The Underground Comix

So for this week, I read some of the underground comic and after some of the comic, I can say that this is quite an experience. I don’t even know where to begin. It seems that every elements that are projected in the underground comics seems very different than comics that were distributed in mainstream bookstore.

First off, the art, I realize that each book, there are several artists contributed in the making of this comic.  I realize that each artist has their own style of drawing but in this comic, I feel that there are a lot of varieties in the art style which may make people thrown off at the moment. Some of the drawing goes from a really simple style like Felix the cat’s simplicity to a more complex rendition and some of the story are used a photo as the story telling images.  I’m not really sure how to react because, it might be considered as an art but for me as the general reader, I was thrown off by it. it is because of the uncanny valley effect where the pose seems cartoonist but since the subject use a photograph as the character, everything seems a bit off. And another thing that makes me confused is how some of the artist uses a widely known character in the underground comic. I am under assumption that the underground comics are some sort of Indie Company who tries to publish their own creation. However, using a well-known character like mickey mouse with a a mature theme makes me wonder if they ever got sued because of that. Just to make it clear, I do not hate the style that the artist uses, as a matter of fact; I’m quite enjoying it to be honest. The variety of the art itself really tells me that there is a lot of ways in telling a story and you don’t have to conform to the mainstream style like a marvel drawing style to deliver your stories. Even a big company like Marvel embraces the drawing changes that each new generation brought in.

Another thing that makes the underground comic different than the mainstream comic is the theme. I should have known what to expect when I heard the word underground. The theme must be something that is unusual, and true enough, when I read the comic, some of the recurring theme in this underground comic collections are  sex, drug and political issues. One of the example would be in the air pirates, where mickey says, “ The whole world thinks I’m Cute… so why won’t Minnie F*** me”, when I heard that I was in disbeliefs. Probably because I grew up watching mickey and read the comic book and here as I read this, It reminds me of the past, however, since this is the underground comics and when the artist use my childhood character to say a different context like sex, it threw me of guard.  I guess this is really what makes it an underground comic. The subject matter depicted in the comic book is very adult and that is why the publisher decided to sells it in a selected market and not the mainstream comic book store where the subject matter depicted in the mainstream comics are more targeted towards general audience.

Overall, this is like a roller coaster ride for me. Some of the reading, I was okay with it and the others needs time to chew on it. this is a different experience for me and I guess it is good in a way because I have never being exposed to this kind of material and now I know some part of the history of the comic book, which is fun actually.