On coming full circle in your work

Looking back on your career, from Underground Comix to publishing and advocacy, you shaped the industry in ways few have. Are there stories, themes, or artistic experiments that you set aside along the way that you now feel compelled to revisit?

Boy, there’s a broad brush, huh? I would just say I feel very lucky that I got into this crazy industry when I did. The Underground Comix Movement at the time seemed very disconnected from the mainstream comics industry. But year by year, I found the influence of undergrounds had a definite impact on what was happening in the larger industry. My generation of artists and publishers really changed the ground rules. We didn’t like the business model that I would say we inherited. We didn’t like the fact that publishers owned all the copyrights, publishers kept the original art. We didn’t like the fact that artists were paid a flat rate regardless of sales, or number of languages the work appeared in. All of these things to us were inherently unfair. And so in creating our own alternative industry and alternative distribution system, we set our own rules.

And as the years have gone by, it’s been gratifying to see that the vision those hippie cartoonists had are now by and large the new business model. Unless you work for Marvel or DC or Archie, you basically will be able to control what you create, and you will be able to be paid in a fairer way. You will get your art back. You will get residuals if it’s reprinted overseas, and all of these things that were not automatic when we began in the late ’60s. So, I look back at that as being perhaps the most significant effect in retrospect. There are so many other factors. I’ve been doing this for, gosh, is it 60 years now? And there’ve been so many changes.

You had a big impact in making the artist as important as the writers, as important as the product and advocating for those rights. Are there any changes or ideals from that underground movement that didn’t stick that you wish you had? Anything that you guys really advocated for that didn’t catch on in the way that you wanted to?

I think our substantive issues have been realized in a larger sense. I think the impact we had could not have been predicted. But even the big companies, they treat their creators a lot more fairly than certainly they did a generation or two ago. And certainly, the independent press is just simply a modern version of undergrounds. When I go to SPX, or Mocha, or MICE, I see a multitude of creators and publications that to me are just undergrounds that are maybe a different size, and the creators don’t look like archetypal hippies anymore, but it’s morphed. It’s morphed in a way that to me is very gratifying. I feel very much at home when I go to an indie convention and see what young creators are doing. It’s very gratifying.

I feel the same way. I think of a modern example that I can think of is Living the Line, primarily. I grew up reading a lot of manga, and Living the line right now is publishing an imprint called Smudge, which is a lot of unpublished, very out there horror manga. And I think about Viz and Yen Press, I’m sure wouldn’t take the risk necessarily on that without some proven backing behind it. But it is great to see that kind of content coming out. To that end, what’s an underground comic that you think deserves more of a spotlight? What’s on the Denis Kitchen essential reading list for those people who are looking to dig into something new and interesting?

You mean what undergrounds from that era deserve being reread by contemporary readers?

Yeah, I’d be interested to hear that answer. And then if there’s anything you’ve come across in the past five years or so that has really surprised you.

Let me try to tackle that. I mean, I guess for let’s say a twenty-something who never saw undergrounds, the most popular series in the late ’60s, early mid-‘70s, was ,The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers by Gilbert Shelton. They were kind of, for my generation, the stoned version of the Marx Brothers, if that’s a fair analogy. I think they still hold up. Gilbert had a tremendous sense of humor, very idiosyncratic drawing style. The three Freak Brothers are just hilarious characters. So I would recommend finding a compilation of that.

You can’t talk about undergrounds without talking about Robert Crumb. He’s a polarizing figure, for sure. And I would say if you’re politically sensitive, tread carefully. But his best stuff is groundbreaking and amazing. I would recommend in particular some of the biographical comics he did for Arcade and some other publications. The autobiographical work will be troubling for some, but it’s like reading any autobiographical work that contains painful memories, or painful descriptions. I mean, again, tread carefully, but he’s a bonafide genius.

There are some wonderful historical undergrounds done by Jack Jackson about the history of Texas, and the Southwest, and the interaction of the early settlers, and the Spanish explorers, and the indigenous people that are done very sensitively and beautifully. Those deserve rereading by a new generation.

Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary was groundbreaking, in that it was really the first autobiographical comic book dealing with his own mental issues in a way that’s also going to be disturbing for some. But it’s a very important work. And I can tell you firsthand, it influenced even creators like Will Eisner, who ended up doing overtly autobiographical material after reading Justin’s comic. And of course Art Spiegelman’s Maus first appeared in Underground Comix.

So, there are, I think lots, that’s just kind of a tip of the iceberg of some recommended readings. I would say another one that I published that I think deserves a fresh look is it did a series called Kings in Disguise. It was five or six comics that were collected into a graphic novel. And then later a sequel called On the Ropes. It was written by James Vance, illustrated by Dan Burr. It’s kind of a coming-of-age story during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It’s just a terrific story. It’s not what most people would think of as an underground. It’s not sexy, it doesn’t have drugs in it, it doesn’t have things you normally associated with the underground. It’s simply an outstanding illustrated story that could only have been published at the time by the Underground Press. It just wouldn’t have found a market otherwise. And there are a number of things like that.

I think the undergrounds are stereotyped in ways that are based on substance, but stereotyping is unfair in a general sense, and anyone who’s really exploring it, I think, will be surprised how many things they’ll find that are just plain funny, or informative, or historical, or autobiographical, and break your expectation of what an underground is. It’s a very generic term.

Especially with the autobiographical work. I think, oftentimes, comics get overlooked for the very human element that can come along with them. I grew up reading a lot of Chester Brown work, and Jeffrey Brown and it’s wonderful to see work like that, and just to see the variety of styles. If you’ve grown up on a Marvel, DC, a superhero comic, and seeing a more just kind of, simplistic isn’t the right word, but forgive me for lack of a better word, a comic that feels approachable in the way that anybody could produce a comic, which I think is a very empowering thing.

You hit on a very important point. The big comic companies, of course, have a house style. If you are hired to draw, say Archie or Spider-Man, it has to look like that trademarked version, of course. But with undergrounds, we actually encouraged individual idiosyncratic styles. And we took the approach, to use a film comparison, I was looking for what tours, artists/writers who left a very distinctive impression, and that their style was instantly recognizable who anyone who had read that work. Even so far as the lettering. A lot of artists can’t letter particularly well, but even as long as the lettering was legible, I never wanted to change it. I just thought that’s the way, that person letters, it’s part of their style inherently. And rarely did I ever say, “Look, you need a professional letterer to help you.”

So, the whole thing to me reflects what is beautiful about comics, and that a single person, or a pair of collaborators, can create a body of work that would be impossible in almost any other medium. You can’t really make a movie by yourself, you can’t… Go down the list. It’s one of the wonderful things about comics. And I love the fact that undergrounds encouraged those distinctive styles and storytelling in a way that now has been inherited by all the contemporary work you see, including a lot of work that’s gotten national and international acclaim. It all came out of that explosion in the late ’60s, which was really a revolt against the comic code authority and everything it represented that was suppressing free expression in comics.

The comics landscape has transformed pretty dramatically since you started. Do you see today’s publishing models and digital platforms and tools as an opportunity to bring life to projects that were once impractical or impossible? Maybe, as you were saying, somebody in a smaller town who might be trying to self-publish now has platforms through Webtoon. Or do they present challenges to that kind of underground ethos? What you’re talking about the ’60s bucking against the larger trends.

Well, it’s difficult to compare the different eras. There really are apples and oranges. Certainly, the advent of the internet significantly changed everything, that’s obvious. But in the same way, I would say what my generation of underground cartoonists benefited from was the advent of offset printing. It’s not something we talk about very often, but printing used to be just not affordable. Let’s say you were cartoonists in the 1940s who didn’t want to work for the man. You would’ve had to have quite a bit of money to print your own comic or graphic novel. But the advent of offset printing made it more affordable.

When I started, I had no money of substance, but I think I had $600, and I was able to print 4,000 copies of my first comic. It was affordable in a way that it wouldn’t have been for my father’s generation. In the same way, now you have not only the internet, but you have print on demand. So now anyone, if you have a comic you’ve created, and you can’t interest a publisher in it, well, you can print on demand 10 copies for your friends, or 50, or 100, and take them to a show, in a way that would not have been practical for my generation. For undergrounds, we started with 10,000. That was the floor for us to be practical. And we were able to easily sell 10,000 in multiples of it back in the day when there were head shops everywhere, and a huge demand. So, I think you have to look at print on-demand and the internet as truly revolutionary. Every generation, I think, either benefits or suffers from change.

You mentioned Webtoons. That was beyond our conception when I started in this business. Not to focus on that particular business model, but there are so many now that I think as a young creator, whether you believe it or not, you have opportunities and options that are enormous, that no other generation benefited from. So, if you’re a young cartoonist and looking at options, understand there are lots. And you can start out very modestly. And you can plan your career in a way that is unusually open. You can go to comic book conventions where you can meet publishers in person, and editors in person, and other creators. You can trade information much more easily. You can afford a table space much more easily. You can have your own website and on and on, and ad infinitum, in ways that, believe me, I’m jealous. I didn’t have when I was 20-something, and the options were very limited as a young cartoonist.

I’m glad you brought up on-demand. I personally have used that. I think I shared with you on one of our calls that I make tabletop role-playing games. I use DriveThruRPG, which is a print-on-demand service, and people are able to order their book, and pay for the shipping. It’s allowed me to then go to comic conventions and game conventions, where I’ve tabled, and I have face-to-face interactions who know the games I’ve made. I have fans in Brazil and other parts of the world I wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet otherwise, or have the opportunity to connect with. Print on-demand is wonderful for that global discoverability.

Well, and I would be remiss if I did not also add a Kickstarter as another game-changing element here. Obviously, I’m benefiting personally at the moment from Kickstarter, but well, again, to state the obvious, it’s another revolutionary element in terms of options.

Denis, the last question that I have for you today is, in 2004 when you left the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, you noted that, “The challenges facing comics are different from when I founded the fund.” That was 20 years ago, 21 years ago or so. What would you say are the current challenges of the comic space now?

It’s probably a question better put to Jeff Trexler, the current executive director. But I know some of the new problems are associated with the things we just discussed, the internet, for example. In the past, a retailer might be busted for selling something—a local DA, or a beat cop might find offensive and arrest you for. Today, you have situations where, let’s say, a tourist coming from Canada to America who has Japanese anime that a customs inspector thinks is pornographic [gets stopped and arrested]. I mean, you’ve got all these new opportunities to offend someone via different platforms. Before, we only had to worry about print. Now, it’s beyond print, and it’s not just restricted to the typical cases we had.

My first 18 years were generally almost always a shop getting busted. Now, you can have individuals being busted. Well, of course, we had a famous case, Mike Diana. I don’t know if you recall… It was a classic case where there had been a serial killer the cops were looking for in, I think, the Gainesville Florida area. Someone sent in a tip and they said, “There’s this weird cartoonist you should look at.” And so they went to Mike Diana’s house and he was not the killer, and they quickly ascertained that. But in his home, they noticed he was drawing these self-made little xerox zines where he had Jesus sexually involved with children, and the cops’ eye bulbs exploded, and they arrested him for that. And a jury, I wouldn’t say a jury of his peers, because in Florida you’ve got a much older demographic, but a jury found him guilty of possessing pornography.

There are just so many opportunities now that we didn’t envision when I started the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in the late 80s. Again, life always seems so much simpler [in the past]; as it goes by, it gets more complicated. So yes, there are new challenges. It all comes down to we have a First Amendment, and it gives us the right of expression, but it doesn’t mean someone else isn’t going to try to prevent you from exercising your free expression. And so we have to always be vigilant. The CBLDF is focused on protecting those rights within our industry. But it’s a larger culture, and as mores, and attitudes, and politics change, then the kinds of things that are going to be objectionable are going to be change.

I am always morbidly curious what’s going on in the trenches. But since I stepped away from the board, I’m not privy to every case that comes along. Obviously, the way I used to. But obviously still a big supporter of it.

Is there anything else you wanted to talk about or just share for this interview?

I guess I would just add that I’m well past the point where a lot of my contemporaries have retired or even passed, but I still feel full of energy, and I feel myself coming full circle, in a way. I began as a cartoonist, and that career never ended, but it was curtailed for the most part by becoming a publisher, and an agent, and wearing many other hats. And now I feel liberated in a way. And so I feel like I can come back to the beginning again. And I have been doing more art, comics, paintings, illustrations, writing. And so it sounds weird, as I’m 78 as I talk, but I feel younger now than I have felt in many years, because I’m literally able to be creative more and more of the time. And there’s nothing that feels better than being creative.

And so this documentary film that Zorn and Ted and some others are making about me is, again, part of that, let’s say, feeling reinvigorated, having cameras pointed at me and asking about the past, has actually, in an ironic way, made me focus more on the present. And I think they end their trailer with an animated version of me saying, “I’m not done yet.” And that’s how I feel. I’m not done yet, folks.