership today. 

A History of Underground Comics offers the most lavish collection of comix art ever to appear in one book, with more than 1,000 drawings by the likes of R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, Richard Corben, Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson, Justin Green, Dave Sheridan, Jaxon, Spain Rodriguez, Victor Moscoso, Kim Deitch, Rick Griffin, Foolbert Sturgeon and many others. 

A History of Underground Comics, Mark Estren traces the roots of underground comics in such legendary comic demigods as Krazy Kat and Little Nemo, and details how comics unabashedly portrayed sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, flouting the conventions of censors who had kept above-ground comics tame. This fourth edition provides 32 pages of new material, including a new index and a new bibliography. 

Social satire in the underground comics usually takes the form of humorous (sometimes bitter) exaggerations of various aspects of American society, from money hunger to art and music. At times, the satire is found mostly in the words. The stories in this book reduce all of society to absurdity by simple vocabularies and a childlike approach to the material.

In his "social realism" strips, R. Crumb does not mock American society; rather, he presents it for what it is and trusts the reader eventually to realize that the strips are funny because the society is absurd. 

Crumb has not been the only underground cartoonist to attempt this special brand of social realism. On occasion, J. Kinney has also worked in this manner. Kinney describes his approach as follows: "I try to put down on paper relatively true visions of middle-class life as I see it. . . . Hopefully by capturing all this on paper, I can help people to see themselves more objectively and insightfully. Heheheheheh."