In 1968, Crumb, in San Francisco, California, self-published his first solo comic, Zap Comix. The title was financially successful, and from issue # 3 was published by The Print Mint. Zap developed a market for underground comix. Zap began to feature other cartoonists, and Crumb launched a series of solo titles, including Despair, Uneeda (both published by Print Mint in 1969), Big Ass Comics, R. Crumb's Comics and Stories, Motor City Comics (all published by Rip Off Press in 1969), Home Grown Funnies (Kitchen Sink Press, 1971) and Hytone Comix (Apex Novelties, 1971), in addition to founding the pornographic anthologies Jiz and Snatch (both Apex Novelties, 1969).[3]
Zap Comix is the best-known and one of the most popular of the underground comics that emerged as part of the youth counterculture of the late 1960s[citation needed]. While not thought to be first underground comic to have been published, it is considered to mark the beginning of the underground comix era[citation needed].
The contents of the first Zap were not intended to be the debut issue. Crumb had drawn a completely different issue's worth of comics, but the artwork was stolen prior to publication. Rather than repeat himself, Crumb drew a new assortment of strips, which replaced the missing issue. Fortunately, Crumb had made Xerox copies of the missing pages, which (according to fellow Zap contributor Victor Moscoso) successfully captured the linework but not the solid blacks. After being reinked, those cartoons subsequently appeared as Zap #0 (which was first published about the same time as Zap #3).
Zap was also one of the books that put the underground in comics: Zap #4 (by then being published by The Print Mint), in particular, was the subject of numerous community standards obscenity busts and court cases. That issue was most notorious for Crumb's satirical story Joe Blow, depicting an incestuous all-American nuclear family whose motto was the family that lays together, stays together. San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore was raided by police, and the fourth issue of Zap was eventually prohibited from selling over the counter in New York. However, the case was as much about publicity as anything else, and the issue continued to be readily available for purchase, including by City Lights. The attention created a bump in Zap sales and elevated its reputation among counterculture types; it certainly cannot be argued that succeeding issues of Zap were any tamer in content.
