Mary! A Graphic Memoir

words by Larry Gambone
art by Josh Wapp

Publication date: June 2025
Paperback, saddle stitched, color covers, black and white interior: $8

Buy at AK Press

What a time it was! The decades between the early 1960s and 1980s. Civil rights, mass worker unrest, general strikes, the Vietnam War and its opposition, women's liberation, environmentalism, LSD, and anarchism. All the forces bottled up by 1950s conformity and repression, exploded on to the scene. Radical youth, first as beatniks then hippies, freaks, and yippies, in all manner challenged authority. Most influential of all was the music. From folk to folk rock, blues rock, psychedelic, heavy metal, and gender bending glam rock. When the '60s impulse seemed to cool down in the mid-'70s, the younger wing of the Baby Boomer generation rose up in the punk rock movement. All of this was Mary's world.

Praise

“Not just another confessional 'live fast, die young' rebel story . . . Mary! is a touching and sensitively rendered lament of love and loss on the counter-cultural margins of the urban wasteland . . . a compellingly told and illustrated first-hand account of emotional entanglement in the underground web of desire, liberation, rage, despair, and self-destruction!”
~ Ron Sakolsky, author of Dreams of Anarchy and the Anarchy of Dreams, Surrealist Subversions, and Gone to Croatan

“Larry Gambone’s Mary! is a rollicking but tender anarchist ode to love, friendship, and intimacy. Straight from the heart. It’s also an entertaining and informative slice of 1960s to 1980s west coast counterculture and politics told with humour and insight from an endearing anarchist movement stalwart and prolific author. Kudos to graphic artist Josh Wapp for his engaging comic book rendition of this poignant and powerful story.”
~ Norman Nawrocki, author of Montreal Red Squared

“Once again, Larry Gambone shines his bright, insightful light on the great subcultures of the mid-20th century. For every famed free spirit like Allen Ginsberg or Joe Strummer, the underground attracted innumerable nameless refugees from trauma. Now, thanks to Gambone we know one of their names—Mary! Larry Gambone’s graphic memoir tells Mary Gambone’s story with the dazzling writing and art and love that she deserves.”
~ David Spaner, author of Keefer Street and Solidarity