The Beatles and Underground Comics

The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" is amazing. I've seen it a few times in the past, but no matter how many times I watch it, I love it. It hurst my eyes actually whenever I watch it. It's rather unpleasant in a very good way, I think. If that makes sense. All the colors, styles and patterns used are all conflicting. But that was the purpose of the movie. That was the look they wanted. I would have loved to listen in on the production of this movie. Hearing them discuss their plans for the movie would have been so funny. I can just imagine them throwing out the idea of the Blue Meanie and shoes with wings bouncing up and down. Something about it just always interests me to watch though. It's just so... Different. Different than anything else I've ever watched before. Still to this day I've never seen anything that was even similar to The Yellow Submarine. And maybe that's just because I haven't really seen many movies from the late sixties. Still, The Yellow Submarine will always be something that stands out in my mind. My eyes are still trying to adjust after seeing all of that.

As for Underground Comics... I don't even know where to start with this topic. There is just so much to discuss. It's something I haven't really read any of before. I read some of Mr. Natural by Robert Crumb, but that's the only involvement I've had in underground comics. For today, I picked a random comic without looking in the bin and I ended up pulling out "Gay Comix", published in 1980. It's got several different stories done by several different artists. The stories are about different men and women in gay situations. The first story, for example, is about a woman who was married. She and her husband grew tired of each other and he left her. She started trying to date, deciding she was bisexual. She goes through a lot of people who leave her, until she finds one woman and tries to be less uptight and tells the woman that she loves her. The comic ends with them together. I think out of all the comics in it, my favorite is the back cover. On the back, there are two men roller skating and holding each other. Then there are two women and their daughter with her dog. The daughter coms up to her and says "Mommy.. Rusty an' I just saw a man an' a woman doin' something strange in the bushes!" I find that entertaining. How the girl doesn't understand why the man and woman are together. At the bottom of the page, Roberta Gregory - the artist - wrote "Here's to a gay new decade!". So from what I can tell, she wanted people to be more open to gay sexuality. Based off of the comic, she wants the new decade to be more open and hopes that homosexuality will be a huge thing. I have to say that I rather enjoyed reading the comic. It was fun. Underground comics are definitely something that I have more interest in now that I know about them.