If you’re as old and drawn to the strange as I am, you were probably a fan of comics artists such as Jim Woodring and R. Crumb long before the indie revival of the mid-90’s. Back when this work was more an offshoot of Mad magazine than some crossover of the New York Times Magazine and intellectual outsider art. It’s the lineage between Will Elder, Ralph Bakshi on the one end, and Kaz on the other.
Indie comics were indie because they were too scatological, too trippy, or too honest for most people to get. Some were sexy, but in an entirely non-arousing way: stretched flesh and stubble. Some were cosmic and revealing, but also penetratingly funny and self-critical. And, for me anyway, no one better balanced the priorities of this genre better than my personal hero and occasional role model Larry Marder, whose classic comic Beanworld is about to be resurrected by DarkHorse.
Although the books won’t start coming out until the end of the year, web versions of some new Beanworld stories are going up on a special MySpace page.
Douglas Rushkoff is a guest blogger.