Acclaimed by many as a pioneer, Robert Crumb's Zap Comix (1968) is regarded as the first, but not the earliest, underground comic book. Crumb was the first cartoonist of the movement to achieve mainstream publication. Crumb was born in Philadelphia. Although he never studied art... Never a member of the counterculture himself, Crumb created a large and diverse body of work during the late 1960s and early 1970s. To a large extent he defined underground comics. He produced a number of solo books between 1968 and 1971, including Zap, Big Ass, Despair, Uneeda, Mr. Natural, and many others. His subjects, the preoccupations of the rebellious youth of the 1960s, were to become the staples of the genre: sex (Crumb's treatments of it were so explicit that they led to a famous censorship trial), drugs, and the decay of spiritual values. His pen was merciless. He spared nothing and no one, including... (http://www.askart.com/artist_bio/Robert_R_Crumb_Crumb/64739/Robert_R_Crumb_Crumb.aspx)