Jay Lynch, Pioneer of Underground Comix, Dead at 72

CANDOR, N.Y.—Jay Lynch, one of the founders of the underground "comix" movement, died of lung cancer at his home in the aptly named town of Candor on March 5—aptly named because if Lynch did anything throughout most of his life, he practiced candor, perhaps better known these days as "telling it like it is." Born in Orange, New Jersey, Lynch began his artistic career at a young age, painting murals on the walls of his neighbors' homes and designing sets for school plays until, following high school in Miami, he attended the Art Institute in Chicago—and moonlighted with the Second City comedy troupe. However, Lynch had long been a fan of comic art, and his own style shows influences from George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Bud Fisher's Mutt & Jeff (whose relationship Lynch parodied with his long-running duo Nard 'n' Pat), and perhaps most of all, Harvey Kurtzman's and Will Elder's parody work for Mad, both in its early incarnation as a comic book and later as a magazine. But according to comic book history site lambiek.net, one of Lynch's biggest influences was writer/editor (and later AVN Online contributor) Paul Krassner, having found, in 1958, the earliest issues of Krassner's satirical magazine The Realist, which inspired Lynch to say, "After reading my first issue of The Realist, I was in a daze which almost bordered on frenzied religious ecstasy ... I knew my cause; I knew my role in the scheme of things." Before beginning his underground comix career, Lynch worked for several humor magazines, including Cracked, Wild!, Thor, Sick, Prep, Squire and Help, the latter published, edited and largely drawn by Kurtzman. But most of those magazines either didn't pay well or folded fairly quickly, so Lynch got a job at a Chicago ad agency and began drawing comic strips in his spare time. Early in his graphic arts career, Lynch drew covers for the fledgling underground newspaper the Chicago Seed, and contributed as well to better-known publications like the East Village Other, the Berkeley Barb, Gothic Blimp Works and the Fifth Estate. Moving into comix, Lynch created Bijou Comix, which lasted just eight issues, and contributed to other comix series like Bizarre Sex, and Teen-age Horizons of Shangri-la. But Bijou Comix was Lynch's baby. He edited it himself and amassed a Who's Who of underground contributors including Skip Williamson (Snappy Sammy Smoot), Gilbert Shelton (Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Kim Deitch (Sunshine Girl) and others. Its first issue hit the stands in the summer 1968, just as the "hippie" movement was taking off, and ceased publication shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Miller v. California, which set for certain criteria for finding a piece of art "obscene"—and scared Lynch enough to make his final issue a softer parody of Mad magazine and his favorite Mad artists, Kurtzman and Elder. After Bijou folded, Lynch looked for more mainstream work, creating the humor strip "Phoebe and the Pigeon People" (depicting pigeons with human heads) for the Chicago Reader, and working on four-panel "Bazooka Joe" comics which were wrapped around each piece of Bazooka bubblegum. That was Lynch's first project with the Topps company, most famous for putting out baseball and football collectors' cards, but with Lynch as part of their creative force, the company also issued the card sets "Wacky Packages" and "Garbage Pail Kids," both of which also drew on the talents of Spiegelman, Deitch and other "undergrounders." Lynch also did some work for Mad magazine itself in the late '90s, as well as mainstream comic books like Archie, Zorro and The Simpsons. Finally, in 2008, Lynch was involved in the creation of children's educational comic books, though as a writer rather than illustrator. Among his stories were Otto's Orange Day, about a cat who wishes the whole world were orange, and when a genie grants the wish, Otto has to figure out how to turn the world back to multi-colors, and Mo and Jo Fighting Together Forever, about a superhero who creates a costume for a pair of twins that give them super powers—except that they destroy it first. By 2016, Lynch's health had declined to the point that, according to lambiek.net, he sold his entire personal collection of original comics, magazines, press files, correspondence and art to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum—but hopefully, Lynch will be remembered for the millions of teenagers and young adults who used Bijou Comix as their first jack-off-worthy porn.