Bad Acid Comix

Bad Acid Comix was formed in the summer of 1967 by Jerry M Garcia (not the Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead) on Los Angeles' east side. The comic was written and drawn completely by Garcia until the beginning of 1968 when he managed to find a team of like-minded cartoonists/writers to help him publish his comic. Bad Acid Comix pushed the limits of the comic book genre with story lines that contained explicit dialogue, drug references and use as well as some slightly sexual scenes and situations. The comics were colored in very bright neon pastel colors giving the appearance of a very strong LSD trip (hence the name Bad Acid)

By 1968 Bad Acid Comix had become one of L.A.'s most popular underground comic books and it had grown considerably from a book featuring only 2 full-length series and a few assorted mini strips in 1967 to a book containing anywhere from 5 to 10 full-length stories from the new writing staff in 1971, as well as countless one-time appearance mini series comics by unknown cartoonists that Garcia would occasionally discover.

The beginning of a dream

The first full-length comic to grace the pages of Bad Acid was Retro Metro, an idea that's sole purpose was to make negative social observations about the 1950s "Leave It To Beaver" style American dream. The comic started with the Retro gang (a Hippie, a Latino, and an African-American) walking down an urban boulevard (that was colored in bright pastel colors) when they abruptly entered a black and white world where every house, car, and street looked the same. They were soon greeted by a young boy (who was obviously supposed to represent The Beaver) and in the case of the Hispanic character and the African-American character in a now very racially unacceptable way (i.e. being called colored people) and having the Beaver's father telling him to stay away from the freaks cause they'll steal his money and make him a junkie. To which group replies to by pointing out the social flaws in their "American Dream" (i.e. there is are no minorities in this perfect world). As the series progressed it was a continual success until the early 1980s where the ideals and social commentary of Retro Metro were rather dated and it was replaced in 1984 by Space Wolf.

With the success of Retro Metro in 67 Garcia decided to push the envelope with his next creation Che 'Vato and the man. The idea behind this series becomes clear after the first issue in which the obviously South American guerrilla leader Che' Vato is fighting imperialist forces in the fictional Latin American country of Orgulloso when he and his forces are surrounded in a blinding white light and find themselves transported hundreds of years into the future by a group of resistance forces that have been engaged in an armed conflict with the Imperialist Yankees to the north for the past 500 years. It becomes obvious who Che' Vato is suppose to be (for those of you who still have no clue it's Che Guevara and if you don't know who that is the stop reading this post now.) The leaders of the rebel groups tell Vato that he was chosen to lead their resistance against the oppressive Yankee armies. Vato and his forces train the resistance forces and lead them into combat until in 1976 when the series was postponed because they were on the verge of victory, or so it seemed, but when the series was reintroduced in 1986 there was a twist added to the plot. After discovering that once he helps the resistance win their war against oppression he will be sent back to the exact time were they extracted him, which he discovers is were he is captured and killed by imperialist forces he begins to wonder if it is worth fighting to save these people in the future when he himself is to be rewarded with his death upon his return to his own time. The series ended in 1990 with the last frame of the comic had Vato standing in the famous Che Guevara pose telling his troops that "We will take the capital at dawn" but since Bad Acid closed its doors after this last issue was pressed the series was never resolved leaving Vato's fate unknown to the fans.

With the growing popularity of Bad Acid Comix and the relative success of both Retro Metro and Che 'Vato and the man strips Garcia along with a few newly hired cartoonist/writers decided in late fall of 1968 to launch a new strip; Ziggy Stardust which was about the far out adventures of an extraterrestrial named Ziggy as he traveled the universe in search of intelligent life. While the strip became some what of a cult favorite by 1977 it was greeted with harsh criticism by critics and fans upon its introduction and was subsequently cut from the magazine by summer of 79.

Fighting the opposition

By the mid seventies Bad Acid had established itself as the premier underground comic book in L.A, but that is not to say that they were without peer. In 1973 James K. Walsh opened Burning Skull Press after his sci-fi/anime comic Rising Sun was turned down by Garcia when he tried to get it published in the pages of Bad Acid. In the fall of that same year one of Garcia's own cartoonists Evan Groening (no relation to Matt Groening of "The Simpsons" fame) broke away and formed his own comic called Mr.Mojo Risin' Comics (named for the recently departed Jim Morrison) which would be Bad Acid's biggest competition until their demise in 1989. While the rivalries between Burning Skull Press, Naughty-Dog Comics, and Bad Acid were of a purely business nature the rivalry between Bad Acid and Mr.Mojo Risin' Comics was a more personal affair.

Changing with the times

Bad Acid had introduced such classic long running series as Retro Metro, Che 'Vato and the man, and Extrastellar Voyage (just to name a few) in the late 60s and early seventies but by the early eighties some of these comics (most notably Retro Metro) were showing their age so Garcia began searching for new talent and would usher in what would be know as Bad Acid's second coming in 1981 with the introduction of four all new comic series, Space Wolf, The Adventures of Some-man and that-guy, Dreamstar, and Heavy Mental.