The term 'underground' has a set of historical uses in various spheres of culture - comics, film, art and music. It maintains a symbiotic relationship with the mainstream, trading street-level and institutional in a continual cycle of unearthing and the risk of not being marginal any more. Guest Editor Lucas Ihlein casts a critical eye on what it was and is now including: copy culture, web-based and email art, comix, animation, zine and fan culture, activism, totally disappeared artists of the 1960s and 70s, marginal and experimental art, guerilla gardening, mining, rubbish dumps, living underground and archiving the underground. About the launch of this issue Prints of Lucas Ihlein's design Under Ground that was used for the cover of this issue are available from Big Fag Press Big Fag Press
