2 out of 5

Acknowledged: not for me.

An interesting 70s venture by Dennis Kitchen to publish the indie cognoscenti (Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, Skip Williamson and more) under the Marvel banner, Stan Lee gave Kitchen free (kinda sorta) reign to do just that, resulting in the magazine-sized ‘Comix Book.’ Kitchen leads in with an explanation along those lines – though note ‘kinda sorta’ applies because Lee is listed solely as an ‘Instigator,’ and Comix was published under Curtis to avoid direct association with Marvel – and further clarifies that this will be an ‘adult’ book as in ‘comics for adults,’ and not just dirty stuff. Dirty stuff, to our 70s undergrounders, mostly meant weed and sex references, so whatever, but Kitchen does admittedly do a good job of balancing that stuff with the other oft-topic of, like, politics, and social acceptance, man. And though I have a fair amount of 70s book in my collection, I gotta say: I’ve just never trucked much with the indies from those days, because their ‘enlightened’ humor is so boring and predictable, that it’s almost a parody. I realize that it’s hard to judge the effectiveness of this stuff decades on, but in retrospect, taking a hard-line “we all need to get along” approach is just sort of the opposite side of the coin to the narrow-minded folk you’re lambasting; that is, these dudes are just as ignorant in their own way, and so I roll my eyes through the book.

Setting that aside as much as I can, I still don’t think this is a fantastic first issue. While the names are known quantities, there’s not really a standout strip. Spiegelman’s plays with some meta structure stuff for humor’s sake, but it’s almost too quirky to enjoy; later in the issue you get some rougher, more direct humor, which works, but the bulk of the book is given over to very bland (then) current events satire, which isn’t very funny or satirical.

I bought this to read the Mike Baron bit: a text piece on modifying a squirt gun. It’s interesting, and very Baron-esque in its dry take on a silly concept, but also indicative of how most of Comix seems to think it’s a lot more clever than it actually is.