Admittedly, the underground comix of the late 1960s and early 1970s provide neither an ideal starting point to introduce a discussion of race and cartooning nor the most consequential examples for discussing this tangle of issues. For instance, I have no reason to believe that comix representations have had an especially powerful influence over people’s ideas about race. The comics and cartoons that have the greatest influence, we may safely assume, are those that are distributed to mass audiences of children by mainstream media in the form of animated television shows and feature films, games, advertising illustrations, comic strips, and comic books. [3] Neither have underground comix been among those racial cartoons most damaging to the people they insulted. That dishonor goes to cartoons that have successfully incited genocide or encouraged acquiescence to genocide, such as those published in Nazi Germany or Rwanda. [4] Further, underground comix have not provided the most extreme examples of race-hate cartoons. [5] (The comix movement did not, as far as I have been able to determine, produce even one example of a cartoon intended to promote race-hatred. [6] ) Also, underground comix of the Nixon era (1968-1974) were not the most eventful cartooning development regarding the depiction of race at that period. The heyday of underground comix was also the period when racial integration finally reached mainstream, syndicated comic strips and comic books. [7] Besides not being the most influential, damaging, extreme, or important race-related cartooning of that period, the outrageous racial stereotypes in underground comix were not even especially controversial. Still, they cry out for closer study.

[3] That people’s basic ideas about race are formed when they are young children underlines how important these simple, attractive images can be. As Jody David Armour explains, “…social stereotypes are… rather well-learned sets of associations among groups and traits established in children’s memories before they reach the age of judgment. And once a stereotype becomes entrenched in our memory, it takes on a life of its own. Case studies have demonstrated that once one internalizes a cultural stereotype, she unconsciously interprets experiences to be consistent with the underlying stereotype, selectively assimilating facts that validate the stereotype while disregarding those that do not.” Jody David Armour, Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: the Hidden Costs of being Black in America , New York University Press, New York, 1997, pp.40-41. (“Comix” were sold to adults only.)

[4] For examples of anti-Semitic cartoons published in Nazi Germany and historic context, see Randall Bytwerk’s online “German Propaganda Archive,” url1.

W.A. Coupe’s cover article for History Today , “Cartoons of the Third Reich,” appears online at: url2. Contemporary anti-Semites revere the publisher of these cartoons as a “martyr,” as seen at: url3.

The verdict against Rwandan media executives for inciting genocide was the first of its kind since the Nuremberg trials. Sharon LaFraniere, “Court Finds Rwanda Media Executives Guilty of Genocide,” NY Times, December 3, 2003. url4

The racist cartoons from Rwanda can be seen starting at url5. Clicking on the head of the cartoon character takes you to the next picture in the series.

[5] For an extensive collection of contemporary anti-Semitic and racist hate cartoons, posted on a racist website, see url6. These works are not related to the people or purposes of underground comix movement in any obvious way, and serve here as another contrasting body of work.

[6] Openings for contrasting interpretations enter especially through cartoonists’ use of humor, irony, parody, caricature, satire, and their attempts to demonstrate editorial freedom through excess and violation of taboos.

In the 1990s, racists republished some of underground cartoonist R. Crumb’s work: "Evidence that Crumb's work has indeed been taken at face value was provided […] in 1994, when two of his strips from Weirdo --'When the Niggers Take Over America' and 'When the Goddamn Jews Take Over America'--were published without his knowledge in the Massachusetts-based, white supremacist magazine Race & Reality, whose editors apparently failed to grasp the ironic intent behind the cartoons. David Armstrong of the San Francisco Examiner , in an article reprinted in the Chicago Tribune (October 9, 1994), reported that Crumb 'expressed surprise' at the appropriation of his work and quoted him as saying, 'Some people don't get satire. To me, it shows how stupid those people are.' Crumb added, 'I was sweating when I was doing [the stories]. I thought, "Some people are going to take it literally." I always have gone close to that line.. . .I release all that stuff inside myself: taboo words, taboo ideas. It pours out of me as sick as possible. I wouldn't put it in a comic for children. But I don't work that mainstream audience.'" Biography of Robert Crumb from Current Biography (1995) At present, Crumb’s collected works (and other republished comix) are freely available to children on the shelves of public libraries.

[7] In this period, Black cartoonists won mainstream acceptance with strips such as Morrie Turner’s Wee Pals , Brumsic Brandon, Jr.’s Luther , and Ted Shearer’s Quincy . Black characters also joined the casts of established white-drawn strips, such as Peanuts , Beetle Bailey and Doonesbury . See Steven L. Jones’ “From Under Cork to Overcoming: Black Images in the Comics,” published in 1992 in Black Ink by the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco.

John Wells’ “The Racial Justice Experience - Diversity in the DC Universe: 1961-1979,” tells how mainstream comic books published by DC introduced racial diversity to their casts of characters during that period at url7. Casey Alt tells the story of the first black Marvel superhero in “Imagining Black Superpower! Marvel Comics’ The Black Panther, 1966-1979,” online at url8.