Not all comics are for kids - Brighton-based comics guru Dez Skinn prefers the kind that deal with sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

The 53-year-old, of Ditchling Road, has just released Comix: The Underground Revolution, a chronicle of the birth and death of the underground comics movement which sprang to life amid Flower Power in the late Sixties.

A former editorial director of Marvel UK, he has also edited titles including MAD Magazine, Buster, Conan, Star Wars Weekly, 2000 AD presents, Judge Dredd and Spider Man and won more than 20 of the industry's coveted Eagle awards.

The "comix" of the title emerged in Sixties America as a reaction to ultra-conservative and patriotic comics produced by the large corporations featuring characters such as Captain America and Superman.

Dez's book chronicles the careers of artists such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, who got bored with superheroes and produced their own pamphlets with a new and revolutionary style, freely attacking politicians, the war in Vietnam and corporate America.

These adult-oriented comics found their first dedicated audience in the Flower Power generation. The stories were typically about hippies and rebels who enjoyed sex and drugs, while putting up with persecution by evil police officers.

Dez said: "Underground comics were the last artform of the 20th Century. They were born in America at the end of the Summer of Love in 1967 and they died out ten years later in extreme censorship.

"The artists couldn't fit into a world of Batman and Superman. They'd grown up with Mad and were used to more cutting humour.

"When San Francisco became the hub of the entire hippy culture, it was only natural that the comic creators would produce their own work for that culture."

In recent years we have been treated to blockbusters of varying quality, including the gothic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, X-Men, Spider-man, Daredevil, Batman and Judge Dredd.

Between them they have pulled hundreds of millions of pounds into box offices across the globe.

But the comics that brought the characters to life have seen a drop in popularity. Newsagents' shelves once adorned with Buster, The Eagle and 2000AD are growing increasingly empty, as comics are sidelined to specialist shops.

Dez said: "Comics used to be like films and TV and books. You could do anything - detective stories, romances, westerns.

"When I worked for IPC in the Seventies, they were firm sale weeklies. If the sale went below 250,000 they were cancelled. It was an industry.

"Now there are only a handful of titles left. You are lucky if you get an average sale of 25,000 monthly. It's a niche market which doesn't get space in the news stands.

"The biggest outlets for comics these days are specialist shops.

"Once you have gone beyond the Beano and Dandy there is this massive jump to Judge Dredd and 2000AD, which is aimed at 18 plus.

"Without an influx of new readers the core readership has got older."

"The beauty of books is that they have a much longer shelf life and a much higher cover price."

But the majority of comics which dispense with fantasy have emerged from independent publishers and the underground comics scene.

Art Spiegelman's Maus, which dramatises his father's experience of the Holocaust, won the Pulitzer Prize.

It describes the experience of the death camps alongside the story of a tender and irritable father-son relationship, with Nazis depicted as cats and Jews as mice.

The underground movement spread to Britain in the Seventies, predictably causing a scandal which culminated in the infamous Old Bailey trial of the producers of the Nasty Tales comic, who were acquitted of obscenity.

Dez said: "No one had covered that decade of anarchy. There have been text books and diaries but no one has looked at the entire Anglo-American counter culture revolution.

"This book is a first. But I really want to stress that these are not children's comics.

"Comics are the easiest way to explain a story - or explain anything. They were even used by the US government to show troops how to unload and clean a rifle."

Dez was born in 1951 in Yorkshire, where he went to school and college before moving to London as a 20-year-old to work as a writer on Whizzer And Chips in 1970.

After moving on to other comics, he decided to start his own for film makers Hammer. He approached the company with his idea and they took him on.

He was headhunted by Marvel's bosses after scooping them with the release of Starburst, two weeks before the official Star Wars magazine was due to hit the stands.

In two years, Dez oversaw the publication of about 20 different comic titles including Spiderman, Hulk and Star Wars Weekly.

He also created his own characters, including Night Raven, a vigilante who fought against gangsters in Thirties Chicago.

But he had enjoyed a colourful career even before he began making money out of comics.

"I created national chat lines," he said. "I was interviewed live by Jeremy Paxman when he used to do breakfast television and I won.

"He wanted to get me on sex and we were so squeaky clean he couldn't get us.

"In a year we made £1 million but the industry was shut down because we were making too much money.

"It was a service to the community because we were enabling people to talk to people of a similar disposition without having to confront them.

"But I started out as a research chemist. I was rubbish - I just broke so many test tubes."

Dez moved to Brighton almost three years ago and divides his time between producing the industry's leading trade magazine, Comics International, and his family life with partner Vaseema Hamilton, the assistant principal of City College Brighton and Hove and two-year old daughter Alice.

The magazine sells as far afield as South Africa and Australia and, since its first edition 14 years ago, has become a Bible for comic fanatics.

Last year he launched a second magazine, called Toy Max, which features the latest film-related figurines.

He said: "Brighton is fantastic. I never go to London for meetings. People are always more than happy to spend the day here.

"The place has such a buzz to it and what an amazing arts community there is.

"There is this incredible thing where all time zones come together.

"You can be walking down Sydney Street and see punks, mods and new romantics.

"When I first moved to London I lived in Portobello Road and that is what Brighton has now."

Comix: The Underground Revolution was launched on Friday in hardback and is due for release in paperback by Collins & Brown next month.