The R. Crumb Underground Comix “Starter Set”.

Description

These four vintage underground comics — Zap Comix No. 1 & 2, Uneeda Comix, and XYZ Comics — are the perfect entry point for anyone looking to dip their toe into an early R. Crumb collection. This is the material that helped define the counterculture press of the late ’60s and early ’70s: irreverent, chaotic, funny, obscene, political, psychedelic, and defiantly homemade. These early Apex Novelties and Kitchen Sink printings have become essential building blocks for any Crumb shelf.

Crumb is the gravitational center of this world, but these books also introduce the wider cast — Rick Griffin, S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, and the rest of the Zap collective — each pushing the form further away from “comic books” and toward underground folklore.

For the collector on a budget or the reader who simply wants to hold some history in their hands, this is a tight, affordable bundle of the era’s underground DNA.