Underground Comix

When I first read the underground comix Gay Comics I was struck by how real the stories were, how human and raw. Traditionally at the time gay stories were not produced or published unless they had a particularly sad ending, most common being the death of a lover or main character, that a gay life was a sad, lonely, tortured life, that of course is not always true. It was incredibly refreshing to me to see the stories of untainted, unabridged gay love, so often rewritten a hundred times over, but my initial love and admiration for underground comix as the true tell-it-like-it-is medium (even in Girl Fight where out of this world over the top scenarios happen, there was still always a realness to the hurt, the anger, and the desire to fight back)  for me this was instantly overshadowed by my classmates, and friends initial reaction to the comix.

Much of what I heard in response to the stories was not about the anger, the rebellion, or the realness that attracted me, but of seeing sex depicted so graphically in a comic, which to me was surprising. I was very little effected by the nudity or the amount of physical interaction between characters, what concerned my more than the sex was the violence, and for others that seemed not to be the case. This to me is a direct reflection of our society, how sex is a taboo and dirty thing not to be talked about, whereas violence is almost a glorified act, with even the most heroic of modern characters constantly being locked in epic battles, but never in the physical representation of love. To me this idea is deeply concerning, that at sex we become uncomfortable and squeamish, but at violence we applaud, we laugh even, finding humor in the knocking of some poor idiots head, or the kicking of a rear. Why is it that we have become numb to the idea of violence, but entirely dumbfounded at the idea of two humans being physical.

While some underground comix used sexual physicality, like Mr. Normal, to be shocking in itself, others like Gay Comics, used it to show the different manifestations of loves, but somehow both are treated in very similar ways.