The first major historical work about the most influential artistic movement in America since the Beat Generation revolutionized literature. A provocative chronicle of the guerrilla art movement that changed comics forever, this comprehensive book follows the movements of 50 artists from 1967 to 1972, the heyday of the underground comix movement. Through interviews with the participants and other materials, Rebel Visions is the most intimate look ever at the people and events that forged the phenomenon known as underground comix, from New York to San Francisco, from the corn belt to deep in the heart of Texas, beginning that day in 1968 when R. Crumb debuted Zap #1 from a baby carriage on Haight Ashbury Street. Rosenkranz has spent 20 years researching this book and acquiring the cooperation of every significant underground cartoonist who worked throughout this period, including Crumb, Gilbert Shelton (Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers), Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Jack Jackson, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, and many more. The book is illustrated with many never-before-seen drawings by all of the underground cartoonists, and exclusive photographs.
The book focuses on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, where Crumb and the rest of his Zap cronies commingled with the rest of the city's counter-cultural scene, notably musicians like the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin. The counterculture was omnipresent in San Francisco for those few years, with underground tabloids like Yellow Dog and Gothic Blimp Works steering the zeitgeist out-of-control, along with the music, political, and psychedelic drug scenes, all of which found a group of unlikely revolutionaries who drew cartoons right at the epicenter.
"It did feel like this must have been what the cubists were going through, like all the magic of being in Paris for the post-Impressionistic movement did feel somehow like being in San Francisco in the early 1970s." — Art Spiegelman, from Rebel Visions
"Like any utopian experiment, ideals were challenged and rewritten in the face of the daily grind. It was a harsh life lesson for me, but there were lots of laughs and some beautiful times, too..."— Justin Green, from Rebel Visions
"Underground comics were more like art and less like comics." — Gilbert Shelton, from Rebel Visions
