The Counterculture! The Bomb! Women’s Lib! Sex/Drugs/Rock ‘n Roll! Not to mention New York City was on the brink of financial meltdown, with the Bronx, literally, on fire.

This was the backdrop for the emergence of underground comics, led by R. Crumb’s Zap Comix, out of San Francisco, and fellow satirists including Gilbert Shelton and Spain Rodrieguez, in NYC’s East Village Other, Kim Deitch, in High Times, and more. 

While Crumb’s Mr. Natural was strutting his stuff in East Village head shops and tattoo parlors, across town, Jules Feiffer continued penning his anxious intellectuals for the Village Voice.

His modern dancer, in Dance for 1978 (“For now, watch out for one long tantrum”) is one of the openers of Alt-Weekly Comics, currently on view at the Society of Illustrators. 

Below: Pages from Marlys, by Lynda Barry. Courtesy Adam Baumgold Gallery.

The show, organized by Warren Bernard (Comics Historian and Executive Director of Small Press Expo) and Bill Kartalopoulos (Series Editor, The Best American Comics), has collected works by the masters of Alternative Comics, leading out with pages from Lynda Barry’s Ernie Pook’s Comeek and Matt Groening’s Life in Hell. From the dark world of Charles Burns’s Big Baby to the the postmodern politics of Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World; from the seedy punk gags of Kaz’s Underworldto the everyday lives of the queer community in Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, the world of not-ready-for-newsstand comics unfolds.

Page from Washingtoon, by Mark Alan Stamaty, 1989 and 1990.

Other alt-weekly creators represented in the exhibit include Marc Bell, Mark Beyer, Ruben Bolling, Derf, Ellen Forney, Ben Katchor, Keith Knight, Michael Kupperman, Carol Lay, Tony Millionaire, Mark Newgarden, Jen Sorensen, Mark Alan Stamaty, Karl Stevens, Chris Ware, and Shannon Wheeler, among others. Click for a list of artists included.

Detail from Too Much Coffee, by Shannon Wheeler, undated.

Alt-Weekly Comics continues through May 2 at the Society of Illustrators. 128 East 63^rd Street, NY, NY. Coming up: MoCCA Fest 2015, April 11-12, at Center 548, in Chelsea. Information.
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