Underground Comics

For the underground comics I read Greaser. It’s really strange comic written in the 70’s set in the 50’s. The comic starts with the main character doing the old hole in the bottom of the popcorn box gag on a movie date with his girlfriend. Through out the entire comic I have trouble finding the protagonist; I don’t think there is one. For a while it seemed as if the comic was applauding the greaser lifestyle since it was centered around it. We see the greasers terrorize people. In the end the greaser push some one too far. They both get their brains blown by a shot gun only to have their killer commit suicide. Who’s the protagonist? All the characters with a significant amount of lines are dead. What’s the point? Without a real story this comic seemed more like a freakshow. The comic would only be read just so people could obtain an offensive view of gender and Italians. The paneling was awful and art. It was clearly handled amateurs, but I guess most underground comics were. One strange thing that stuck out for me was on the back there and illustration of a greater harassing a woman, on the bottom it said sexism was out. I didn’t understand it all. Was the comic sexist and hated feminism? Did the comic not believe in sexism? Maybe the comic was actually against sexism and using the disgusting characters as an example of what not to be? I don’t know but I also don’t want to read Greaser to find out.

Sally Cruikshank’s work actually made me laugh. It was a little hard at first because the animation is low quality but it was entertain. Seeing Sally’s work I now know that the show Rocko’s Modern Life is must be based off of it. In fact most of Joe Murray’s work must be inspirted by Sally Cruikshank. It was very interesting to see the work of a significant figure of animated programming.