With each of those projects I wasn't thinking about how the layout would really affect the story I was working on - it wasn't the content that was affecting the layout, it was, how I wanted to draw at that point in time.
I think people should have the legal right to hurt themselves without fearing that they're going to get locked up for doing so. But on a personal level, if someone I loved was hurting himself or herself in front of me, I would, of course, try to restrain them.
I'd begun reading Crumb shortly before that, and other underground stuff, so that was an influence to some degree. Of course the Marvel and DC comics, they had been my main interests in my teenage years.