Revised Review: Underground comics

            Looking back on the entries I’ve compiled this semester, I’ve noticed my entry regarding Underground Comics was pretty lacking, in need of a re-write. I felt this was a necessary since me and my circle of friends are also engaging in a similar counterculture.

            Underground comics sold in head shops and underground newspapers were made to freely communicate frustrations towards society and the police, actualizations reached by way of psychedelics, and day-to-day experiences with inequality. They were a response to the implemented Comics Code and disquiet throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s: the Civil Rights Movement, the Sexual Revolution, the Vietnam War, and anti-drug and paraphernalia laws. While these comics address issues from nearly 50 years ago, their intent is still relevant to today’s controversies – Global Warming, the War on Women, Palestine and Israel, the war in Afghanistan, as well as the gradually rising acceptance of Gender/Sexuality Minorities, marijuana use, plant-based diets, and calling white people out on their whiteness. Today, these expressions are mostly made over the Internet, so these messages are reaching a much wider audience.

From whitewhine.com

            Underground comics of the 60s-70s often contained Optical Art (more commonly known as “Op Art”), an optical illusion that would appear to move or “breathe” under the human eye, like how a surface would appear while on psychedelics. When Op Art appears in a comic, it can simulate a psychedelic experience or instill an unusual sensation in the viewer. The comic Mother Oats frequently employs the use of Op Art. Combining that with its irregular pacing, strange perspective and highly detailed drawings, it does read like an acid trip.