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X-Rated: Childhood and the "Adults Only" World of Underground Comix

ABSTRACT:This article discusses the underground comix movement's complex relationship with childhood and children's cultural forms. Underground artists used their narratives to contest the ideal of the innocent child as well as resist dominant narratives of maturation. While underground cartoonists often reinforced the binary of adult comix versus children's comics, they seemed less interested in undoing comics' association with childhood than in condemning adult-led institutions that policed comics content and young people's reading practices. But comix artists did not necessarily seek to liberate children from practices of adult gatekeeping. In announcing that comix was "for adults only," underground creators and distributors arguably served as gatekeepers themselves. Curiously, the spirit and paradoxes of underground comix of the 1960s and 1970s are revived in an unlikely space: Dav Pilkey's ongoing children's book series The Adventures of Captain Underpants (1997-present). Pilkey's irreverent series recalls the underground in its celebration of do-it-yourself comics publishing and its attack on authority figures and adult-led institutions. But Captain Underpants also testifies to how subversive and countercultural elements can be commodified and repackaged for children's consumption.