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Author:
Title: GOTHIC BLIMP WORKS: Numbers 1-7 [with] Spain's The Collected TRASHMAN Tabloid No. 1
Place Published:
Publisher:EVO
Date Published: 1969
Description:

Generally VG/Fine. Some nicks and modest edgewear but no tears or chips. Not folded as is often the case. Cream covers, off-white pages. A very handsome run. Art by Crumb, Wilson, Spain, Robbins, Deitch, Beck, Lynch, Spiegelman, Metzger, Bodé, Kaluta, Griffith, the Mad Peck, Shelton, Williams, Wrightson, Wolverton, Green, etc. Amazing stuff. Provenance: Property from an Old Berkeley Hippie.

Lot of the first seven (of eight) issues of the legendary underground comix tabloid, Gothic Blimp Works, together with The Collected Trashman #1 by Spain.

Underground newspapers of the '60s, including the East Village Other and the Berkeley Barb, provided a forum for dozens of underground cartoonists in the watershed tears of 1966-68. In 1969, a group of UG cartoonists borrowed the tabloid newsprint format and produced their own paper featuring nothing but comics, comprising a sort of Sunday funnies for radicals. The paper was first edited by Vaughn Bodé, who quickly burnt out on the task, with Kim Deitch assuming the editorial role. Gothic Blimp Works only lasted a year due to internal pressures and management problems, but the paper represents a creative peak of the underground comix movement. Trina Robbins explains, "'The publisher just wasn't putting his energies into it... the artists were putting their energies into it and Kim was too, but it was a losing battle because [the publisher] just didn't care.' However, to the reader then or the collector now, the energy and joy of the Gothic Blimp Works cartoonists was obvious. The politics of management were not as self-evident as the quality of their work." -Patrick Rosenkranz, Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution, 1963-1975 [Fantagraphics: 2002].

The tabloid format makes these GBW issues much harder to find than UG comic books, especially in decent grade. As Spain Rodriguez remarked, "The strong point about comics is that they stay intact. A newspaper strip is much more prone to get lost or get rotted out." -Ibid.

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