The Crazed Meanderings of a Depraved Mind by D.A. Latimer, East Village Other Vol 4 issue 14 Willy Murphy, Decomposition: The Crazed Meanderings of a Depraved Mind by D.A. Latimer (1969), reprinted in Flamed Out: The Underground Adventures and Comix Genius of Willy Murphy, page 51. "Willy Murphy died tragically young. Before becoming a cartoonist, he worked for eight years as an advertising copywriter at J. Walter Thompson. The upheaval of the late 1960s, including experimenting with drug use and opposition to the Vietnam War, led Murphy to leave that world behind and dedicate himself to social commentary though his cartooning. In 1969, Murphy contributed to the all-comics tabloid Gothic Blimp Works. Moving to San Francisco around 1970, he was a key contributor to San Francisco Comic Book, and illustrated the cover of the fourth issue. Sometime in the early 1970s, along with Larry Todd and Gary King, Murphy began hanging around the Air Pirates collective — Dan O'Neill, Shary Flenniken, Bobby London, Gary Hallgren, and Ted Richards — and contributing to their projects. In early 1972, Murphy edited the comics section of Sunday Paper, the ambitious but brief-lived broadsheet section of underground comics published by John Bryan. Murphy illustrated the convention program of Berkeleycon 73, the first comic convention that really highlighted underground comix. In 1973–1974, Murphy helped co-found the self-publishing venture Cartoonists Co-Op Press, with Jay Lynch, Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Jerry Lane, Diane Noomin, and Art Spiegelman. Murphy illustrated three early stories by Harvey Pekar, which were published in Murphy's own Flamed-Out Funnies #1 (Keith Green, 1975) and later appeared in one of Pekar's American Splendor collections (although not in the actual comic book series American Splendor). In 1976, Murphy and Gary Hallgren worked closely with Gilbert Shelton and Ted Richards on Give Me Liberty: a Revised History of the American Revolution, Rip Off Press' comic about the hoopla surrounding the American Bicentennial. After developing a cold, Murphy died suddenly of pneumonia over the Washington's Birthday weekend in 1976." In 2023, Murphy's friends and family published "Flamed Out: The Underground Adventures and Comix Genius of Willy Murphy" through Fantagraphics, which is a terrific snapshot of both Murphy's journey from Mad Men to the Summer of Love and of that period of comics/comix. Murphy did not make much published work, and I am very happy to add this early piece to my UG collection.
