Books

Bob Levin's OUTLAWS, REBELS, FREETHINKERS, & PIRATES

By Leroy Douresseaux
June 20, 2005 - 14:54

OUTLAWS, REBELS, FREETHINKERS & PIRATES: Essays on Cartoons and Cartoonists


Writer Bob Levin made quite a splash with his book, Pirates & the Mouse: Disney’s War Against the Counterculture, earning rave reviews from many critics. OUTLAWS, REBELS, FREETHINKERS & PIRATES (subtitled Essays on Cartoons and Cartoonists) is more evidence of his talent as both an essayist and a storyteller. The 17 essays collected within originally appeared in The Comics Journal and are a combination of interviews, profiles, and histories of the rebellious visionaries who made and continue to make the medium of comics more interesting because they not only did it their way, but their way of doing it pointed other comix creators down roads different from what the mainstream demanded.
Levin’s interviews Underground Comix visionary S. Clay Wilson, the legendary Justin Green, and R. Crumb’s superbly talented brother Maxon. Also included are historical essays and/or retrospectives of pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and the gone-too-soon Dori Seda. He also looks at obscure comix artists such as Rory Hayes and truly underground, beneath-the-radar publishers like B.N. Duncan.
What Levin, an author and attorney who lives in Berkeley, CA, does is turn over angles of comix history that most comic book industry watchers and especially most fans either totally ignore, or it’s something of which they are totally ignorant. Levin is one of the important historians of comic cart, and one day when comic books are taken seriously (meaning as something more than just filler for CNN Showbiz), the new historians will quickly turn to Levin’s work and consider him one of their Founding Father. A

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12