I read Robert Crumb's Mr. Natural and the Air Pirate Funnies. A lot of these short comics revolved around humorous word play and sexual humor, while others were disturbing. Some of the strips I read broke the fourth wall, which I haven't seen previously. Some comics rhymed and read like song, while others morphed and transformed before your eyes. I see how underground comics were an explosion of exploration within the confines of the humorous comic strip. There is a strong feeling of a lack of inhibition in these comics, and that seems what comics really needed at the time. They started handling more serious topics like politics and religion, while still being couched in the form of the comic strip.
The more sexual, racist, and violent of these strips appear to be jab at the rules of the establishment and they seem to thrive on shock value. It's interesting as an observation of base human tendencies, but I don't know how much of that I can handle. Mainly because if the characters only project base desires then the plot will inevitably involve them killing something or fucking it and the dialogue will consist of grunts and yelps.
As far as art that's meant to be shocking. To me, it quickly looses its appeal. Simply because it's easy to think of taboos and one can become numb to it. I've seen pictures of fine artists shooting paint out of their butts, I've heard of people describing 9/11 as the greatest work of art ever made, I've heard of a guy who discharged semen on to every page of a book, an exhibit where the artist starved a dog to death. I feel like shocking art has a simple formula, find something taboo and cross that line. I guess that my preference is more towards worlds I can lose myself, novels with motifs metaphors and make me cry or be left in awe or learn something.
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