While comics today are often primarily associated with the superhero stories that provide fodder for blockbuster movies, they are and have been a much more diverse body of literature, and one worthy of study.  A mainstay of childhood and young adult reading, comics have incorporated many genres, including action, humor, romance, crime, horror, drama, science fiction, and fantasy.  There is also a strong subversive movement, largely aimed at adults, of ‘underground’ work that uses the medium in innovative ways. A database dedicated to this art form, Underground and Independent Comics focuses on those outside the mainstream, from the lurid 1950s horror and crime comics which prompted the restrictive Comics Code to cheekily irreverent like R. Crumb’s Zap Comix to much more … Continued