gothic blimp works
Gothic Blimp Works
East Village Other (1969)
When 1968 rolled into 1969, the underground comix revolution was well underway, but had not yet exploded. The epicenter of the movement was emerging in San Francisco, but in early 1969 New York City was still the place to be if a radical cartoonist wanted to get published. The East Village Other (EVO) had already been publishing works by future underground comic book creators Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Kim Deitch and Robert Crumb for a couple of years, and sales were booming (60,000+ units every week).
By 1969, the publishers of EVO had launched sister publications Kiss, Gay Power and Aquarian Agent, and had also published several all-comics special issues of EVO, which were best sellers. Joel Fabricant, who began working as EVO’s quasi-business manager and publisher after two of the original founders had left the paper, came up with the idea to launch an all-comics publication. After much internal wrangling about the format and title of the new enterprise, Gothic Blimp Works was launched in the spring of 1969. Despite the desire of most of the contributors, who wanted to make it a comic book, Gothic Blimp Works was produced as an all-newsprint tabloid.
Gothic Blimp Works may have been doomed from its inception, but I wish it had managed to survive for a few more years, delivering its opulent compositions from the masterminds of the underground revolution.
