In the late 1960s England's major underground newspaper, International Times (IT), began including more cartoons into their content, mixing in some British comics with quite a few American underground comics. It was a popular move that drove up their circulation numbers. In 1970, one of their photographers, Graham Keen, left the paper to launch Cyclops, the first major British underground comic with national distribution. Cyclops folded after four issues, probably because it featured mostly British comics, which at the time were of significantly poorer quality than American comics. But Bloom Publications (publisher of IT) saw the potential in the comic book format and launched its own underground comic book, Nasty Tales, the following year.

Unlike Cyclops, Nasty Tales focused on reprinted American underground comics. That may sound old hat to Americans, but people in Great Britain had never seen a comic book that delivered page after page of Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Greg Irons, S. Clay Wilson and Spain Rodriguez. Nasty Tales was 52 pages thick and every issue featured at least 32 pages of American underground comics (as much as most American comic books). It was easily the most popular British underground of its time, helped pave the way for undergrounds that would follow (in more ways than one), and inspired many British cartoonists to pursue work in underground comics.

The first issue of Nasty Tales reprinted one of Robert Crumb's cartoons from Snatch Comics #1, "Grand Opening of the Great Intercontinental Fuck-in and Orgy Riot," which looked every bit as raunchy as it sounds. Though this same cartoon had previously been published in IT without a problem, this time an eight-year-old boy picked up Nasty Tales #1 at a news stand and took it home. When his mother found the comic book and perused it, she tore it to pieces and took the shredded book down to the local police station. This incident led to Bloom Publications and the staff at Nasty Tales being indicted in 1971 for possessing obscenity with the intent to distribute.

The Nasty Tales trial at the Old Bailey (the most important criminal court in Great Britain) in January, 1973 was a national event and contentious affair. While the trial resulted in a not guilty verdict for Bloom Publications and the comic book's staff, the costs of the trial derailed the publication (the judge denied a motion to reimburse the defendants for their legal expenses). In fact, the seventh and final issue of Nasty Tales came out before the trial even began. After the series folded, the trial was memorialized in 1973 in the comic book The Trials of Nasty Tales, which was copublished by Bloom and H. Bunch Associates and, somewhat ironically, featured all British creators.

While its run may not have lasted long, Nasty Tales was a vitally important publication in the history of British undergrounds. The notorious trial that it engendered (and the resulting not guilty verdict) would embolden British publishers to produce hundreds of other underground comics in the coming years. And despite the emphasis on American comics, Nasty Tales also gave Britains Chris Welch and Edward Barker (who was one of the defendants in the trial) considerable exposure.