Facts o’ Life Funnies

by Matt Peters

Content advisory: Strong language, nudity, and brief depictions of sexual activity, drug use, and interpersonal violence

In the 1960s, an underground comics scene emerged in the United States and United Kingdom, giving rise to small-press and self-published comics that featured stories about free love, recreational drug use, subversive politics, and other themes that were normally considered off limits in mainstream comics. Underground comics were commonly sold in head shops, where their mature content seemed less conspicuous among drug paraphernalia and other countercultural lifestyle goods. While mainstream publishers such as Marvel, DC, Dell, and Charlton cooperated with the Comics Code Authority, an industry-established regulatory body that screened comics for objectionable content, creators of underground comics flouted such regulation in favor of unfiltered free expression.

Underground comics reached their peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and their epicenter in the U.S. was San Francisco. Out of that time and place came Facts o’ Life Funnies,[1] an anthology of informative stories about sexual health. Facts o’ Life Funnies was open and explicit as it broached a range of topics, from pubic lice to birth control pills, offering an irreverent alternative to the more staid language and clinical tone found in standard sex education materials.

Published in 1972, Facts o’ Life Funnies contains 12 comic stories and two pages of recommended resources for sexual health. Each of the 12 stories is short, ranging from one to five pages, and illustrated in black-and-white line art. Creator credits are included in each story, but no distinction is made between writers and artists. However, most of the stories only credit a single person, making it safe to assume that writer and artist are one and the same. The comic’s front cover is adorned with a corner box claiming that Facts o’ Life Funnies is published by “The Underground Health Department.” In truth, it was a publication of the Multi Media Resource Center and Rip Off Press, the latter known for The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Robert Crumb’s Big Ass Comics, among other titles.

When read today, Facts o’ Life Funnies remains surprisingly relevant at moments, though much of it was clearly better suited for the early 1970s. That mixed relevance is apparent from the start, as the anthology opens with Michele Brand’s “If It Were True…” (inside front cover), a one-page series of vignettes addressing a variety of myths about sexual health. It starts with the myth that recovering from a sexually transmitted infection provides immunity from recurrences. While that misconception might persist today, a later vignette broaches the old warning that masturbation can lead to hairy palms, a myth that seems quaint decades later.

All of the vignettes in “If It Were True…” use anthropomorphized rabbits in lieu of human characters, a creative choice that gives the story a lighthearted tone. Most of the stories that follow it use human characters instead, but they still maintain some degree of levity. As a whole, Facts o’ Life Funnies aims to be informative but not overly serious. While informative, it tends to be light on details. The anthology is seemingly aimed at nudging readers to think more about their sexual health and talk more openly about it with their partners. To do that, the collected stories provide just enough information to underscore the importance of sexual health while trusting readers to do most of their fact finding elsewhere. That narrow focus limits the utility of Facts o’ Life Funnies but works well for it stylistically, letting it avoid long-winded dialogue and captions that could weigh down its narratives.

In terms of the sexually transmitted infections (STIs) it discusses, Facts o’ Life Funnies has an almost singular focus on gonorrhea. In Gilbert Shelton and Gary Frutkoff’s “Fat Freddy Gets the Clap” (pages 1-5), a series of infidelities spreads gonorrhea among a group of friends. In Ted Richards’ “Hold the Mashed Potatoes” (pages 18-21), a group of military personnel learns that a mess hall cook has gonorrhea, and misconceptions about catching the disease through casual contact lead to a series of comedic overreactions. In Gary Hallgren’s “Comes Clean” (pages 23-26), two friends learn that they contracted gonorrhea from a mutual sex partner.

Facts o’ Life Funnies predated HIV, and it was published before chlamydia cases were routinely tracked in the United States. However, other STIs such as genital herpes and syphilis were circulating at the time, but they go without mention in Facts o’ Life Funnies. Shary Flenniken’s “Trots and Bonnie” (pages 12-15) discusses cervical cancer screenings, but it doesn’t discuss the cancer’s viral causes.[2] Bobby London’s “Sins of the Flesh” (pages 27-30) explores the topic of pubic lice, a condition that’s often lumped together with STIs, even though it’s technically a parasitic infestation.

Another prominent theme in Facts o’ Life Funnies is pregnancy, including the prevention and termination of pregnancy. Oral contraceptives, colloquially known as the Pill, were still a relatively new technology when the comic was published. The Pill received initial approval in 1957 and full approval in 1960, some twelve years before the 1972 publication of Facts o’ Life Funnies. The anthology’s embrace of the technology is palpable in two interconnected stories by Lora Fountain that are both titled “Fertile Fanny” (pages 6 and 31). The first story is a cautionary tale about the unreliability of the withdrawal method (discontinuing vaginal sex immediately before ejaculation), recommending the Pill or other contraceptive methods in its stead. The second story stresses the importance of taking the Pill regularly, explaining that taking it on an as-needed basis (such as before, during, or after a date) is not effective.

Facts o’ Life Funnies predated (by a matter of months) the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationally. However, abortion had already been legalized in some states, including California, where Facts o’ Life Funnies was published. The anthology reflects the liminal moment of its publication, when abortion was neither universally banned nor universally protected in the United States. Robert Crumb’s “Preggers” (page 7-10) depicts a couple whose relationship is strained by an unintended pregnancy—and further strained by a risky attempt at a do-it-yourself abortion. Lora Fountain’s “The Abortion Game” (pages 16-17) is not a standard comic story but a narrative that mimics a board game. Readers imagine themselves rolling a pair of dice to determine where they land in a series of spaces. Each space indicates progress or peril in a quest to navigate an unintended pregnancy, in some cases by terminating it and in other cases not. In the latter cases, going through with the pregnancy is not always a personal choice; sometimes it’s a result of restrictive abortion laws. “You live in a state where all abortions are illegal” (page 16), reads one space.  “You don’t have enough money but still want an abortion” (page 16), reads another.

The stories throughout Facts o’ Life Funnies are heteronormative, but the anthology does offer information for gay and lesbian readers in “Suggested Reading” (page 32) and “Help!!” (inside back cover), two resource pages that list helpful books and health services respectively.  Most of the books that are listed are now out of print, and some of the recommended services are no longer around. As one example, the Daughters of Bilitis is listed for readers who want more information about same-sex attraction between women. The Daughters of Bilitis is a civil and political rights organization that dissolved in 1995.

A search of the Grand Comics Database for terms such as sex ed, sexual health, contraception, and family planning suggests that Facts o’ Life Funnies was the first commercially distributed English-language comic book focused on sex education.[3] Facts o’ Life Funnies was thus an important precedent in the discourse of health and wellness in comics.

Like many first-of-its-kind works, Facts o’ Life Funnies had its share of flaws. The most problematic feature of the anthology is its occasional inclusion of casual violence. The aforementioned “Preggers” includes a sequence in which a clearly distressed seventeen-year-old writhes in fear and pain as her older boyfriend attempts to perform a crude, amateur abortion on her. The story uses a caricatured drawing style that makes exaggerated physicality part of its visual language. However, using that style as a license to depict intimate coercion or violence will likely strike many readers as counter to the goals of the anthology—namely, to promote sexual health and wellness.

The aforementioned “Comes Clean” follows a similar pattern later in the anthology, using its non-realistic art style and comedic tone to depict an exaggerated, violent altercation between a young couple. Although the altercation is obscured by a giant dust cloud, the speech bubbles and written sound effects leave little to the imagination.

Those flaws aside, many readers will likely appreciate Facts o’ Life Funnies for its historical significance and its unique approach to sex education. Despite its age and small-press origins, copies can often be obtained for reasonable prices on eBay, as well as at local comic book shops that happen to have a copy.[4] Library special collections are another potential resource for interested readers. Washington State University, for example, has a copy in its Lynn R. Hansen Underground Comics Collection.

Notes

[1] The comic’s title logo implies that the title might be Incredible Facts o’ Life Sex Education Funnies. However, the actual title, based on the comic’s indicia, is simply Facts o’ Life Funnies. Another oddity of the front cover is that it mentions Terry Balawejder as one of the anthology’s contributors, but Balawejder is not credited in any of the stories inside the anthology. According to Grand Comics Database, Balawejder was Ted Richards’ spouse, so she was most likely an uncredited collaborator on Richards’ “Hold the Mashed Potatoes” (pages 18-21).

[2] When Facts o’ Life Funnies was published, herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2) was a suspected cause of cervical cancer, but later research pointed to human papillomavirus (HPV).

[3] Facts o’ Life Funnies was preceded in 1949 by the comic book Lucky Fights It Through, which EC Comics created for Columbia University. Published to promote the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, Lucky Fights It Through is the story of a cowboy named Lucky Jordan who contracts syphilis during a drunken night of sex. Although it beat Facts o’ Life Funnies by more than two decades, it was a giveaway comic rather than a commercially distributed one. In addition, it was a slim 16 pages, and newsstand and other retail comics were typically 32 pages. Thus, Lucky Fights It Through is an important predecessor but a slight misfit for the criteria mentioned above (in the sentence that prompted this note). As a print comic, Lucky Fights It Through is now a rare collectible, but it’s available digitally on the blog Hairy Green Eyeball 2 (color version), as well as the blog Ragged Claws Network (black-and-white version). Aside from Lucky Fights It Through, there were comics before Facts o’ Life Funnies that included sexual content but did so for entertainment rather than education.

[4] For an example of pricing, this reviewer found a copy in good condition for about $10 at The Collector’s Territory in Tucson, Arizona.

Matt Peters is a program manager at Health Sciences Design, an interdisciplinary health innovation program at the University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. He is also a longtime comic book reader and collector who can be found from time to time at his local comic book shops. Views expressed are his own.