Underground and independent comics, comix, and graphic novels

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels is the first ever scholarly, primary-source database focused on adult comic books and graphic novels. Here are the works of artists alongside interviews, criticism, and journal articles that document the continual growth and evolution of this artform. Volume I covers major works from North America and Europe, beginning with the first underground comix from the 1950s and continuing through to modern sequential artists. It incorporates 75,000 pages of material from artists such as Basil Wolverton and Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Harvey Pekar, Spain Rodriguez, and Vaughn Bode, and modern masters including Peter Bagge, Kim Deitch, Dave Sim, Dan Clowes, and Los Bros. Hernandez. The collection contextualizes these original works with 25,000 pages of interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from journals, books, and magazines, including The Comics Journal. Also included in this collection is The Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Frederick Wertham--the book that led to one of the largest censorship programs in US history--and the complete transcripts of the senate subcommittee hearings that birthed the Comics Code Authority and, inadvertently, the underground comix movement.