One artist who ran with the freedoms Friedrich offered was Jim Starlin. Star*Reach #1 was edited by Mike Friedrich, the man who coined the word “groundlevel” and who convinced Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Steve Skeates, and other pros to contribute to his comic and exercise creative freedoms mostly not available at the Big Two. I bought Star*Reach #1, my first groundlevel, in 1975, when I was twelve years old and too young to know what sex was.
These comics are weird and adventurous, but the genres are familiar.Ī big part of the adult content of the groundlevels was sex. Saga gives us adult science fiction–adult enough to precipitate an iPhone and iPad ban on the images of gay sex in Saga #12–while Pretty Deadly splices the Western to hallucinogenic storytelling à la Alejandro Jodorowsky’s cult movie El Topo (1970). Dave Sim’s Cerebus was one early groundlevel comic, Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest another, and nowadays, when I look at the artistic and commercial renaissance at Image Comics, I see the rebirth of the groundlevel aesthetic. “Groundlevel” refers to the middle position these comics occupied between the DC-Marvel “mainstream” and the excesses of Crumbian undergrounds. CRAIG’S PICK :: SEX CRIMINALS #5: In 1970s fandom, we used the term “groundlevels” to describe comics that combined fan genres like science fiction and fantasy with adult visuals and subject matter(s).
