La primera historia narrativa de los Comix Underground, el movimiento contracultural de los 60, 70 y 80 sin los que sería imposible entender la novela gráfica de hoy en día: la historia de cómo un puñado de nerds, feministas, moteros, porretas y demás escoria pusieron la cultura patas arriba

This subterranean subgenre of comic strips and books was printed in lofts on out-of-date machinery, published in handbound zines and underground newspapers, and distributed in headshops, porno stores, and on street corners. Comix - spelled that way to distinguish the work from its dime-store superhero contemporaries - presented tales of illicit sex, casual drug use, and a transgressive view of American society that was embraced by hippies, the fine-art world, and legions of future creatives. With a narrative that weaves together the stories of Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, and Art Spiegelman, among many others, Doherty details, in the first complete narrative history of this movement, the local scenes that sprang up in the 1960s and '70s in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Chicago, and provides insight into the rivalries, ideological battles, and conflicts that flourished.The book begins with the artists' origin stories and follows them through major successes, including Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize–winning Maus and Robbins's Wimmen's Comix, and tragedies, from S. Clay Wilson's spiral into alcohol abuse that resulted in career-ending brain damage to Crumb's neurotic running from his own success (and his use of controversial race and gender imagery), and ends 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.RESPECTED AUTHOR: Doherty is a journalist and author who has spent years documenting subversive subcultures and contributing to comics criticism. He has served as a judge for the Eisner Awards, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, USA Today, Slate, and Salon.UNIQUE IN THE MARKET: Dirty Pictures is the first and only narrative history of Underground Comix and the first book to discuss the breadth of comics creators in such detail.BUILT-IN FAN BASE: R. Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, Trina Robbins, Art Spiegelman, and the other creators included in this history have legions of fans who have followed their work for decades.STRONG CATEGORY: Narrative books on comics have a robust readership with titles such as Marvel Comics: The Untold Story and The Ten-Cent Plague garnering attention both critically and from the comics fandom at large.