#06 American Know-How
#06 American Know-How
Kitchen Sink February 1976
Snarf #6 came out nearly a couple years after the previous issue, making it crystal clear that new issues of this title would not be getting published on a regular basis. Fortunately, there’s plenty of quality material to be found in Snarf #6, beginning with Robert Crumb’s solid front cover art, which is the only cover Crumb ever did for the series. Joel Beck provides a good one-pager for the inside front cover before the book gets rolling in earnest with Dave Schreiner’s and Denis Kitchen’s “Life in the Ice & Salt Works.”
“Life in the Ice & Salt Works” is an allegorical tale about a prison mine that illuminates the slightly flawed paradise that Comix Book offered in 1974. Comix Book paid $100 page rates (four times the rate of most undergrounds) and offered enormous distribution power (200,000 copies compared to 10,000 for most undergrounds), which many artists found irresistable temptations. Underground comic creators were used to lifestyles afforded by “Life in the Ice & Salt Works,” where times were always hard and prospects seemed perpetually gloomy, especially after the underground industry hit the skids in 1973.
Justin Green joins the stable of Snarf contributors with “Marijuana, Crutch or Cure?” George DiCaprio and Jay Kinney collaborate on a computer dating two-pager. Ted Richards and Willy Murphy also join Snarf’s staff with a “Two Fools” story about “How the Mona Lisa Got Her Smile.” Murphy passed away from pneumonia a month after this book was published.
John Pound gets a fascinating two-page gallery spread, followed by a terrific two-page collaboration with Harvey Pekar and Robert Armstrong about Harvey’s junk-food diet. Snarf regular Evert Geradts contributes a solid two-pager as well, and after a decent one-pager from Beck, Howard Cruse returns with a hilarious faux commercial about tooth care.
George Metzger, Carl Lundgren and Sharon Kahn Rudahl also join the large group of first-time contributors to Snarf. Metzger’s two-page story about a couple of woodsy hippies going into the city to get a break from their monotonous diet of rice and veggies, while Lundgren’s single page “Mice Puzzle” provides a fun graphic. Rudahl’s “Wisconsin Story” is an engaging three-page autobiographical account of Rudahl’s year and a half in Madison, Wisconsin, where her marriage fell apart and her radical-left ideals became everyday life.
#06 American Know-How
