Underground Comics of the 60s

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For week six of our literary comic venture, we focused on the underground comic circuit of the 1960’s. Contrary to comics prior the underground comics movement, post 1950s era,  they included subjects that we usually associate comics with, superheroes, detectives, and such. But containing a fuzzy overarching goal of educating the minds of the prominently youth readership. Comics during these days were created to entertain and to entertain, only. The comics of the time were never made to make a statement on politics or have any other strong opinions about things, while the comics created in the underground circuit were made to talk about the things that the world wasn’t talking about at the time, like drug culture and being LGBTQ, in a time that talking about sexuality wasn’t as a common as it is today. They featured many gay themes in the comic, Gay Comix. Here I read an anthology of various gay tales, some of topics dealing with same sex family life to the gay dating scene, all stories contained mature themes, but varying in levels of graphicness. The creators of Gay Comix are unapologetic about the subject matter and throw the subject in the reader’s face, making sure they won’t forget what they’re reading. Most to all of the comics produced in the underground were made for adults, for obvious reason, such as subject matter. Another comic I read was Dopin’n Dan, which on face value seems relatively tame. The comic follows Dopin’n Dan in his journeys with the war and dope. A thing that I found interesting about Dopin’n Dan is that Dan is pretty ok guy, he just smokes weed at the most inopportune times. He has many notable opportunities to take other drugs, he’s offered cocaine in one comic, but he abstains because weed is all he needs. Making it seem like he’s a saint for not doing heavy drugs, as he casually smokes a joint in the bathroom. A true 60s icon.
10/10 comic period

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