Big Apple Comix

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Big Apple Comix is an early independent comic book published by Flo Steinberg in 1975. An historically important link between underground comix and what would later be called alternative comics, this 36-page, 6 3/4" x 9 3/4" hybrid with glossy color covers and black-and-white interiors contains 11 sometimes sexually frank stories by such mainstream creators as Neal Adams, Archie Goodwin, Denny O'Neil, Herb Trimpe, Al Williamson, and Wally Wood. Most of its stories revolve around New York City (colloquially known as "The Big Apple") during a particularly low ebb in the city's finances, crime situation, race relations, and infrastructure.

The one-shot comic book was among a handful of notable 1960s-'70s precursors of the independently produced comics that first proliferated with the 1980s rise of "direct market" comic-book stores. Other such early links between underground comix and modern independents include Mike Friedrich's Star*Reach and Wood's own witzend. Critic Ken Jones, in 1986 retrospective review, suggested that Big Apple Comix and [Mark Evanier's] High Adventure may have been "the first true alternative comics".^[1]

The comic featured writer-editor Goodwin displaying his cartoonist abilities; Adams and a fledgling Larry Hama sharing vertically split pages to parallel a street prostitute with a corporate secretary using sex to further her career; and Wood's story "My Word", a bitter parody of the Al Feldstein-scripted "My World" that Wood illustrated in EC Comics' Weird Science #22 (Dec. 1953).

Linda Fite and John Verpoorten handled production work for the comic, released with an indicia date of Sept. 1975 and sold primarily through mail-order by Steinberg's Big Apple Productions. Many of its contributors were connected with the Neal Adams-Dick Giordano studio, Continuity Associates.

[edit] Contents

• Front cover by Wally Wood
• Foreword by Denny O'Neil
• "The Man Without A City" by Stu Schwartzberg (writer), Marie Severin (artist), pp. 3-5
• "Peep Shows" by Archie Goodwin (writer-artist), pp. 6-7
• "My Word" by Wally Wood (writer-artist), pp. 8-10
• "The Tube" by Wally Wood (writer), Al Williamson (artist), pp. 12-14
• "A Nice Place To Visit, but..." by Linda Fite, p. 15
• "Over & Under" by Neal Adams (writer-artist, "Over"), Larry Hama (writer-artist, "Under"), pp. 16-20
• "New York City: The Future" by Paul Kirchner, p. 21
• "The Battery's Down" by Alan Weiss, Howard Weiss, pp. 22-26
• "Lotsa Yox" by Herb Trimpe (pencils) and Wally Wood (inker), pp. 27-28
• "The Silent Minority" by Mike Ploog, pp. 29-30
• "Token" by Herb Trimpe p. 31-34
• "Backword" by Flo Steinberg
• Back cover by Ralph Reese

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• "The Early Independents", by Richard J. Arndt: (PDF) and HTML
• The Grand Comics Database
• Wally Wood Online Checklist: Big Apple Productions
• "Special Fabulous Flo Steinberg Celebration", Comic Book Artist #18 (April 2002)