“Underground Comix” describes the art form that appeared in the US in the 1960s. This type of comix were published in underground papers such as “East Village Other” or “Los Angeles Free Press”. It could be found in places that were known as “head shops”. They depicted the rebellious mood of those years in the form of the counterculture movement:

• Down with the government

• Make love, not war

• Drugs

• Rock n’roll

• Women liberation

Those were some of the themes of the mentioned movement. The book that is considered to have started the whole underground Comix movement is Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix #1. It made its attacks on the fact that old-fashioned legislators believed that the young Americans were susceptible to the evil that was filtered through rock n’roll and comic books. Zap satirized, at that time, sex and nudity, recreational drug use and even racial stereotyping.

Around that time, comics were considered a medium for children, and officials did not feel that the “Adults Only” label was enough of a warning. Therefore the artists rebelled the only way they knew and could: by making the comics unfit for children. It can be said that for the youth culture of the late 60s, Zap, as well as similar comics, were a symbol of power, going against everything that officials wanted quiet, obedience and respect.

Taking all of the above into consideration, you could say that the main idea of the comiX movement was freedom of love, speech and equality by use of satire.

In the modern age, storytelling has become an important factor in matters of expressing what is needed. But this cannot be done just using words. This can be done by using words in combination with visual art. By combining this two you can obtain a way of communication that can attract the audience and put your point across.

At the present, we are heavily dependent on the technology. This technology is used in numerous ways. One of them is visual storytelling. The storytelling factor can be found in numerous areas, such as games, movies and even books or ads.

Books rarely use visual elements for storytelling, but those that use them, are usually books you can get into. For example, those books were usually accompanied by a host of hand-drawn images that depicted different scenes from the book, making it possible to analyze not just on an imaginative level what was read, but also on a visual level.

The movie can be considered itself storytelling with a visual aspect to it; therefore people tend to get more excited by them, as the main point of it is the visual representation of the story. The same can go about the ads.

In the games industry, visual is one of the most important parts, and as such a good story usually goes with a good visual, be it pixel art or modern 3D rendered visuals.

This visual storytelling, be it in movies, books, ads or games makes use of the main ideas of the comiX movement, not shying away anymore from the taboos of that time, and each time amazing us, even if we do not fully understand the story, just from the start.