There scarcely was an underground comics world before Robert Crumb’s classic solo first issue of Zap in 1968. By Zap #2, he had begun assembling a Seven Samurai of the best, the fiercest, and the most stylistically diversified cartoonists to come out of the countercultural kiln. All of them were extremists of one sort or another, from biker-gang member Spain Rodriguez to Christian surfer Rick Griffin, but somehow, they produced a decades-long collaboration: a mind-blowing anthology of abstract hallucination, throat-slashing social satire, and shocking sexual excess that made possible the ongoing wave of alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Charles Burns. The Complete Zap Comix collects every issue of Zap – every cover and every story – in a three-volume slipcased softcover set. They’re all here – from Zap #0, a solo Crumb issue, through Zap #16, the final issue with work by R. Crumb, Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Gilbert Shelton, Paul Mavrides, Rick Griffin, and Robert Williams.
