In fact, at the peak of underground comix, in 1972-1973, the Mission District was packed with underground cartoonist, that all lived within the walking distance of each other. Underground comix had their biggest USA popularity between 19 (1973-74 in the United Kingdom), and underground comix artists had two centers of gathering: New York and San Francisco.
Oh, yes, and one more thing - this "X" was also saying that the content of these publications was X-rated, which was sooo not-in-line with that Comics Code we've mentioned. If you have wandered why is it written "comix" instead of "comics", the underground comix artists used this term in order to differentiate themselves and their work from mainstream comics. In these conditions, the underground comix started to grow.
What have we had in the United States during the sixties? Well, not much, apart from the hippies, protests against the Vietnam War, free love, widespread use of drugs, rock'n'roll music, fight for civil rights, feminism, anti-abortion protestors, Cold War. In between, survived Mad Magazine took over - one may say that the whole generations were taken by storm with Mad Magazine's satire, humor, and work by several talented young artists. 1972 / Right: Trina Robbins - Girl Fight Comics, 1974 The Beginnings and the Golden Era Left: Larry Todd - Iron Soul Stories / Center: Jay Lynch - Roxy Funnies. Parents were burning and throwing away their children's comics collections, and exactly among those kids who were hit the most with this ban, were the ones that, some 15 years later, would start producing underground comix. Comics was halted, except for Mad, that became a magazine - for censorship reasons. Every comic book that was published by the E.C. Comics being on top of that list), and soon, the Comics Code Authority passed the Comics Code, a set of rules that were compulsory for comics creators.
After that, the whole crusade started against comics (with the E.C.
Yet, in 1954, a guy named Fredric Wertham wrote an article at Reader's Digest, where he stated that reading comic books resulted in "juvenile delinquency". And then, during the forties, comics started to embed some more serious subjects, which led to the emergence of the E.C. During the twenties and the thirties, the main characters in comics were superheroes, talking animals or other acceptable heroes. authorities back then have thought that comics are corrupting young people - and especially comics published by the E.C. And what was not to like, too? Horror fiction, crime fiction, science fiction, satire, military fiction - who wouldn't have loved that? Yet, the U.S. Comics) were highly popular among youth of the United States.
During the fifties, Entertaining Comics (E.C. As so many other works of art, underground comix movement started with a - prohibition.