Maverix & Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix: As a kid, I frequented headshops for the best rock t-shirts. Honest. Most of these places were dungy little sh*t holes where the rent was cheap, till the landlord upped the rent. Next thing you know, the shop re-located to another cheaper location harder to get to. That meant more bus fare and walking. I did walk a lot back then. This was not a place you want to bring your parents to. Within the walls of these “joints” were underground comics, not the kind of comics you find at your local mom-and-pop corner stores. Let’s not forget the trippy incense that filled the air. I enjoyed those books. Today, there are few head shops around or if any at all. It was hard finding certain issues back then. My eyes devoured Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton’s “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.” Maverix & Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix is like having your personal headshop at your fingertips.
Drew Friedman is no slouch himself in the underground movement. Drew binds together a cast of misfit artists who never got to work for the big guys in this lavish book. In 1974, Marvel publisher Stan Lee and underground pioneer Denis Kitchen collaborated on a series: Comix Book. You will never see a cinematic universe from this cast of shenanigans. It was a different time. You got away with many things. Robert Crumb’s stuff is out there. We meant no harm back then. I don’t know if we knew better but it is a piece of comic history we must treasure. This is a book where forgotten artists get to shine with the big guys.
Maverix & Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix: With the publication of R. Crumb’s debut issue of ZAP in 1968, the Underground Comix revolution exploded, creating a significant paradigm shift and blowing the lid off the traditional comic book. Maverix & Lunatix features 101 full-page portraits (and more) by a cartooning icon in his own right, Drew Friedman, spotlighting the essential artists, writers, and editors who defined one of the great art and countercultural movements of the 20th century.
Featuring R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, Melinda Gebbie, Art Spiegelman, Vaughn Bode, Trina Robbins, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, Sharon Rudahl, Larry Gonick, Rick Veitch, Joyce Farmer, Justin Green, “Grass” Green, George DiCaprio, Diane Noomin, Harvey Pekar, Robert Williams, Howard Cruse, Dan O’Neill, Spain Rodriguez, Shary Flenniken, Richard Corben, and so many others… all of whom helped to reinvent an entire artistic medium and became icons of underground comix.
Featuring a foreword by Marc Maron (WTF with Marc Maron) and an introduction by historian Patrick Rosenkranz (Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963–1975), each portrait in Maverix & Lunatix is also accompanied by a short biography of its subject by Drew Friedman, making the book both a gorgeous art book and a valuable historical resource.
Drew Friedman‘s work has appeared in The New York Times, Mad, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. He resides in Pennsylvania with his wife and collaborator, Kathy Bidus, and their two beagles.
Marc Maron is an American stand-up comedian, podcaster, writer, actor, and musician. In 2009, Maron started WTF with Marc Maron, featuring his revelatory conversations with iconic personalities. It became a worldwide phenomenon, with more than six-million downloads each month and 250 million lifetime downloads within its first 6 years.
Patrick Rosenkranz is widely acknowledged as one of the premiere scholars of the underground comix movement. His books include Rebel Visions (the most widely-heralded history of the era) and The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective. He lives in Portland, OR.