urally, to an interest in further understanding what Arthur Rimbaud meant when he wrote “Je est un autre,” the French for “I is an other” [sic] – utilizing the third-person verb to fully convey his sense of disenfranchisement. In Austin, the 1960s counterculture brought about a significant change in expression with zines like The Texas Ranger, which was distributed at the University of Texas. Despite the general extensions of the first amendment during the time, a young Jack “Jaxon” Jackson and others were reportedly fired from the staff for what Jaxon called “a petty censorship violation.” Although I have no idea what this was about, it might be the reason that Jaxon invested his time into creating God Nose in 1964, which many consider to be the first underground comic, predating R. Crumb’s Zap Comix by four years. Today, a first-run mint copy of God Nose
would bring upwards of $20,000. Like most of the hipsters, Jackson left the Drag for the Haight in 1966, where he made psychadelic show flyers and partied hard. In 1969 he founded the legendary Rip Off Press with some other guys from Texas. Reading some of the comics Jaxon did during the time, it seems like they spent most of their money partying, and thus, weren’t terribly successful, but somehow the business managed to stay afloat, and a decade later Jaxon began to try his hand at revisionist historical fiction, publishing the landmark Comanche Moon and practically inventing that genre in comics – so far as I know. His historical fiction is focused on retelling stories of Texas as they ought to have been told from the beginning, without the obvious bias and prejudice of conservative politics. His second work of historical revisionism,
Los Tejanos, is considered one of the top 100 comics of the century, thus all-time, by the Comics Journal. It tells the story of Juan Seguin and other Tejas-born Mexicans who worked with Anglos to form Texas as we know it and were swiftly forgotten or written off as traitors. In all of his work Jaxon engages with complication and attempts to make sense of it, reading between the lines with a critical eye in order to reiterate what probably happened in actuality. Jack Jackson led an intriguing life. His legacy deserves more credit than has been received. And I believe most of the reason for this injustice is that Jaxon took his own life on June 8, 2006. Which is too much for some people to accept as an end. But he probably killed himself because he was dying of prostate cancer, not because he was crazy or depressed. And isn’t it every person’s right to do so? After all, if you