The impact of American underground comix is profound: They galvanized artists both domestically and abroad; they forever changed the economics of comic book publishing; and they influenced generations of cartoonists, including their predecessors. While the works of Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman are well-known via the New Yorker, Maus, and retrospective collections, the art of their contemporaries such as Gilbert Shelton, Trina Robbins, Justin Green, Kim Deitch, S. Clay Wilson, and many other seminal cartoonists who came of age in the 1960s is considerably less known. Underground Classics provides the first serious survey of underground comix as art, turning the spotlight on these influential and largely underappreciated artists. Essays from curators James Danky and Denis Kitchen, alongside essays by Paul Buhle, Patrick Rosenkranz, Jay Lynch, and Trina Robbins, offer a thorough reflection and appraisal of the underground movement. Over 125 original drawings, paintings, sculptures, and artifacts are featured, loaned from private collections and the artists themselves, making Underground Classics indispensible for the seriousminded comics fan and for the casual reader alike.

Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix

Comics & Graphic Novels

Kitchen, Denis

Danky, James

Graphic Novels

Harry N. Abrams

Harvey Kurtzman discovered Robert Crumb and gave Gloria Steinem her first job in publishing when he hired her as his assistant. Terry Gilliam also started at his side, met an unknown John Cleese in the process, and the genesis of Monty Python was formed. Art Spiegelman has stated on record that he owes his career to him. And he's one of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner's favorite artists. Harvey Kurtzman had a Midas touch for talent, but was himself an astonishingly talented and influential artist, writer, editor, and satirist. The creator of MAD and Playboy's "Little Annie Fanny" was called, "One of the most important figures in postwar America" by the New York Times. Kurtzman's groundbreaking "realistic" war comics of the early '50s and various satirical publications (MAD, Trump, Humbug, and Help!) had an immense impact on popular culture, inspiring a generation of underground cartoonists. Without Kurtzman, it's unlikely we'd have had Airplane, SNL, or National Lampoon. The Art of Harvey Kurtzman is the first and only authorized celebration of this "Master of American Comics." This definitive book includes hundreds of never-before-seen illustrations, paintings, pencil sketches, newly discovered lost E.C. Comics layouts, color compositions, illustrated correspondence, and vintage photos from the rich Kurtzman archives

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics

Arts & Photography

BUHLE, PAUL

Individual Artists

Abrams ComicArts

Hard cover book. Fully illustrated, works by comic artist Will Eisner.

Art of Will Eisner

Yronwode, Catherine

Kitchen Sink Pr

Madness in Crowds is an overflowing art book monograph collecting the charming, virtuosic and staggeringly detailed work of the cartoonist and graphic artist Harrison Cady. A master of creatures, contraptions and crowd scenes, Cady is best known today for illustrating the works of children's book author Thornton Burgess, but this tome - the first ever collection of Cady's works - explores in detail the rest of his staggeringly prolific six-decade career, in particular his stunning, overcrowded, and obsessively rendered illustrations for the original Life magazine. Features over 300 images, a detailed biography by Denis and Violet Kitchen, and an introduction by Gary Panter. 10x14", 192 pages.

MADNESS IN CROWDS: The Teeming Mind of Harrison Cady

Kitchen, Violet

History & Criticism

Beehive Books

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Books by Kitchen, Denis