An Outlaw Comics Taxonomy

Having touched at least briefly on the “Big Three Outlaw Comics,” I’m now moving forward in this article series to what I call the “Outlaw Comics Explosion. I still have some articles to backfill, such as the missing second part of the James O’Barr series, but over the next few months I’ll be covering Poison Elves, Boneyard Press, and the mid-90s Bad Girl Comics trend. I thought it would be helpful to explain my taxonomy for Outlaw Comics.

As I wrote in my “Introduction to Outlaw Comics” article, I’m not trying to create a standard definition of Outlaw Comics to be used outside of this website. I simply need some parameters to focus my work on this series. (I’m trying to come up with another term to distinguish what I’m talking about from the way “Outlaw Comics” is increasingly used on Cartoonist Kayfabe and elsewhere. In the meantime, I’ll continue to use “Outlaw Comics” as it remains the most commonly used term for what I’m talking about.) Likewise, I don’t mean for this taxonomy to be definitive. I don’t even think of it as final with regard to my own work. I share this only to explain my own thinking, not to tell anyone else how they should label any particular book.

Also note that these labels are not value judgments on my part. The labels I place on these books are not a reflection of my opinion of their quality. These should not be read as endorsements or condemnations of any title or creator. Indeed, I’m lumping together books that are, in my view, highly variable in quality.

Proto-Outlaw Comics

This can include anything from the beginnings of comics up to the appearance of the “Big Three” (Yes, that means there’s some overlap in the timeline with “Early Outlaw Comics” period.) that have some but not all of the Outlaw Comics characteristics and/or directly influenced the development of Outlaw Comics.

• EC and other pre-Code crime, horror, and weird comics
• Underground Comix
• Black & white comics magazines (Warren, Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant, Marvel’s various magazines)
• Bernie Wrightson
• Frank Frazetta
• British comics (2000AD, Warrior, Deadline, Crisis)
• Early direct market indie comics (Cerebus, Grim Jack, American Flagg, etc.)
• Mature and/or “edgy” comics published by Marvel and DC (Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, Void Indigo, Rick Veitch’s The One, Starstruck)
• Certain manga (Fist of the Northstar, Devilman)

Early Outlaw Comics

Stuff that generally fit within my Outlaw Comics definition but that pre-date the “Big Three”:

• Grips
• Deadworld
• Some Aircel comics (Warlock5, Samurai)
• Maybe Gore Shriek?
• Lord Horror and other Savoy comics? (Started in 89, concurrent with The Big Three, though Lord Horror appeared on records previous to that)

The Big Three

Faust, The Crow, Cry for Dawn. 1989. ‘Nuff said?

Outlaw Comics explosion

This really gets started in 1991.

Rob Liefeld has quoted Todd McFarlane saying that he and some of the other Image Comics founders built their careers at Marvel by delivering Art Adams-style comics every month, filling a demand Adams himself was unable to fill. The Explosion artists and publishers were doing much the same thing, but drew inspiration from Vigil, O’Barr, and Linsner (in addition to other creators, often including the Image founders). “Back in the early 90’s, there were a few books that featured heavily violent mature story lines and those books were highly sought after, but rarely came out,” Razor creator and London Night Studios founder Everette Hartsoe said in an interview in 2010. “I wanted to do a book like that and intertwine all of my favorite characters and put the book out as close to monthly as possible.”

The explosion includes (in no particular order):

• London Night
• Boneyard
• Anubis
• Fathom
• Bishop Press
• Evil Ernie
• Rebel Studios and Northstar’s non-Faust books
• From Darkness and CFD’s other non-Cry for Dawn books
• Poison Elves and some other Sirius titles (Mosaic for example)
• WasteLA by Bill O’Neil
• Junkfood Noir from Oktober Black
• Heart Eater
• Anarchy Press
• DAMAGE!/Bloodshed
• Operación Bolívar
• Verotik

A lot of these are also heavily influenced by the Image founders.

Post-Outlaw Comics

A lot of stuff that may or may not have been directly or indirectly influenced by Outlaw Comics (or created by “real” Outlaw Comics creators), but that have a similar aesthetic and likely scratched the same itch among comics buyers. These were generally less extreme than Outlaw Comics, but tended to come out on a more reliable schedule, were often full color, and were relatively easy to find in comic shops. Mostly this is from the mid-to-late 90s, but stretches from the early 90s at least into the 00s.

Examples:

• Spawn
• Darker Image and related titles (The Maxx, Cybernary)
• Jae Lee (especially Hellshock and Youngblood: Strikefile)
• Many “Bad Girls” comics (some of these were Outlaw Explosion or Proto-Outlaw Comics rather than Post-Outlaw)
• The Darkness
• Ascension
• DV8 and other Warren Ellis stuff (especially his Avatar stuff)
• Divine Right
• Crimson
• Preacher
• The Goon
• Brian Woods
• Walking Dead
• Crossed and many other Avatar comics.

Outlaw Adjacent Comics

Stuff with a lot of similarities to Outlaw Comics but don’t quite meet my personal criteria. A lot of “disreputable” stuff by otherwise “reputable” creators and publishers. Proto and post-Outlaw comics also generally fit into this category. Examples:

• Black Kiss
• Lobo
• Brat Pack
• Clive Barker comics
• Ted McKeever
• Baker Street
• Casanova Frankenstein
• Early Brian Michael Bendis
• Kabuki
• Yummy Fur
• Mike Diana
• Fukitor
• Lots of manga
• Avatar’s books by Alan Moore and other critically acclaimed creators.

Generally, proto and “Post-Outlaw” stuff also fit into this category. I’m still unsure of where to place Real Deal, possibly here or possibly in the Explosion.

Outlaw Revival

There’s been something of a critical reappraisal of Outlaw Comics and other comics panned or ignored by critics (such as those by Liefeld), as creators like Ed Piskor, Sarah Horrocks, and Michel Fiffe openly discussed their early influences and as critics like Joe McCulloch wrote about forgotten books like Donna Mia. McCulloch’s old blog dates way back to 2004, and Ben Marra was doing Night Business in 2008, but I think the reappraisal really gets started in the early to mid-2010s, with things like Fiffe’s COPRA, Piskor’s Liefeld tribute in Hip Hop Family Tree, and Brandon Graham’s Prophet, and the Faust episode of the Comic Books Are Burning in Hell podcast. Suddenly it was cool to say you liked Rob Liefeld and Tim Vigil.

Then of course there was the Outlaw Comics episode of Piskor and Jim Rugg’s YouTube series Cartoonist Kayfabe.

I’m grouping into the revival both things that are self-conscious pastiches, like Piskor’s Red Room, as well as things that arrive at the Outlaw Comics parameters more organically, like Barbatus and Meanboss’s Sad Sack. Some other examples:

• Slasher by Charles Forsman
• The Derelict and The Other Side of Town by Alex Delaney
• Rabbit’s Badass Song by Christopher Elston, Chassity Lassiter, and Halil Mete.

There’s tons of this stuff on the #outlawcomics hashtag on Instagram.

There are also a number of comics that deal with many of the same concerns as Outlaw Comics, but take a different approach:

• Faithless (which feels like an extended version of a Cry for Dawn story)
• My Friend Dahmer
• Did you Hear What Eddie Gein Done?