A story of two men, two comic strips, and their intense encounter with 1960s American counterculture.

In his earlier novels, Funny Papers and Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, Tom De Haven embarked on a dazzling tour of twentieth-century America, revealed through the world of the comic strips and their creators. Now in Dugan Under Ground, he transports us to the explosive underground-comics scene of the sixties.

It's 1967, the Summer of Love. Roy Looby, a gifted young cartoonist, deserts his mentor, the legendary strip man Ed Biggs, and heads to San Francisco's Haight Ashbury to join the drop-outs and musicians. In the reckless spirit of the times, Looby creates "The Imp Eugene," a libidinous comic-book character who is a far cry from Biggs's signature figure, Derby Dugan -- the cheerful icon of a more optimistic generation. Just like his real-world counterpart, hippie cartoonist R. Crumb, Looby is soon celebrated and vilified for his creation. And then he disappears, rumored to have lost his mind during the drug-fueled creation of a cartoon masterpiece.

A fabulous, strange trip across a wildly changing America, Dugan Under Ground is a rich, inventive tale about the suffocations of jealousy, the regrets that kill the spirit, and the mythic qualities of American popular culture.