The Print Mint, Inc. was a major publisher and distributor of underground comix based in the San Francisco Bay Area during the genre's late 1960s-early 1970s heyday.
[2] Don and Alice Schenker started The Print Mint as a picture-framing shop and retailer of posters and fine art reproductions on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, in December 1965, originally sharing a store with Moe's Books, but later on moving into a separate location down the block.
The dance venues at The Avalon Ballroom and The Fillmore were advertised by posters designed by artists Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, and others.
[5] 1967 was an eventful time, and the store became a center of neighborhood activities and a main source of countercultural information and creative energy to the huge influx of young people coming into San Francisco that summer.
In addition, they published one of the first ecologically themed comics, The Dying Dolphin, a solo effort by rock poster artist Jim Evans with contributions by Ron Cobb and Rick Griffin.
As the first publisher to invest heavily in the underground comix movement (and its distribution), the Print Mint was instrumental in the form's popularity and widespread reach in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
A few of those, including Gilbert Shelton and Frank Stack, broke off in early 1969 to form their own publisher, Rip Off Press, taking some of the more established cartoonists (like Crumb) with them.
[9] The Print Mint's bold experiment with Arcade: The Comix Revue, started in 1975 and edited by Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, with most issues sporting a cover by R. Crumb, paved the way for RAW!
Previous to that, Simon Lowinsky, owner of the Phoenix Gallery on College Avenue in Berkeley, had organized an exhibition of the Zap collective's original drawings, and had been arrested on the same charge.