| The Last Laugh: Larfing All the Way to the Dock
Roger Sabin
The thing about the American and British underground comics of the 1960s
and ’70s (those deviant slices of hippie graphics) was that they
weren’t really ‘underground’. Not in the
same sense, say, as satirical comics produced in secret as a way of resisting
a totalitarian state (this kind of subversion proved effective in Nazi
Germany, and today continues to be severely punishable in parts of South
America). Theywere generally available quite openly from ‘headshops’
and a limited number of newsstands, and went about the business of ‘poking
fun at the straights’ without any dangerof acartoonist being
shot.
Which is not to say that they didn’t cause trouble,or that
cartoonists and publishers didn’t suffer. Thebrilliant satires
of Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Spain Rodriguez,S Clay Wilson and others
certainly hit their mark and the backlash was dramatic. It seems that 1973
was a particularly bad year. The US right-wing press had been attacking
the undergroundon and off since its inception, but then the Supreme Courthanded
down a ruling whereby communities could decide their own First Amendment
standards with reference to obscenity. Several busts followed, including
that of Zap, a top anthology title famous for its Crumb content.
At around the same time, a number of ‘anti-paraphernalia’
laws were passed, whichhad theeffects of outlawing the sale of drug-related
itemsand closingdown the headshops. Without a sales network, theundergroundwould
have a mighty struggle to survive.
In the same year, the much lampooned corporate world took its revenge.
In 1973, Disney took to court the Seattle-based Air Pirates Funnies
– or, more specifically, Mickey Mouse Meets the Air Pirates
Funnies – for depicting in its pages a pot-smoking, sexually
active Mickey. Despite cartoonist Dan O’Neill’s defence
that a drawing has to look like its target or else the satire won’t
work, he and the other Air Pirates were accused of ‘defiling
Mickey’s innocent delightfulness’, and busted for in
excess of US$1 million.
In Britain, there was a similar conservative reaction. Intime, most
of the hippie newspapers were prosecuted for obscenity, with the most famous
case involving that man Crumb again. In 1971, Oz magazine was taken to
the Old Bailey for its ‘Schoolkids Issue’, which happened
to feature a sexually explicit Crumb strip, modified by the addition of
the head of Rupert the Bear. This was going too far for the judge and,
no doubt feeling that Rupert’s ‘innocent delightfulness’
had been defiled, he sent the three Oz editors to jail (they were soon
released on appeal).
One of the UK’s funniest undergrounds, Nasty Tales
, was then busted in 1973 (the annus horribilis). Again, the charge
was obscenity; again the venue was the Old Bailey; and again Crumb was
the focus (especially his ‘GrandOpening of the Great Intercontinental
Fuck-In and Orgy Riot’). This time the court let off the defendants
with slapped wrists (they celebrated by bringing out a new issue of Nasty
Tales which reprinted the ‘Fuck-In’ strip).
In spite of the pressure, the underground did survive, more or less,
into the 1980s and 90s; though the counterculturechanged its complexion
(veering more towards direct actionand green protest than the old sex,
drugs and minority-causesvibe ofthe 1960s). New names were tried for the
post-hippiecomics– including ‘alternative comics’,‘indiecomics’,
and ‘new wave comics’ – butthey remained
underground in spirit. The Establishment clampdownscontinued.In 1982, the
UK’s foremost publishers of suchmaterial,Knockabout Comics, were
cleared at the Old Baileyafter policeseized drug-related titles.
In 1996, they were again cleared in court, this time of an obscenity
charge relating to – you guessed it – Robert Crumb.
As star witness Paul Gravett, administrator of the Cartoon Art Trust, told
the court, Crumb’s work was in the tradition of Hogarth and Rowlandson
and, further, he was one of the most important cartoonists of the last
25 years. That Crumb’s reputation (or that of Knockabout) should
have been brought into question in this way was just one more disgraceful
episode to add to the list.
Alas, the busts didn’t end there. Savoy Comics, publishers
based in Manchester, fared less well. Through the late 1980s and 90s, their
darkly satirical comics Meng and Ecker and Lord Horror were the
subject of repeated police raids ( Index 1/1996). Prosecutions under
the Obscene Publications Act followed. One hostile witness took particular
exception to the former comic’s use of Garfield in a story (the
character Meng ejaculates over the smug feline): ‘Garfield is
perceived as a wholesome and endearing character,’ he told the
court, ‘with whom all the family can identify.’The
echoes of the Air Pirates case and the Oz trialwereclear. In 1992,
the ruling against Meng and Ecker wasupheld, despite the efforts
of defence lawyer GeoffreyRobertsonQC (who had defended Oz in 1971), and
it became thefirst comicto be banned in the UK. Meanwhile, the title Lord
Horror had been published both as a book and a comic;these were prosecuted
at the same time. However, whereas thebook was cleared, the comic was ordered
to be destroyed because,in the words of the judge, ‘it might
appeal to persons of a lesser intellect’.
Savoy’s satire was aimed both at the right-wing Establishment
and the left-wing ‘politically correct brigade’, and
references to the Nazi Holocaust and extreme sex peppered their output
during this period. Pushing the limits of anti-PC protest was a sport that
other comics engaged in, too. From Atlanta, Georgia, came Baby Sue,
a title written inthe language of a redneck and containing strips that
were/areblatantly racist. ‘The Two Black Ladies’ are
charactersdrawn with thick lips and bunches in their hair, and who talkin
pidgin English about subjects that reveal their ignorance. It would be
easy to mistake the comic for a KKK publication, were itnot for the fact
that it comes from the same stable as a record label famous for its provocative
(left-wing) punk acts. Butdespite this provenance, Baby Sue has
been vilifiedby some fans of comics and many dealers refuse to stock it.
Racism is certainly the topic that pushes the buttons of the liberal
left, and we need look no further for the King of the Wind-Up than our
old friend Robert Crumb. In 1993, in an issue of the anthology title Weirdo,
Crumb produced two strips that were to cause a major outcry. One was ‘When
theNiggers Take Over America!’; the other ‘When theGoddamn
Jews Take Over America!’. Both were gleeful stabsat the PC lobby
(example from the first strip: ‘Are you afraid of young black
men? You oughta be ... They hate your white guts!’) and traded
in every racial stereotype imaginable. Inevitably, they were taken the
wrong way and several high-profile cartoonists joined in the castigation
of Crumb. For fans who had followed his career closely, however, it merely
confirmed that he still had the same devilish streak that had led to all
the fuss in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and that he could still give newcomers
like those over at Baby Sue a few lessons in outrage.
The most recent example of comics censorship has involveda title not
about racism, but about children. Although Boiled Angel was certainly
a ‘humour’ comic in the underground tradition, it was
also strong stuff (in the S Clay Wilson manner), and included scenes of
mutilation and brutal sex involving minors. Such transgressive material
was in the Savoy mould, and just as likely to cause a reaction. But mild-mannered
creator Mike Diana had little idea of what was in store for him when the
comic was busted for obscenity in Florida. In1995, he became the first
cartoonist ever to be jailed on this charge.
Would Boiled Angel have caused a stink if it werein book form?
Probably not: the example of Lord Horrorindicates the double standards
that apply: comics are notaccordedthe same leeway in terms of artistic
expression asother artforms. For many of the prosecuting lawyers in thevarious
casesoutlined above, the comic is a medium that shouldbe confinedto a juvenile
readership, and has no business dealingin adultsatire (they’d
argue that comics should indeedbe comical,but in a Beano -like way).
And if it’sa sourceof gratification to some cartoonists and publishers
that graphichumour can be such an effective ‘weapon’,
to thepoint where it is clamped down on in such a systematic fashion,then
censorship remains a continuing menace. In alternativecomics, as ever,making
people laugh can be a dangerous business.
Roger Sabin is the author of two histories of comics,and co-editor
of Below Critical Radar: Fanzines and Alternative Comics 1976 to ‘Now’
(Slab
o’ Concrete Press, 2000).
To find out more about censorship of comic books, see www.rpi.edu/~bulloj/search/CENSORSHIP.html
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