Response to The Underground

Where do I even begin with this? I wanted to laugh when I remembered how we were told and warned that we would be offended by the works we would read this week and, you guessed it, became appalled. I read both The Book of Mr. Natural by Robert Crumb and Air Pirate Funnies. I knew what I was getting into and had been unfortunately exposed to a bunch of Not-Safe-For-Work content when I was younger by simply looking up my favorite cartoon characters online. I mean, even now there’s basically no way to avoid seeing things like that so I thought that I wouldn’t be that shocked…. But boy, was I shocked. The explicit sex and nudity I was fine with but the scene in Mr. Natural where he has a giant baby give him oral shocked me so much because I didn’t think that that was something that would have been depicted. But, these were Underground and they wanted to have no restrictions, so I guess that if it was something that offended people, it would be put in.

The Air Pirate Funnies I found interesting because it started out with characters that looked similar to Disney characters and that they were meant for children (if the cover wasn’t shown) and eventually went to showing actual profane depictions of Disney characters. I can only remember one scene that disturbed me in particular, and it was when the centipede woman took off her dress and revealed herself. It didn’t disturb me because of the act, but because of how she appeared to be like a monster or creation straight out of Human Centipede. The depictions of Disney characters having sex and doing drugs made me wonder if Disney tried a lawsuit or something against the creators because I saw it as potentially image ruining. I also knew that there was no way that Disney would let these not child-friendly depictions of their characters pass. Of course, I would learn that Disney did pursue taking them to court and such. 

I do think that these serve an importance in comics’ history but it’s really just not my humor so while I saw things interesting, I couldn’t really enjoy it. I liked learning about them and how important they were to pop culture as well. I even looked at the Tijuana Bibles because I remember reading a scene in Watchmen where Sally Jupiter’s daughter Laurie discovers one of her mother and is disgusted by it, while her mother says she found it flattering. Watchmen changed how superheros were viewed and how their comics were written. The Air Pirate Funnies’ depictions of Disney characters reminded me of how Sally Jupiter, a public superhero in Watchmen’s universe before her retirement, became a sex symbol for people and was seen as such- something definitely not for kids.