Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix Hardcover – June 14, 2022

A must for everyone who reads comics from underground comix of the 60's to the modern graphic novels of today. A nuanced, informative and interesting read. The way the chapters are chronologically organized make it easy to understand the timeline, and to pinpoint certain people and events. We are introduced to some very young comix artists in the 1950's, and follow their emergences from humble beginnings. Their lives and careers intertwine with each other throughout the years...including and encouraging the newer comix artists as they come along. Their inspirations, personalities, friendships, and feuds. In some cases their deaths. This too is how we get to know them. The depictions of the artists and their comics are honest and without personal judgement or opinion. Yet Brian Doherty conveys an authentic enthusiasm and interest that really shines through. Supporting this lush text are recent interviews which are referenced along with extensive academic research. Also highlighted is the fact that many of these comics originally created legal problems due to their content. Booksellers getting arrested, comix creators being taken to court. These encounters and incidents receive due acknowledgment here. This was not so long ago. "Dirty Pictures" should be given to all students in Art School. Because this is what Real Artists do in the wild...and this is what a Real Art Movement looks like.

I was a bit worried when I started this book that it would really only deal with a handful of creators, but I was happily wrong — this book does a very good job of painting a vivid picture of the early decades of underground comix. One really pleasant surprise was in how the book shows the evolution from the underground days to the 1990s, when we had companies like Fantagraphics putting out titles which previously would have been released on the underground circuit. The book was really engaging, and gives a great taste of the strong and varied personalities which shaped that unique market.

What? No PICTURES? Believe it or not—DIRTY PICTURES is better off without pictures. It's a TREMENDOUS read, perhaps the best ever written about Underground Comix. Perhaps Doherty's followup will be DIRTY WORDS. What? No WORDS? Just pictures. Bravo Brian Doherty.

Great book if you are familar with the characters

It's pretty hard to justify creating a book on the history of underground comix when neither the writer nor the publisher can apparently secure rights to any images from those publications. One would think this is a deal breaker - but they published it anyway, without even bothering to create a bibliography to assist the hapless reader in trying to locate example artwork and publications themselves. Nor do they include photos of the artists, many of which would be in the public domain, so the project smacks of laziness. The writer didn't acknowledge or explain this complete lack of imagery in his introduction either, making the book disingenuous as well as a failure in presentation. This one goes back tomorrow.

Doherty's history of the underground scene in American comics is exhaustively researched as it tracks the movers and shakers of the scene over a half century, even if it is a bit light on historical analysis. Certainly worth reading for anyone interested in the history of the form.

Seriously, you're writing about a visual medium and not including examples? Not even referring to a website where people can see them (if publishing them in the book was a concern). It made the information a lot less easy to understand, since we're just going on the (vague) descriptions from the author.

As a writer of comics myself, I appreciated this deep dive into the comics (or comix) and creators that shaped my own approach to the genre. Well researched and engagingly written.