Comics are in the business of drawing whole worlds. Panel by panel, they build forests and cities and dreamscapes and other planets, and wherever they build a forest or an enchanted wood or a trippy vision, mushrooms tend to sprout. The fungus grows all over the pages of comics and graphic art, in the fairy-tale woods of children's comics, in the surreal visions of the underground, in the fantastical settings of every kind of drawn story, one more medium in which the mushroom has found a natural and recurring home. We have already looked, in this series, at one great comic mushroom, the Smurfs and their mushroom houses, but that is a single instance of something much larger, the fungus's broad and varied life across the whole world of comics and sequential art, which is what this article is about.
This article is about the mushroom in comics and graphic art, the fungus as a recurring image in the drawn and sequential storytelling of comics, from children's fairy-tale comics to the wild pages of the underground. It is a story about comics as an art form, about the mushroom's many roles across the drawn page, and about the fungus's particularly strong connection to the psychedelic underground comix of the counterculture. It connects to the whole visual tradition this series has explored, including psychedelic poster art and the psychedelic graphic icon. Verify any specific comics history and attributions against documented sources before publishing.
Comics as an art form
To take the comic mushroom seriously you first have to take comics seriously as an art form, which they genuinely are, a real and distinctive medium of visual and sequential storytelling. Comics combine images and words in sequence to tell stories, a genuine art form with its own history, techniques, traditions, and real artistry, the drawn page as a medium of narrative and visual expression, and they deserve to be understood as such, not as a lesser thing but as a real and rich form of art. The mushroom in comics belongs to this genuine medium, and appreciating it means appreciating comics themselves as the serious visual art they are.
What makes comics distinctive as a medium is worth noting, because it shapes how the mushroom appears there. Comics are a drawn medium, building their worlds entirely through illustration, and a sequential one, telling stories across panels in a flow of images, and this combination of the drawn and the sequential gives comics a particular character, able to build whole imagined worlds panel by panel, to depict anything the artist can draw, to unfold visions and stories across the page. This capacity to draw and build whole worlds means comics can conjure any setting and any image, including the fungal, wherever the story calls for it, the mushroom appearing in comics wherever the drawn world requires or invites it.
The freedom of the drawn page is central to the mushroom's life in comics, because comics can draw the fungus in any form and any role the story needs. Unlike photography, which must depict what exists, comics can draw anything, real or imagined, in any style, and this freedom means the mushroom can appear in comics in every possible form, realistic or fantastical, tiny or enormous, ordinary or magical, in whatever role and style the story and artist choose. This total freedom of depiction makes comics a peculiarly rich medium for the mushroom, the fungus able to take any form the drawn page can imagine, from the botanically accurate to the wildly fantastical, appearing across comics in an enormous range of forms and roles, as free and varied as the drawn imagination itself.
The fungus in the fairy-tale forest
One of the most natural homes for the mushroom in comics is the fairy-tale or enchanted forest, the magical woodland setting where the fungus has always belonged, and this role is worth exploring, because it draws on the mushroom's deep fairy-tale associations. Comics that build fairy-tale, magical, or fantastical woodland settings naturally fill them with mushrooms, the fungus a standard and expected feature of the enchanted forest, and this use of the mushroom to furnish the magical wood is one of its commonest and most natural roles in comics, drawing on the deep association of the fungus with the fairy-tale forest that this series has traced across illustration and folklore.
The mushroom serves the fairy-tale forest in comics as a marker of enchantment, a visual signal that we have entered the magical wood. When a comic wants to show that a forest is enchanted, magical, or fairy-haunted, mushrooms are one of the standard signals, the fungus appearing to mark the wood as a place of magic and wonder, its presence telling the reader at once that this is no ordinary forest but an enchanted one. This signaling function, the mushroom as a marker of the magical wood, draws on the fungus's deep fairy-tale associations, its established role as a feature of the enchanted forest letting it signal magic and enchantment at a glance, one of the visual signs comics use to mark a setting as fairy-haunted and wondrous.
This fairy-tale role connects the comic mushroom to the whole long tradition of the fungus in children's and fantastical illustration, which this series has explored. The mushroom in the comic fairy-tale forest is continuous with its long life in illustrated fairy tales and children's books, the same enchanted-forest fungus appearing now in the drawn panels of comics as it long appeared in storybook illustration, the fungus carrying its fairy-tale associations from the illustrated book into the comic page. This continuity places the comic fairy-tale mushroom in a long tradition of the fungus in fantastical illustration, the enchanted-forest toadstool a recurring feature of drawn fantasy across the illustrated book and the comic alike, the fungus at home in the magical wood wherever it is drawn.
The mushroom in comics is also often a home or a habitation, drawn as a dwelling for tiny characters, a role this series has met before in its most famous form. Comics that depict little folk, fairies, gnomes, small woodland creatures, frequently give them mushroom homes, the fungus drawn as a house or shelter for the very small, exactly the charming conceit this series explored in relation to the Smurfs and their mushroom houses. This use of the mushroom as a dwelling for tiny beings is a recurring comic motif, the fungus turned into a cozy home for the little folk of the drawn page, drawing on the same natural fit between the mushroom's shape and the idea of a little house, and on the same deep association of the fungus with the world of the small and magical. The comic mushroom is often a home as well as a plant, the drawn fungus sheltering the tiny inhabitants of the enchanted page.
The scale games that comics can play with the mushroom are worth noting too, since the drawn page can freely alter size in ways that suit the fungus's magical associations. Comics can draw the mushroom at any scale, tiny or enormous, and often play with its size for magical or surreal effect, giving us giant mushrooms towering over characters, or tiny ones sheltering insects, or fungi that grow and shrink in the manner of the size-changing mushroom this series traced in Alice in Wonderland. This freedom of scale, the comic mushroom drawn at any size and often changing size for effect, suits the fungus's magical and transformative associations perfectly, the drawn page able to make the mushroom as large or small as the story's magic requires, one more way the total freedom of comics gives the fungus a range of forms and roles the real organism could never take. The comic mushroom can be a towering giant or a tiny shelter, as the drawn magic demands.
The mushroom and the underground
The mushroom's connection to comics runs deepest, though, in a particular and genuinely significant tradition, the psychedelic underground comix of the counterculture, and this connection is worth exploring closely, because it is where the fungus and the comic form met most intensely. The counterculture produced a flourishing of underground comics, wild, uninhibited, psychedelic, alternative works that broke every convention of the mainstream comic, and these underground comix were deeply bound up with the whole psychedelic visual culture this series has traced, sharing artists, styles, and sensibilities with the psychedelic poster and the whole countercultural art scene. The mushroom, as a central emblem of that whole psychedelic culture, found a natural home in the underground comix, the fungus appearing throughout their wild psychedelic pages.
Pull quote: The underground comix took everything the mainstream comic wouldn't touch and put it on the page in wild psychedelic color. The mushroom, emblem of the whole trip, was right at home there.
The shared world of the underground comix and the psychedelic poster is worth emphasizing, because some of the same artists and sensibilities moved between them. The psychedelic poster art of the counterculture and the underground comix were closely connected, part of a single countercultural visual world, and some of the artists associated with the psychedelic poster, figures this series has noted in relation to 1960s poster art, were also involved in the underground comix, moving between the poster and the comic page, carrying the same psychedelic style and sensibility across both. This shared world means the underground comix belong to the same psychedelic visual tradition as the poster and the whole countercultural art scene, and the mushroom, central to that tradition, appears across all of it, in the comix as on the poster, one emblem of a single connected psychedelic visual culture.
In the underground comix, the mushroom carried its full psychedelic meaning, appearing as an emblem of the whole countercultural and psychedelic world the comix expressed. Because the underground comix were so bound up with psychedelic culture, the mushroom appeared in them as a central emblem of that culture, a recognized sign of the psychedelic and the countercultural, its presence marking the comix as part of the whole trippy alternative world. The mushroom in the underground comix is the fungus at its most fully psychedelic, an emblem of the whole counterculture and its altered states, appearing in the wild psychedelic pages as one of the central signs of the psychedelic world the comix celebrated and expressed, the fungus fully at home in the countercultural comic. This is one of the strongest connections between the mushroom and the comic form, the fungus and the underground comix bound together in the shared psychedelic culture of the counterculture.
The visual style of the underground comix suited the mushroom especially well, because it shared the whole psychedelic aesthetic the fungus belongs to. The underground comix were drawn in a wild, dense, flowing, often psychedelic style, full of intricate detail, distorted forms, and vivid visionary imagery, exactly the aesthetic this series has traced across the psychedelic poster and the whole countercultural visual culture, and the mushroom, rendered in this style, took on its full psychedelic character, drawn in the flowing visionary manner of the comix as an emblem of the altered and the strange. The fungus in the underground comix is not a neat botanical drawing but a wild psychedelic vision, rendered in the dense flowing style of the comix, and this stylistic fit between the fungus and the psychedelic comic aesthetic is part of why the mushroom belonged so fully in the underground, the fungus and the style sharing the whole visionary sensibility of the counterculture.
The freedom and transgression of the underground comix also suited the mushroom's countercultural meaning, the fungus at home in a medium that broke every rule. The underground comix were deliberately transgressive, breaking the conventions and taboos of the mainstream comic, wild and uninhibited and alternative, and the mushroom, as an emblem of the countercultural and the mind-expanding, was perfectly at home in this transgressive medium, its associations with the alternative and the boundary-crossing matching the comix's own rule-breaking spirit. The fungus belonged in the underground comix not just as a psychedelic sign but as an emblem of the whole transgressive, alternative, boundary-crossing sensibility the comix embodied, the mushroom and the underground comic sharing a spirit of uninhibited alternative freedom, the fungus at home among the wild rule-breaking pages as one of their emblems of the countercultural and the mind-expanding.
The graphic novel and beyond
Beyond the fairy tale and the underground, the mushroom appears across the whole contemporary world of comics and graphic novels, in an enormous range of roles and styles, and this breadth is worth surveying, because it shows the fungus's continuing life in the medium. Contemporary comics and graphic novels, a rich and serious art form, depict every kind of world and story, and the mushroom appears throughout them wherever forests, fantasy, the natural, the psychedelic, or the strange are drawn, the fungus a recurring feature of the contemporary drawn page across genres and styles. This continuing presence shows that the mushroom's life in comics is not confined to the fairy tale or the underground but extends across the whole contemporary medium, the fungus still sprouting throughout the drawn worlds of comics and graphic novels.
The mushroom serves contemporary comics in the full range of its meanings, from the naturalistic to the fantastical to the psychedelic, drawing on its whole rich store of associations. A contemporary comic might draw the mushroom naturalistically, as a real fungus in a real setting, or fantastically, as a magical or alien growth, or psychedelically, as an emblem of altered states, or in any other of the fungus's many meanings, the mushroom serving whichever role the story requires. This full range of uses across contemporary comics reflects both the richness of the mushroom as an image and the range of the medium, the fungus appearing in every possible role and meaning across the drawn page, as versatile in comics as it has been across all the other media this series has explored.
The rise of the graphic novel as a serious literary and artistic form has given the mushroom, like every other image, new depth and seriousness as a comic subject, and this is worth noting. As comics have matured into the graphic novel, a form capable of real literary and artistic ambition, the images within them, the mushroom among them, can carry real depth and meaning, the fungus appearing in serious graphic novels as a meaningful image rather than mere decoration, bound up with the themes and meanings of ambitious drawn works. This maturing of the medium means the comic mushroom can now be a serious artistic image, appearing in ambitious graphic novels with real depth and resonance, the fungus taken as seriously in the mature comic as it has been in the fine-art traditions this series has traced, from still life to visionary painting. The comic mushroom has grown up along with the medium.
The rich fantasy and science-fiction traditions of comics have given the mushroom particularly striking roles, the fungus imagined as alien, monstrous, or otherworldly. Comics love to invent strange worlds and creatures, and the mushroom, already a genuinely strange organism, lends itself beautifully to fantastical and science-fiction reimagining, drawn as alien flora, as sentient fungal beings, as monstrous or otherworldly growths, the fungus transformed by the comic imagination into something wondrous and strange. This fantastical reimagining of the mushroom, the fungus made alien and otherworldly on the drawn page, draws on the real strangeness of fungi that this series has explored, and pushes it further into pure invention, the comic imagination taking the already-strange mushroom and making it stranger still, an alien and wondrous growth of imagined worlds. The comic fungus is often not of this earth at all, reimagined by fantasy and science fiction into something genuinely other.
The way comics can show the mushroom's growth and transformation over their sequence of panels is worth a note as well, since the sequential form suits the fungus's transforming nature. Comics tell stories across a sequence of images, able to show change and transformation over the panels, and this suits the mushroom's associations with growth and transformation, the fungus able to be shown sprouting, growing, changing across a sequence of drawn panels in a way that captures its transforming character. This sequential depiction of the mushroom's growth and change, the fungus transforming across the panels, is one more way the comic medium suits the mushroom, the sequential drawn form able to render the fungus's growth and transformation over time, the mushroom's transforming nature depicted in the unfolding sequence of the drawn page.
The drawn fungus in the whole story
Stepping back, the mushroom's life in comics is one more rich chapter in the fungus's vast cultural history, distinguished by the particular freedoms and traditions of the drawn and sequential medium, and it is worth seeing in that larger context. Comics offer the mushroom a peculiarly free and varied home, able to draw the fungus in any form and any role, and a particularly strong connection through the psychedelic underground comix to the whole countercultural art tradition, so that the comic mushroom is both extraordinarily various, appearing in every possible form across the drawn page, and, in the underground tradition, especially deeply psychedelic. This combination of total freedom and deep psychedelic connection makes comics a distinctive and rich medium for the fungus, one more domain in which the mushroom has found a full and varied life.
The comic mushroom draws, like all the fungus's other lives, on the deep store of cultural meaning the mushroom has accumulated, which the drawn page deploys in its own way. Comics can draw on any of the fungus's rich associations, the fairy-tale and the psychedelic and the natural and the strange, deploying them across the drawn page as the story requires, so that the comic mushroom is one more harvest of the fungus's whole cultural inheritance, its accumulated meanings put to work in the drawn and sequential medium. The comic page draws on the mushroom's whole cultural history, deploying its rich associations in the service of drawn storytelling, one more medium in which the fungus's deep accumulated meaning is put to fresh use.
That the mushroom has found so full and varied a life in comics, from the fairy-tale forest to the underground comix to the serious graphic novel, is one more testament to its extraordinary richness and adaptability, the fungus at home across the whole range of the drawn medium. The mushroom's presence throughout comics, in every form and role and meaning, is one more expression of its general cultural power, the fungus so rich and recognizable and various that it thrives across the whole world of the drawn page. The honest way to hold the comic mushroom is with appreciation for comics as the genuine art form they are, with recognition of the fungus's particularly deep connection to the psychedelic underground comix, and with a sense of the total freedom the drawn page gives the mushroom, able to be anything the artist can draw. Panel by panel, in fairy-tale woods and psychedelic visions and ambitious graphic novels, the mushroom keeps sprouting across the drawn page, one more medium in which the endlessly adaptable fungus has grown a full and various life.
Why this matters
The mushroom in comics matters, first, as a full and varied life for the fungus in a genuine and distinctive art form, the drawn and sequential medium of comics and graphic art. The mushroom appears throughout comics, in the fairy-tale forest, the underground comix, and the contemporary graphic novel, in every possible form and role the drawn page allows, and its life across this medium is a rich chapter in the fungus's cultural history, distinguished by the total freedom of depiction that comics offer and by the particularly deep connection between the mushroom and the psychedelic underground.
It matters, too, for the fungus's especially strong connection to the psychedelic underground comix, one of the deepest links between the mushroom and any medium. The underground comix of the counterculture, bound up with the whole psychedelic visual culture this series has traced and sharing artists and sensibilities with the psychedelic poster, gave the mushroom a natural home as a central emblem of the countercultural and psychedelic world, the fungus fully at home in their wild psychedelic pages. The honest way to hold the comic mushroom is with appreciation for comics as a serious art form, with recognition of the fungus's deep psychedelic connection to the underground comix, and with a sense of the extraordinary freedom and variety the drawn page gives the mushroom, able to appear in any form and role across the whole world of comics. The fungus grows all over the drawn page, from the enchanted wood to the psychedelic vision, one more medium conquered by the endlessly adaptable mushroom.