Spontaneous Combustion (Skip Williamson autobiography)

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Spontaneous Combustion is Skip Williamson's memoir about Art and Life. About his motivations and the voices in his head that command him do what he does.

His is a childhood so consumed by the specter of comic books that he's driven to pre-pubescent larceny and discovers the awesome power of comic art. And later into the roil of the turbulent late 60s Chicago where he, Robert Crumb and Jay Lynch helped jump start the underground comix movement with Bijou Funnies, a comic that featured dancing chickens, stories of shocking sexual angst, psychotropic other-dimensional travel, satanic cartoon ravings, and introduced the world to the seminal cartoon characters Snappy Sammy Smoot, Nard and Pat and Mr. Natural. And into the mean streets of the Windy City where he witnesses the police riots in '68, becomes friends with Abbie Hoffman and illustrates "Steal This Book". He gives witness to the Chicago 7 trial, the implosion of the radical left and, as he trips the psychedelic outback by consuming LSD and enjoys undulating carnality fueled by "Free Love" and psychoactive substance.

Stumbling along the craggy road to blivion Skip enjoys drug- fueled adventures with his friend Bob Rudnick, the Righteous One, and eventually Rudnick's death. And his friendship and an art/musical partnership with John Prine. He tells the story of a messy suicide during the lunch hour while working at Playboy magazine, and his move to Atlanta -- an artistic sinkhole -- where he receives a death threat during an art lecture, and where his art is painted out on a gallery facade because of distasteful content. And as eight of his paintings are taken off the wall at an exhibition and destroyed because an art patron saw them as anti-Semitic and satanic.

These stories and much more.