Raw 2

Not quite the shock it must have (might have?) been when first published, this volume of Raw offers comix that would be edgy, perhaps even too un-PC to be published, today. We often unthinkingly think that tolerance for free-speech increases as time goes on, but, alas, the "Dark Ages" arent once and never again, but return in cycles--and, in terms of freedom of expression, we might well be in the twilight of a new Dark Ages. Anyway, "Raw" represents a period of time, post-60s/70s, when the survivors of the comix counterculture were "legitimizing" their underground vision and becoming the Establishment. Could anyone ever foresee a time when Crumb would be published by Penguin? Well, Crumb isnt in this volume of Raw, but other stuff in more or less the same vein and spirit is. There's also a "chapter" of Maus, as well as one-page macabre shorts, a fine mix of horror and autobiographical strips, and a somewhat dated but no less relevant & suitably nauseating illustrated expose of the meat industry. Reading Raw 2 left me wishing that there was a regularly published anthology of alternative comix still being produced today; if there is, I dont know it...and I dont know that a large publisher like Penguin would still dare to publish anything that had even the slightest chance of offending anyone. Such is the corporate/PC mentality of publishing today, which, in seeking to appease all tastes produces books with no flavor, and in trying so hard to be "multicultural" ends up reflecting in its products (and make no mistake, they are "products" not books) no culture at all. Raw harkens back to a time when artists, to paraphrase Spain Rodriguez, didnt avoid controversy or any risk of offending, but located precisely the sorest areas of society's collective psyche, the protected places that would cause the most controversy and offense if violated, and stuck their needles there. And publishers wonder why they are losing readers. Its not just the antiquated nature of the paper/printed text, but their greed, their mediocrity, and their misguided utopian humanism...all of which the artists in a publication such as Raw attacked so relentlessly.