If you want the real rap on underground comics, you can find it in our own
back yard. Jack Jackson, aka Jaxon, created one of the earliest
underground books of the early Sixties, God Nose Comix, right here in
Austin, he knew and collaborated with many of the most prominent artists of the
period, such as Gilbert “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” Shelton, and he helped
numerous other underground artists create their own books through his
participation in the founding of Rip-Off Press, a cartoon-ists’ co-op, in San
Francisco in the late Sixties. One of the artists whose work was printed by
Rip-Off was R. Crumb. Here are a few of Jaxon’s recollections of the man who
made Mr. Natural. – R.F.
n
“I think Crumb’s a genius. From the very first time I saw the his artwork,
I thought he was one of the very best pen-and-ink artists of the 20th century.
I ran into him for the first time in New York. I had just done God Nose
Comix in… this must have been 1964. I had been hawking copies of it on
the Drag and had made enough money on it to do the European tour. I was
familiar with Crumb’s work already, from a book that Harvey Kurtzman put out
called Help! He was doing pieces for Kurtzman and he was going into the
slums and doing these pen-and-ink sketches, which was pretty brave for a white
boy in those days. I was quite disappointed when I met him. He’s such a geek.
Physically, he’s a geek. He was emaciated. I mean, he’s somebody Hitler
would’ve put in one of his camps. I was never able to figure the sex appeal of
the guy, but he had women coming onto him all the time. All these big-ass
chicks were coming on to him because they knew he had a fetish for that, but I
never really understood what they saw in him. Of course, the groupie mentality
was so strong in those days.
“We met again a few years later in San Francisco. I was art director for
the Family Dog, doing posters for the Avalon Ballroom shows. We were Bill
Graham’s competition. And I remember one day I was walking down the street and
there was Crumb. He was hawking this Zap Comix just like I had been
hawking God Nose back on the Drag. Now, I had been doing God Nose and, of course, Gilbert [Shelton] had been doing Feds ‘n’ Heads, so
Crumb was not the one to start underground comix. Nonetheless, his material
gave it the focus to generate a wider audience. Zap definitely brought
it through to the mainstream.
“Now, the undergrounds were not intended to reach a mainstream audience.
Basically, we were doing it to entertain ourselves. The whole idea was to keep
the thing open and keep changing it in whatever way worked for you. And in a
way if it became a success, you had failed, because we thought that true art
was ahead of the public taste, and if it was a success, that meant the public
liked something in it. Then you felt a need to keep in those things that the
public liked, and you were obliged to continue this god-damned thing whether
you wanted to or not.
“Rip-Off Press did Motor City Comix and Big Ass [for Crumb].
He’d bring in full books of material, and we’d print them.”
Austin Chronicle: What would you think when he would bring you all this
weird materal?
“We’d usually love it. But nobody would ever have dared to tell him you
gotta tone this down. We believed that the artist should have full creative
control over his material. We had no use for editors. You gotta remember, this
was the Nixon/Reagan era. The whole idea was to outrage people.”
AC: Was Crumb any more prolific than other artists?
“Much more so. And the strange thing about Crumb is that he just starts
drawing. Most artists will break things down into panels and work out where the
words go and pencil them in very carefully and everything. Crumb just starts in
the upper left corner of the page and draws. I don’t even think he does any
preliminary pencils. It just boggles my mind. I’ve never seen any other artist
work that way. The guy’s really a genius. But there’s no question about it;
he’s a geek. You see this guy shuffling along Sixth Street and you’d think he’s
a wino.” -Jack Jackson
Jaxon’s most recent projects include the books Comanche Moon
and Quanah Parker and the forthcoming Threadgill’s Comics. n
This article appears in June 30 • 1995 and June 30 • 1995 (Cover).