Bijou Funnies #8
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeBijou Funnies #8 (November 1973) serves as a bookend to the underground comix golden age, arriving at the precise moment the Supreme Court's Miller v. California ruling empowered local communities to prosecute obscene material — a decision that gutted the head-shop distribution network on which underground titles depended. Rather than going out quietly, editor Jay Lynch used the final issue as both a political act and a creative capstone: an editorial inside the front cover, titled 'Um Tut Smut,' directly condemned the ruling and announced that no further issues would appear unless it was repealed. As a production artifact, the issue stands apart because it was printed entirely in full color — a genuine rarity among underground comix of the era — and because it gathered nearly the entire constellation of Bijou's contributors for one last collaborative statement, making it a document of community as much as a comic book.
"Geek Brothers!" is a sharp, satirical standout in Bijou Funnies #8, written by Jay Lynch and featuring a cover by Harvey Kurtzman, whose distinctive pencils and inks lend the issue a defiant, almost prophetic edge. The story opens with a pointed editorial warning that the comic’s future hinges on a Supreme Court decision allowing local communities to set their own standards for obscenity—a real and contentious moment in 1973 that deeply affected the comics landscape.
In this one-page parody from *Bijou Funnies* #8, a satirical ad mocks the EC Comics style by listing fake titles of underground comics, cleverly weaving in nine actual comic logos as if they were part of a mock lineup. It’s a sharp, playful jab at the underground scene’s self-referential culture, all wrapped in the deadpan humor of the era.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Bijou Funnies had been co-founded in Chicago in the summer of 1968 by Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson, and Jay Kinney, directly inspired by Robert Crumb's Zap Comix #1; Crumb himself helped assemble the debut issue during the Democratic National Convention that year. Kitchen Sink Press (operating through its Krupp Comic Works distribution arm) had taken over publishing duties from the Print Mint with issue #5 in 1970, though the indicia continued to credit the Bijou Publishing Empire. For the eighth and final issue Lynch conceived a thematic framework drawn from the title's deepest roots: every story would be an underground cartoonist parodying a fellow underground cartoonist's signature characters, all executed in the full-color, parody-within-parody spirit of Harvey Kurtzman's early Mad comics — the common ancestor that Lynch and his circle had cited as their primary influence from the start.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published November 1973 by Kitchen Sink Press (Krupp Comic Works), it is the eighth and final issue of Bijou Funnies, which ran from 1968 to 1973.
- The cover was drawn by Harvey Kurtzman — creator and original editor of Mad — as a direct homage to the color Mad comic book format that predated Mad's switch to black-and-white magazine format with issue #24 in 1955.
- The entire issue was printed in full color, an uncommon production choice for underground comix of the period.
- The interior editorial, titled 'Um Tut Smut,' was written by Jay Lynch and explicitly condemned the 1973 Miller v. California Supreme Court obscenity ruling, threatening no further issues would be published unless the ruling was overturned.
- Every story in the issue is a mutual parody: contributors include Robert Crumb (parodying Jay Lynch's Nard 'n' Pat as 'Pard 'n' Nat'), Jay Lynch (parodying Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers as 'The Geek Brothers'), Skip Williamson (parodying Crumb's Mr. Natural), Denis Kitchen (parodying Dan Clyne's Hungry Chuck Biscuits as 'Hungry Irving Biscuits'), Bill Griffith (parodying Kim Deitch), and Kim Deitch (parodying Griffith's characters including an early Zippy the Pinhead analog).
- The back cover is a parody of a famous EC Comics ad listing Mad imitators, substituting the logos of underground comix titles — a meta-commentary on the scene's own proliferation.
- The full contributor roster includes Harvey Kurtzman (cover), Lynch, Williamson, Crumb, Kitchen, Griffith, Deitch, Justin Green, Kim Deitch, Jay Kinney, Bill Stout, Pat Daley, Willy Murphy, and Ralph Reese.
- Selected material from across the Bijou Funnies run — though not specifically from issue #8 — was collected in The Best of Bijou Funnies (Quick Fox/Links Books, 1975), edited by Lynch, and later reissued in 1981 as a flip-book paired with The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics.
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Reprinted in The Scum Also Rises: An Anthology of Comic Art #[nn] (1988), The Complete Crumb Comics #9 (1992), A History of Underground Comics: 20th Anniversary Edition #[nn] (2012), The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics #[nn] (2012), Fifty Freakin' Years with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #[nn] (2017)
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