UNDERGROUND ZAP COMIX GROWS UP

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Three decades ago, an ex-greeting card designer
named Robert Crumb made copies of his comic artwork and hawked them on
Haight Street from a baby carriage.

Zap Comix -- and a new genre of ``underground comix'' -- was born.
Racy and anarchic, Zap rebelled against the restrictive comics code of
the 1950s and feasted off the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll of the late
1960s.

Thirty years later, the one-time hippie cartoonists have finally
graduated from Haight-Ashbury head shops to an art gallery that is
selling the original artwork for $2,500 to $20,000 a pop.

``At the time, who would've thought? We were trying to have fun, and
we're still trying to have fun,'' says S. Clay Wilson, among Zap's
original ``Magnificent 7.''

The world of cartooning was under a strict code that forbade the
depiction of sex, drugs and profanity when Crumb slapped out the first
issues of Zap on newsprint using an old press in 1968. It was a new
form, one filled with the most fantastic illustrations of sex and
drugs that generation's cartoonists had seen.

``It was as if Walt Disney had dropped acid,'' recalls Victor Moscoso.
``It made no sense whatsoever but it just knocked everyone out.''

Wilson joined in. Moscoso and Rick Griffin, famous in the 1960s for
their psychedelic rock concert posters, soon followed.

``I take the responsibility for putting the 'ugh' in underground,''
Wilson says. ``I said, 'Look, we can draw whatever we want. We're artists.'''

By 1969, Spain Rodriguez, Robert Williams and Gilbert Shelton had
landed in San Francisco and rounded out the ``Magnificent 7.''

``Zap No. 4 was like going into orbit. It was like being in a rock 'n'
roll band,'' Moscoso says.

The time was ripe for rebellion.

``It was a crazy time, especially in 1969 with Vietnam, and protests
and the Summer of Love, and LSD,'' Wilson recalls. ``It was like an
energy was building up. San Francisco just became this hub.''

They sold Zap at head shops and under the counter at comic book shops,
away from the gaze of censors. Some were busted -- including Lawrence
Ferlinghetti's City Lights bookstore.

They knew they were bucking the law, and took pride in being
underground.

``We were doing something that was like getting revenge for all those
years of comic book repression,'' says Rodriguez. ``It felt real good.''

Each of the cartoonists is an extraordinary artist with his own style
and wacky vision. Williams filled full pages with his futuristic,
phantasmagorical illustrations; Shelton's ``Fabulous Furry Freak
Brothers'' have become as legendary as Crumb's ``Mr. Natural'' and
``Keep on Truckin''' counterculture icons.

But it was the perversity of Zap that hooked readers -- the popping
eyeballs, the sex-crazed loonies, the panels that poked fun at Jesus
and suicide.

``It was something different. These books changed some people's lives
throughout the country,'' says Gary Arlington, a San Francisco comic
bookstore owner. Readers outside San Francisco had inklings about the
sex and drugs of San Francisco in the '60s but to see the scene in a
comic book was mind-boggling.

``We were radical. The surf was up for all of us and we happened to
ride some really far-out waves,'' Moscoso says.

All 15 issues remain in print, and until Griffin's death in a
motorcycle accident in 1991, all seven met regularly for infamous jam
sessions. They passed panels around while drinking, drawing and
swapping stories and jokes until dawn.

``You'd stop and take a few tokes and have something to eat,''
Rodriguez says.

But as with every rock band, there's always the threat of a breakup.
Each had his own thing: Williams moved to Los Angeles and began
painting; Griffin took up religion and surfing. Shelton and Crumb both
live in France.

Last year, Crumb, the most famous of the group and the subject of a
1995 Terry Zwigoff documentary, refused to attend the last jam session
after Moscoso and Rodriguez had already arrived to pick him up (Crumb
doesn't drive).

``It's like trying to quit on the Mafia,'' Crumb complains in his
two-page strip, which he ordered his partners to include in Zap on the
threat of taking it elsewhere.

They did -- with their responses. ``Crumbolina's really going off the
deep end,'' the strip by Moscoso and Rodriguez says, depicting Crumb
as a foot-dragging child with a lollipop jammed in his mouth.

``It's like leaving a family, and he's not very graceful at it,''
Moscoso says. ``He wants to kill (Zap), but it's not his to kill.''

A new cartoonist was asked into the group: Paul Mavrides, Shelton's
longtime collaborator.

``It's like being invited to the party 25 years after the beer's all
been drunk,'' Mavrides says. ``But I respect the artists, and I'm
flattered to have been chosen.''

Mavrides gave his own version of events, even though he wasn't there
to witness them. He depicts Moscoso attacking Crumb with a pen, a play
on one of Crumb's own early cartoons about a character who lets fame
get to his head.

The Rashomon-style exchange is featured in Zap No. 14 and the online
magazine Salon. The originals, with Rodriguez's smudges and Crumb's
careful use of whiteout, are for sale at the gallery (Crumb's for $20,000).

Crumb or no Crumb, Zap will live on, the cartoonists
say.

``It never dies out. We're not going to let it,'' says
Rodriguez.

Says Wilson: ``We're still going to keep doing it until the last horse is
hung.''