Underground : Mother's Oats Comics

This week I went in a very different direction and read strips from Mother's Oats, an underground comic.

The comic surprised me right away with its cover page (above). The cover features a mother swearing at her child and smacking him across the head, while her other boy curses as he looks on. Although this scene is made out to be comedic, it is very disturbing. Even the child abuse by Craig's father in Blankets--last week's post--was not nearly so blatant.

The shocking cover was a good indicator of what was inside Mother's Oats. Nudity and blatant drug use abound in the comic. In one strip, a character even shouts that he "Musta O.D'd". In another, two faucet spouts have sex.

Mother's Oats is not only about shock value, however. The comic also frequently jumps into political theory tirades in the middle of its insane adventures. One character, for example, discusses his "theory of perpetual ignorance" to his friends. The booming counterculture of the time must have loved this kind of dialogue.

Reading Mother's Oats definitely helped me understand how underground comics affected mainstream comics. With such extremes as the disturbing Mother's Oats and the extensively censored Marvel comics existing at the same time, the work coming out of this period was bound to land somewhere in the middle.

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