Terminal Exposure: Comics, Sculpture, and Risky Behavior

by Michael McMillan, Dan Nadel (introduction)

248 pages, Hardcover

Published July 22, 2025

Reviews

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael "not really a cartoonist" McMillan contributed pieces across the many great underground publications of the '70s, ranging from Weirdo, Young Lust and more, and yet remains an outsider amidst an already fringe portion of the medium. With Terminal Exposure, New York Review Comics collects his many comics and strips from a myriad of publications, including his 1971 one-shot, Terminal Comics.



Terminal Comics #1, Apex Novelties, 1971

Many of the strips collected here are autobiographical in nature, though fairly steeped in surrealism and narrative experimentation. A significant deviation from his peers working other underground publications in 1960s-70s San Francisco, McMillan's sterile visual language and dry wit provided ample juxtaposition to the boisterous, transgressive and politically charged comics one would expect from the time. McMillan's strips have a quaintness to them, like boyhood fantasies expressed through a more refined lens. Much of McMillan's experimental art comes not really from playful manipulations of the medium - indeed, his simple paneling and austere lines can mostly appear as dry and tame - but rather from the comic use of genre tropes amidst the many reality based comics here.

Perhaps not many were asking for a collection of Michael McMillan's comics, but I'm glad NYRC curated a hefty collection of his works from his tenure making comics.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing anyone needs to know about a figure like Henry Darger, the Chicago janitor who spent decades privately composing and illustrating a fifteen-thousand-page epic, In the Realms of the Unreal, is that he existed. Virtually unknown in life, Darger became famous in death—famous in the same romantic way that all outside artists tend to make it: as visionaries uncorrupted by the poisons of commerce and public opinion.

The same—similar—could be said of American artist Michael McMillan. Apart from a handful of appearances in the underground comics of the sixties and seventies; apart from an association with the likes of R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman; apart from the fact that he is, well, still living, McMillan, who was born in 1933, has largely avoided the limelight. Call it art for art’s sake: he’s done it for himself all along.

All of which makes the publication of Terminal Exposure, the first-ever collected edition of McMillan’s work, just the kind of moment for celebration no one ever sees coming. ...

Rest of the review here: https://ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/07/2...