APEX NOVELTIES — Zap Comix #4

San Francisco, CA: Apex Novelties, 1969. 1st Edition; 1st Printing. Comic. B&W Illustrations; This comic is in Very Good- condition and was issued without a dust jacket. Second printing (with the staple placement other than 2 5/16" from the top prong of the staple to the top edge of the comic). There is a lightish angular crease to the front cover of the comic, along with some beginning bumping and wear to the spine ends and corners. The text pages are generally clean and bright, but do have some beginning generalized toning. "The book opens with Victor Moscoso's "Hocus Pocus," which is six pages of stylized animals, sex organs, humans and iconic cartoon characters engaging in a wild orgy in the middle of an M. C. Escher-like room with two floors, no ceilings and two doors. New characters enter or leave the room on every page and the whirlwind of an orgy becomes a gleaming mass of French-curve bodies and appendages. For someone who never dabbled in erotica before Zap, Moscoso quickly adapts to the genre. The next story by Robert Crumb became the most notorious comic strip in the history of Zap Comix and led to the book being virtually banned from retail sale throughout America for almost a year. "Joe Blow" depicts an apparently middle-class family of four engaging in father-daughter and mother-son sexual relations. The fact that the children in the story were post-pubescent only made "Joe Blow" slightly less egregious. A limited number of "adult intellectuals" with open minds recognized that the story delivered a satire of a middle-American family taking Dr. Spock's liberal child-raising advice a few steps too far. But for everyone else, "Joe Blow" was the most shocking and revolting comic strip they had ever read." (from Underground ComixJoint). Very Good- .