{"id":1985,"date":"2015-06-05T18:59:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T17:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=1985"},"modified":"2011-05-25T15:30:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T15:30:50","slug":"60s-comics-a-brief-history-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/60s-comics-a-brief-history-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"60s Comics: A Brief History (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series MaxComics<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

60s Comics: A Brief History <\/strong>by Max Galli – <\/strong>PART 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the\u00a0mid-Sixties gave space to new experiments in graphic arts, so comics evolved into a new age. Italian architect Guido Crepax –\u00a0already famous for illustrating jazz records covers in the late 50s, published his carachter Valentina on the new comic magazine Linus<\/em> in 1965. Originally named \u2018Neutron\u2019, starring a man with extraordinary psycho-cinetic powers hidden in the features of American art critic Philip Rembrandt, Valentina was intended to be only Neutron’s girlfriend, but things\u00a0turned out to be\u00a0a bit different. The girl, a professional fashion photographer with Louise Brooks-like haircut, was potentially a\u00a0sexy character, so Crepax\u00a0set about making\u00a0Valentina sexier and sexier, also introducing new elements in the very way to draw comix –\u00a0a new film-like cut of frames, close to Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s sense of visuals, \u2018fetish\u2019 details, the confusion between reality and dream. Every single page of Valentina was a piece of art, as the \u2018comic\u2019 orthodoxy was transcended. At the end of 1967, Valentina\u00a0completely replaced\u00a0Neutron as the main character of the story.\u00a0\u00a0A curiosity: Valentina is also remembered for being one of the very first graphic characters to get older as time passes.<\/p>\n

If italians did their best to join in the cultural revolution, the French didn’t sleep at all. Belgian-born illustrator Guy Peellaert created Jodelle in 1966, a swingin’ chick with more than a resemblance to pop singer Sylvie Vartan. Set in a rather funny and surrealistic ancient Rome, Jodelle lives together with his boyfriend, a bizarre young guy studying\u00a0to be\u00a0a druid (?!?), who gets angry quite often and occasionally sports a pair of long and sharp vampire-like teeth. Published by Eric Losfeld, the king of\u00a0 French sexy comics, Jodelle<\/em> is\u00a0widely recognised as the\u00a0first pop-art comic.<\/p>\n

In 1967 Peellaert invented another pop-art comic strip, Pravda \u2018la survireuse\u2019<\/em> (one who lives day-by-day). If Jodelle<\/em> was all about fun and a bit of optimism, Pravda is a cynical, disillusioned girl with an anarchic attitude. She hates almost everything and everyone, and she’s never satisfied\u00a0with anything. This time, the model for Peellaert’s artwork is Francoise Hardy, and the story of Pravda is not even a story, but a mix of various episodes.<\/p>\n

In the UK, Jenny Butterworth & Pat Tourret created Tiffany Jones<\/em> around 1965. Tiffany Jones\u00a0comes to London from \u2018up north\u2019, and sets up a new life at her cousin’s flat –\u00a0evolving from a plain provincial chick to a fashion model, having a go to all those cool jobs\u00a0that epitomised\u00a0Sixties youth. Here, our girl looks like a bit of a do-gooder, although \u00a0representing (in part) the typical cultural zeitgeist of\u00a0 the era.<\/p>\n

Lovely Tiffany is basically a good girl who only wants to do the best she can in life, but without being particularly ambitious or original. All the other characters are just\u00a0there to\u00a0frame to Tiffany’s adventures: neither completely square, nor completely hip, just\u00a0 somewhat \u00a0in the middle.<\/p>\n

That said, let’s talk about the artwork –\u00a0The drawings are captivating and much passion for the \u2018Swingin’ London\u2019\u00a0is\u00a0included in\u00a0every single frame. I should say that the beauty of this comic strip resides in its drawings and (pop) graphics.<\/p>\n

In the US, the nascent counterculture was generating new horizons in comic design. Robert Crumb created Fritz the Cat<\/em> in 1964, named after his own cat Fred. Fritz had nothing to do with the usual Disney or Warner Bros animal characters. He had all the human attitudes you can imagine, as he liked to smoke (both cigarettes and pot), drink, and have sex with his fox-like girlfriend and many other female characters. Fritz<\/em>\u00a0continued\u00a0throughout the Sixties and lasted till 1972, when director and cartoon animator Ralph Bakshi\u00a0made a film out of it. Robert Crumb \u2013 it must be said, with very rare coherence \u2013 didn\u2019t like his underground cat going mass-media, so answered back with a bitter end, killing Fritz in an almost forgotten episode, stabbed to death with an ice stiletto by his last, ostrich-like, girlfriend.<\/p>\n

Crumb also created another funny character, Mr Natural<\/em>, a sort of\u00a0 tricky guru who liked to annoy a certain ordinary guy called Foont<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(continued in Part 3)<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series MaxComics<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

As mid-Sixties gave space to new experiments in graphic arts, so comics evolved into a new age. Italian architect Guido Crepax, already famous for illustrating jazz records covers in the late 50s, published his carachter Valentina on the new comic magazine “Linus”, in 1965. Originally named \u2018Neutron\u2019, starring a man with extraordinary psycho-cinetic powers hidden in the features of American art critic Philip Rembrandt, Valentina was intended to be only Neutron’s girlfriend, but things went a bit different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,70,106,95],"tags":[269,121,179],"series":[268],"class_list":["post-1985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comics","category-design","category-picks","category-vintage","tag-60s-comics","tag-eyeplug","tag-max-galli","series-maxcomics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1985"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}