Text - Rhodes University

Undergrounds were amoral, sexual, scatalogical, irreverent, political; everything that
comics were not allowed to be. They flourished briefly during the hippie era, but were
so closely associated with that era that few survived it. Underground artists were also
unable to make a living out of their work. Some artists who continued doing comics were
subsequently employed by established comic publishers. They did succeed in bringing a
fresh approach to existing comics, but in the 1970s superheroes dominated the market as
the only genre that could still generate a level of interest among young consumers
without disobeying the very powerful Comics Code.
The situation in Europe was slightly different from that in America. British comics existed
in weekly, black and white format, resisting the excesses of American colour and
adventure. Magazines were strictly separated into girls' and boys' stories, and then further
into rigidly defined age-groups. Most were still based on pre-1950s models. The
panic over horror and crime comics, which were mostly American, had resulted in deep
conservatism in Britain. Comic publishers had avoided the controversy that had raged in
the United States by censoring their own publications before public outcry could force
them to do so. (An unforeseen result of this was that as comics slowly came to be
considered a more respectable medium, in the 1980s, British artists and writers were not
restricted by the Comics Code.) Only "proper" children's material was allowed. Boys'
comics contained stories about sport, war, space travel, family life, and school; girls'
comics, stories about romance, work, family life, and school. As moralistic as American
comics, there was one important difference: British comics purported to focus on reality
rather than fantasy. Billy's Boots might be magic boots that enabled him to score goals
from anywhere on the soccer field, but he still played on the school pitch, dreamed of the
England team, and took flak from the school bully about his old-fashioned boots.
Superheroes did inevitably appear in these stories, but were always ridiculed. Rather than
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