Inner City Romance

Colwell has spent most of his career as a painter, firmly rooted in the heart of the counterculture. (He worked as a courtroom sketch artist in the trial of Patti Hearst, for instance.) Produced between 1972 and 1978, these comics reveal a deep awareness of the era: stories filled with unease, disintegration, hope, and a yearning to escape—either to bed, just to get laid or high, or else to some New Age paradise, free of despair and loneliness. Some stories are dated, as is the more psychedelic art. In “Radical Rock,” an impending tragedy at a concert—a bust by the “pigs”—is told in rhyme, which now seems fairly corny, yet Colwell captures the desperation to communicate and to be heard, surrounded by forces of law that are trying to clamp down and smother these voices. An added bonus is the gallery of Colwell’s paintings that explores race, sex, and power, including a 2004 painting depicting the abuse at Abu Ghraib, which caused an uproar and led to an attack on the manager of the gallery where it was displayed. Erotic, violent, and trippy, these are counterculture comix that still have bite. (Feb.)