The novelist and essayist Bob Levin recounts this rollicking saga with humor, wit, intelligence, and skill, bringing alive the times, the issues, the absurdities, the personalities, the changes wrought within them and us all. Includes never-before seen art from the Air Pirates archives! Two excerpted chapters of this book in The Comics Journal in 2001 proved to be one of the magazine's most popular features in recent memory. Black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Meet the artist <UL> <LI> who proved you could do ANYTHING in a comic book. <LI> who regularly performs an act of purification by passing a 21-foot long cloth through his digestive system. <LI> whose pink winged magic stogie-waving fairy godfather was the toast of 1940s intellectuals. <LI> who, more likely than not, never had sex with her Doberman. <LI> whose gore-splattered stories featured an all-teddy bear cast. <LI> who devoted a dozen years to creating an epic graphic novel equivalent of the "Odyssey" (but is now largely forgotten). Bob Levin explores the by-ways and back roads of creative genius in as off-beat a collection of characters as are likely to be found outside a carnival midway. Serious, dedicated, often driven by the hounds of Hell, these artists pursue often off-putting, always fascinating visions without regard to popular acclaim or financial reward. Levin's profile/essay style is a unique blend of pooched journalism, quasi-autobiography, faux cultural history, and semi-scholarship, and the perfect vehicle by which to engage these beyond-the-box personalities. And from these engagements he fashions powerful arguments for the value of unfettered expression, no matter from how far outside the mainstream it may issue.

Levin, an author and attorney, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife Adele, his frequent collaborator. He is a long time contributing writer to The Comics Journal, where all of these pieces previously appeared. His last book, The Pirates & the Mouse: Disney's War Against the Counterculture, was hailed by critics as "masterful," "passionate," "elegant," "charming" (twice), "thoughtful," and "hilarious."

Essay subjects include: Chester Brown, S. Clay Wilson, Dori Seda, B.N. Duncan, Justin Green, Maxon Crumb, Crockett Johnson, Roy Lichtenstein, Graham Ingels, Jack Katz, Rory Hayes and more.