The Curator's Eye: Counterculture Comix
- — September 1, 2010
Comic Redux
Fantagraphics Books curator Larry Reid is out to raise eyebrows with his Bumbershoot show Counterculture Comix: A 30-Year Survey of Seattle Alternative Cartoonists. “It’s the first comprehensive survey of Seattle alternative cartoons ever presented,” says Reid, “and it proves that Seattle in the late ’80s and early ’90s was the most important comics scene since San Francisco in the ’60s. It put Seattle in the forefront of what became the national alternative comics movement – it gave birth to the genre.”
Lynda Barry, Poodle with a Mohawk, 1982, ink on paper, 20 x 24 inches. Courtesy of Marie McCaffrey.
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In fact, Reid claims Seattle artist Peter Bagge coined the phrase “alternative comix.” “There can be no doubt Peter Bagge was Seattle’s own Robert Crumb,” says Reid. Crumb’s crosshatched masterpieces razzed the Summer of Love; Bagge’s Hate comics captured the grunge epoch. “He wasn’t just satirizing or documenting it,” says Reid. “Like Crumb, he was part of it.” In a symbolic passing of the torch, Crumb let Bagge take over his influential magazine Weirdo when Bagge moved to Seattle in 1987. Seattle comics made history when hippie sensibilities collided violently with punk. “The new comics grabbed Seattle by the throat and pulled it out of the ’60s and into the ’80s,” Reid says. Some of the scruffy artist punks were destined for fame and fortune: Matt Groening and future Simpsons senior exec Ron Hauge passed through Seattle’s scene, as did soon-to-be-ubiquitous illustrator Mark Zingarelli. But the true scene founders, Reid argues, were the turn-of-the-’80s duo Charles Burns and Lynda Barry. The Lynda Barry image that crystallizes the transition of the Seattle scene is her 1982 “Poodle with a Mohawk” poster. “It made punk rock cute and cuddly and acceptable to a Seattle that was still stuck in a Birkenstock lifestyle,” says Reid. “People considered it threatening. But Lynda made it funny.” Though the comics scene was to reach its peak of fame in the ’90s – although it ain’t over yet – Reid traces the boom back to her. “Lynda laid the foundation for alternative comix in Seattle – and possibly, for the success of graphic novels in general.” • |
FOCAL POINTS Number of artists in the Bumbershoot show: About The four given the most attention: Peter Bagge, Square footage of the show’s Olympic Room venue: 4,060 Some other Seattle comics pioneers: Bob Hale the cartooning TV weatherman, Hank “Dennis the Menace” Ketcham, Walt Crowley, the hippie Delacroix of Helix newspaper August 1980 cost of a Matt Groening cartoon at Larry Reid’s gallery Rosco Louie: $50 Cost of a Lynda Barry cartoon: $50–250 Earnings of The Simpsons: Name of the model for the poodle in this comic: |
