[The] best young comics-makers, Robert Crumb and Vaughn Bodé, aren't sick and dirty; they're gross and funny. Their grossness takes the form of four-letter words and more or less naked women … or animals. So what's new? The grossness is new. In our day, gentlemen of the jury, those words and that nakedness were dirty; they generated sniggers and sidelong looks. Grossness is better. Laughing is better than leering.

As for the humor, well, it's television humor, I suppose, but it works. In the second of Fritz the Cat's three stories, Fritz is a C.I.A. agent ordered to discover the new Chinese ultimate weapon. The James Bond gags are okay, but when Fritz is captured and thrown before "Captain Stin Ki Chin Ki … Head of Seclet Porice Folce! Most fealed man in arr of China!" and he says, "Gleetings, paper tiger Amelican! Terr us, what has blought...