The Radical Story Behind The First All-Women Feminist Comic Book Series
How “Wimmen’s Comix” turned the boy’s club of underground comix inside out.
WIMMENS COMIX
In 1954 the Comics Magazine Association of America formed the Comics Code Authority to regulate and often sanitize self-published mainstream comics. Depictions of violence, sex and drugs, as well as socially progressive content, were strictly prohibited.
Around 1968, an underground comix movement began bubbling beneath the surface of the squeaky clean comic realm, dominated by superheroes and their hapless side chicks. The movement, led by artists like Robert Crumb, Jack Jackson and Gary Panter, dodged the watchful eye of the Comics Code by selling their work in head shops as opposed to regulated comic stores. In doing so, they were free.
What did this new, unprecedented freedom mean for the unruly bunch of talented, defiant, and yes, resoundingly male artists? Well, among other things, it resulted in a bunch of fictional naked ladies undergoing degradation, humiliation, rape, torture and murder. And the most horribly frustrating part? It was all a big joke, and any woman who’d dare protest just wasn’t smart or cool enough to get it. Continue reading “All-Women Feminist Comic Book Classics: Extracts and History”
The Free 