Arcade the Comics Revue #1

History

Spiegelman and Griffith had first conceived of a magazine-format adult comics anthology around 1971 under the working title Banana Oil, conceived as a homage to humorist Milt Gross, but the publisher they approached at the time could not make it happen. Several years later, with Print Mint's support, they launched the renamed Arcade in Spring 1975 out of San Francisco — epicenter of the underground scene — in a large 8" × 10½" format with color covers and black-and-white interiors. Almost immediately after the first issue shipped, Spiegelman relocated to New York, placing the bulk of day-to-day editorial labor on Griffith and his partner Diane Noomin; compounded by chronic distribution problems and retailer indifference, the magazine folded after seven quarterly issues in Fall 1976. Griffith later recalled that he had also worked with Spiegelman during the preceding 'bad year' of 1973–74 — when a Supreme Court obscenity ruling had effectively paralyzed underground publishing — doing Wacky Packages for Topps, making Arcade's eventual launch feel like a hard-won second chance for the movement.

Trivia · 10 facts

• Publisher and format: Published by The Print Mint of Berkeley, California in Spring 1975 as a large magazine-sized (8" × 10½") anthology with a color cover and black-and-white interiors, running approximately 52 pages.
• Editors: Co-created and co-edited by Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, who had both been central figures in the San Francisco underground comix scene; Griffith's partner Diane Noomin also played a key editorial support role throughout the run.
• Cover and back cover: The full-color front cover was by Robert Crumb — who provided covers for five of the seven issues across the run — while Victor Moscoso contributed the full-color back cover.
• Table of contents page: Featured individual self-portraits by each contributor, a distinctive editorial device used across all seven issues; Robert Crumb's self-portrait from this page was later reprinted in The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 10 (Fantagraphics, 1994).
• Story roster includes: Art Spiegelman's 'Cracking Jokes' (an investigation of humor later reprinted in his Breakdowns collections); Jay Lynch's 'Nard 'n' Pat' strip; Bill Griffith's 'Detective Zippy, Plainclothes Pinhead' (in which Zippy runs a detective agency); Diane Noomin's 'Bingo Bondage' featuring DiDi Glitz; Kim Deitch's 'Mishkin's Folly'; Paul Krassner's 'The Love Song of Timothy Leary' illustrated by Spain Rodriguez; and a Harrison Cady reprint section spotlighting Golden Age newspaper cartooning.
• Nard and Pat (Jay Lynch): These characters are NOT first appearances here — Nard 'n' Pat originated in The Chicago Mirror in 1967 and ran through all eight issues of Bijou Funnies (1968–1973) before appearing in Arcade.
• Zippy the Pinhead (Bill Griffith): NOT a first appearance — Zippy debuted in Real Pulp Comics #1 (Print Mint, 1971); the Arcade #1 story 'Detective Zippy, Plainclothes Pinhead' is an early solo Zippy adventure but not his origin.
• DiDi Glitz (Diane Noomin): NOT a first appearance — DiDi debuted in the self-published Canarsie Creeps (1973) and her first widely distributed story 'Restless Reverie' appeared in Short Order Comix #2 (1974); 'Bingo Bondage' in Arcade #1 is an early DiDi story. Noomin's work appeared in all seven issues of Arcade.
• Reprints and legacy: Spiegelman's 'Cracking Jokes' strip from this issue was reprinted in his Breakdowns anthology (Bélier Press, 1977) and again in the expanded Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! (Pantheon, 2008); Noomin's 'Bingo Bondage' was later collected in Glitz-2-Go (Fantagraphics, 2012).
• Arcade's broader editorial mission deliberately paired contemporary underground artists with reprinted work from early 20th-century cartoonists — issue #1 features Harrison Cady cartoons from 1907–1912 — establishing a historical consciousness unusual for the underground scene.

Cast · 4 characters

Full credits