In its day, Krazy Kat, by George Herriman, was out on its own on the grimy ink-soaked back pages of American newspapers: a comic strip that aspired to the heights of social philosophy. But the current landscape of American culture is overcrowded with its progeny. Comics have long since evolved from a juvenile amusement to a respected form of narrative art in graphic novels; contemporary artists like David Shrigley have become famous using familiar comic-strip formats as media for absurdist social critique. The long meander between those two points is the subject of “American Alternative Comics, 1980-2000: ‘Raw,’ ‘Weirdo,’ and...