Radical America Komiks - Softcover

"There is a certain irony that Radical America Komiks is likely to be one of the best-remembered parts of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). That the visual and the satirical turn out to have a longer shelf life than the polemical would perplex, and more, the members of SDS who encountered the wonderful comix drawn and assembled by Gilbert Shelton. Viva comics, no matter how it is spelled!" --James Danky, Underground Classics Illustrated

"Radical America Komiks not only provides an unparalleled sense of how leftist politics and avant-garde narrative art intersected at the end of the 1960s, it anticipates many of the innovations and tropes we associate with the alternative comics movement of the 1980s and 1990s." --Kent Worcester, coeditor of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium

"Radical America Komiks was the funniest issue of that whole series of New Left magazines because it included the best cartoonists in the underground. Gilbert Shelton, master humorist, creator of the Furry Freak Brothers, edited the extra-thick comic book as one of the earliest projects at his fledgling company Rip Off Press. Nothing like funnies to liven up political discussions." --Patrick Rosenkranz, author of Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution

"Radical America Komiks is a treasury of Austin's radical artists from the 1960s and '70s, especially Gilbert Shelton, truly a global figure of comix innovation." --Thorne Dreyer, founding editor of The Rag

. Paul Buhle and Gilbert Shelton interviewed on Rag Radio. --http: //www.theragblog.com/rag-radio/

In 1969, activist and history grad student Paul Buhle published a special graphic issue of his SDS journal, Radical America. He enlisted Austin-based cartoonist of Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers fame, Gilbert Shelton, to edit what would be the first merger of New Left politics with the burgeoning counterculture and underground comix movements. Paul Buhle and Gilbert Shelton are Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio. Now, in 2018, Radical America Komiks has been reissued with a new introduction by Buhle and foreword by Jay Kinney. Paul, a prominent historian of the Left and popular culture critic, now publishes graphic novels and radical comics. Shelton, whose Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers--characterized by Buhle as "totemic" figures in the counterculture--first appeared in Austin's The Rag, also created Wonder Wart-Hog, Fat Freddie's Cat, and Feds 'N' Heads. Shelton and Robert Crumb are generally considered the preeminent artists of the comix movement. Gilbert joins us from Paris, France, where he now lives. --Radio interview, Rag Radio, KOOP 91.7-FM, https: //archive.org/details/RagRadio2018-12-16-GilbertSheltonPaulBuhle

"The one-off publication of Radical America Komiks in 1969 was arguably the most fully developed expression of this cross-fertilization and as such we are grateful to PM Press for publishing a replica of the ground-breaking comic book." --
Louis Proyect, https: //www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/25/komiks-from-the-underground-the-radicalism-of-gilbert-shelton/
"Over 42 goofy pages, readers were presented with anarchic, zany strips that pushed all the boundaries of common decency for that period. Included among these was one of the earliest appearances of Shelton's own Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, the goofball stoners who went on to become a cult classic." --Andrew Stewart, https: //washingtonbabylon.com/pm-press-reissues-radical-america-komiks-proving-there-is-still-hope-for-humanity/

In the 1960s, Gilbert Shelton contributed to various underground comix and designed concert posters before creating the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. He then set up Rip Off Press, from which Freak Brothers strips were soon syndicated, borrowed, or stolen by a host of publications. Paul Buhle was the editor of Radical America in the late 1960s. He has edited comics biographies of figures including Emma Goldman, Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg, and Isadora Duncan. Jay Kinney was an active participant in the underground comics movement from 1968 through the 1980s. He cofounded the romance comic satire Young Lust and founded Anarchy Comics.