Politix: The Social & Political Dimensions of Underground Comix

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Trina Robbins, Mama Dramas #1 (Educomics, 1978)

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Rius, The Chicanos (NACLA, 1973)

Frank Waynewood collected comics on two parallel tracks, according to Catherine Tate: the political and the transgressive. Featured here are selections from the first track: comix addressing social and political issues—including those arising within the art form itself.

"Frank would likely agree that his comic collection fed a lifelong interest in politics and in transgressing boundaries," said Tate. "From childhood on, comics represented a means of exploration and escape. His original attraction to comics inspired him and allowed him to imagine a life beyond the imposed boundaries of the segregated South." 

That members of historically marginalized groups should have embraced an art form "previously shunned to the margins of society," to quote Tulane University's Amistad Research Center, certainly makes sense. However, as with the wordless novels of the 1920s and 1930s, white, male voices predominate in early underground comix. And, for a self-styled "radical" art form, it is striking the extent to which underground comix were exclusionary, misogynistic, and casually, "ironically" racist.

The world of independent comix has yet to live up to its promise as a vernacular art form and haven for the unheard. Nevertheless, the affinity that many on the margins have felt for comic art, and the democratic possibilities of the medium, have inspired a diversity of creators to kick down the doors to the underground, give the gatekeepers some well-deserved wedgies, and claim their places at the (drafting) table.