D.K. Holm - Robert Crumb (Pocket Essential Series) - Pocket Essentials (2005) PDF

Robert Crumb 14/2/05 11:38 am Page 2
Other books by this author

Quentin Tarantino
Film Soleil
Robert Crumb
D.K. Holm
www.pocketessentials.com
First published in Great Britain 2003
This edition published in 2005 by

Pocket Essentials, P.O. Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ, UK
Distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing,

P.O. Box 257, Howe Hill Road, North Pomfret,Vermont 05053
Copyright © D.K. Holm 2005
The right of D.K. Holm to be identified as the author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or

introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any
means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of the publisher.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.The book is sold
subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in
any form or binding or cover other than in which it is published, and without similar
conditions, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publication.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1–904048–51 X
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks

Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman
Acknowledgements
I should like to recognize the unwavering and cheerful

assistance and support of the following people and
institutions: Tim Appelo, Charles Boucher, Donald
Fiene, Desiree French, Helaine Garren (who, among
other things, offered a necessary and thorough reading
of the text, accompanied by timely dispensations of
food), Britta Gordon (for introducing me to Peter
Brown, among numerous other services), Charles and
Ingrid Gordon (for help in a move that made a book
even possible), Damon Houx (who told me the first
time I met him about a Crumb book I had never heard
of), Anne Hughes, Shawn Levy, Patti Lewis, Cynthia
Lopez, Andrea Marsden, Cindy Mason, Gregg Morris,
Rebecca Rich, Michael Russell (a great cartoonist,
editor, journalist, and movie reviewer), Charles
Schwenk (for invigorating discussions of all manner of
subjects from Saint Augustine to Marvel Comics), Sam
Smith, Greg Tozian, Mark Christensen, Chris Ryall (my
editor at MoviePoopShoot.com), Robert Wederquist
(of the indispensable DVDJournal.com), and a certain
copy editor who wishes to go unnamed, but who
performed superb eleventh hour work on the first third
of the book. In addition, I also wish to cite the embat-
D. K . H O L M
tered Multnomah County Library, Portland State

University Library, and Powell’s Books for their seem-
ingly endless resources. Acknowledgment is also due to
Paul Duncan for, among many other things, reassuring
emails. And finally of course Robert Crumb for
submitting to yet another interview from an annoying
intruder. Mr Crumb read the text of the first edition
and made several key corrections, for which I thank
him. Any remaining errors that escaped his eye remain,
of course, mine.
6
Contents
1. Introduction: Who Reads R. Crumb? 9

Out of the Past: Influences On Crumb (Pieter
Bruegel, George Cruikshank, James Gillray),The
Lure Of Comic Books (Carl Barks, E. C. Segar, Marge,
Walt Kelly, Harvey Kurtzman), Crumb:
The Consummate Cartoonist And Writer
2. The Genesis Of A Future Genius

(1943–1964) 31
Crumb Family Comics,Your Vigor For Life
Appalls Me: Robert Crumb Letters, 1958–1977,
The Yum Yum Book
3. The Bitter Years Of Early Struggle

(1965–1970) 46
‘Mr Natural in Death Valley,’ ‘Dirty Dog,’
‘Lenore Goldberg And Her Girl Commandos,’
‘Joe Blow,’ ‘It’s Really Too Bad’
7
D. K . H O L M
4. Life On The Farm: Brutal Years Of

Breakdown And Defeat (1971–1979) 64
‘Bo Bo Bolinski: He’s The No. 1 Human Zero’
and ‘A Gurl,’ ‘Pete The Plumber,’ ‘Fritz The
Cat, “Superstar,”’ ‘Whiteman Meets Big Foot,’
‘Singing In The Bathtub,’ R. Crumb And The
Cheap Suit Serenaders
5. Retreat To Realism (1980–1993) 81

‘Excerpts From Boswell’s London Journal
1762–1763,’ ‘Psychopathia Sexualis,’The
‘Devil Girl’ Series, ‘The Confessions Of Robert
Crumb,’ ‘R. Crumb, “The Old Outsider,” Goes
To The … Academy Awards,’ ‘When The
Niggers Take Over America’
6. Post-Crumb, The Later Years Of

Fruitful Harvest (1994–2003) 111
Art & Beauty,The R. Crumb Coffee Table
Art Book, ‘Bad Karma,’ ‘From
Cradle To Grave’
7. The Latest Confessions:

An Interview With Robert Crumb 140
8. Reference Materials 153
8
Introduction:Who Reads R. Crumb?
Yes, who actually reads R. Crumb?

At first thought, you’d think that everyone would
read the internationally famous cartoonist who created
characters such as Mr Natural and Fritz the Cat and
popularized phrases such as ‘Keep on truckin’.’ You’d
think that everyone would respect the ‘godfather’ of the
underground comics revolution of the Sixties, when his
psychedelic and confessional content expanded the
limitations of a medium that traditionally favoured
superheroes or funny animals.
Crumb’s Head Comix in 1970 and The R. Crumb
Coffee Table Art Book in 1997 bookmark an era of
profound change in the nature of a medium once
viewed as kids’ stuff. Both books were bestsellers, and
Crumb is also the recipient of the weird honour of
having his complete oeuvre published in more or less
chronological order in his lifetime. His letters and
sketchbooks have seen print, the sort of honour usually
reserved for grand old men of the arts community.
Popular movies have been made of his work, an award-
winning documentary has been made about him,
galleries and museums have exhibited his work, and
merchandising – everything from calendars to statuettes
9
D. K . H O L M
– helps to keep his imagery and worldview in the

public eye.
But who actually reads Crumb?
Hardcore feminists certainly don’t. Crumb’s rise to
prominence coincided with the hippie movement but
also the rise of feminism. Just as the cartoonist was
enjoying a new-found freedom of expression, feminists
were coming down on him for just the sort of fantasies
he expressed. Cartoonist Trina Robbins, interviewed in
Crumb, is characteristic of feminist reaction to Crumb:
‘I was used to what he had been doing which was really
quite sweet.Then he did this one that was just incred-
ibly hostile to women, very sexually hostile, and I
wasn’t expecting it. I was really shocked. It’s hard for me
to believe that he can’t just channel himself into doing
better work.’
And he was certainly spurned by art critics. Except
for a few, including Robert Hughes, Time magazine’s
wide-ranging art critic, and Kirk Varnadoe, who
included Crumb in his Metropolitan Museum of
Modern Art show, ‘High and Low,’ Crumb has been as
much ignored by the critics as were Will Eisner, Walt
Kelly, and a host of other comic artists before them.
Critical silence has greeted most of Crumb’s publica-
tions. No New York Times review, no Art In America
profiles, despite the fact that Crumb, after a brief slow-
down in the early Seventies, has been producing inter-
esting, varied, and controversial work without
interruption. Only recently has a change occurred in
Crumb’s critical reception.
Nor is he read necessarily by the fanboys.The pimply
10
RO B E RT C RU M B
kids may own the comics, but it is simply merchandise

that rests prophylactically in plastic sacks, untouched.
Anyone familiar with the world of collecting knows
that artists such as Crumb are more likely to be
collected than read, for actually reading the comic
would potentially damage it and reduce its value.
Crumb, a collector of old jazz records himself, under-
stands the psychology without necessarily appreciating
the fanaticism that greets him. On record collecting,
Crumb has written that ‘When I first saw some … old
Race Record jackets with the original record inside
framed on the wall in the homes of record collectors I
would visit, how I envied and coveted this stuff!’
Here’s an imaginary profile of a typical Crumb fan.
He’s a male, of course; a youngish-looking older guy, or
a prematurely old youngster, already bitter at the world
for the way he’s been mistreated. He is a collector, most
notably of mainstream stuff like comics or graphic
novels or music, but also probably of some kind of
offbeat objects or cultural products, like city maps, say,
or place mats from Southern spare-rib joints in the
Thirties. He dresses in carefully selected vintage
clothes, preferably from the Fifties; has glasses, or adult
acne, or both. He knows way too much about obscure
things and, because of his loathing of pop culture and
contemporary society, he knows little about what’s
going on in the ‘real’ world. He has problems with
women. Frustrated in his encounters with bosses,
collecting competitors, and women, he leads a life of
resentment, glowering at the guys who get the girls. In
Crumb’s work, though, he finds solace. Someone is
11
D. K . H O L M
putting down on paper exactly what he feels inside.

Imagine Steve Buscemi’s Seymour in Ghost World and
you’ve got the picture.
This is a parody, of course, and slightly mean spirited.
However, it does point to the very special place that
Crumb occupies in the psyches of several generations
of comic book readers. For a period of time, Crumb
was in danger of being cast among the celebrators of
white male rage, a popular phase of comedy in the early
Nineties exemplified by ‘shouting’ or gross comics such
as Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay and Sam Kinison. The sheer
diversity of Crumb’s work, however, has warded off
confining it to any one category. Crumb appeals to all
walks of life, and to both genders.
I ran into a friend on the street. She was going to
grad school at the time and was in the middle of finals.
I mentioned that I was writing a book about Crumb,
but did so hesitatingly, adding unconfidently,‘You prob-
ably hate him.’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I love Crumb’s comics.’
My friend admitted to a liking in general for the
weird, the crazy, the ‘alternative,’ the seamy, the kind of
difficult-to-take truth treated in Crumb’s comics and
elsewhere – a shocking confession, coming from
someone whom, based on her appearance, you would
cast as a small town librarian or research assistant. For
her to admit to a lust for outsiders such as Crumb was
shocking, but gratifying.
‘I’ve thought a lot about this, because I get attacked
for my taste in humour surprisingly often,’ she went on.
‘But I appreciate “offensive” culture for a couple of
12
RO B E RT C RU M B
reasons. First, I find most of it funny. Even when offen-

sive, it is still funny and I like to laugh. I guess my
humour sensor is larger than my sense of what is truly
offensive. George Carlin was right when he said that
you can laugh at everything. Second, there is a not-
sosubtle political agenda embedded in my appreciation
of raunchy culture.
‘I tire of hearing arguments for reasons why I should
blindly embrace the cultural ideals of minority groups,
merely because they are racial minorities. I am much
more interested in intellectual and cultural minorities,
and the purveyors of offensive culture are these minori-
ties.
‘Anyone who tests the taboos of a society, as Crumb
does in his comics, is helping that society to define or
even redefine itself. Constant re-evaluation of what is
acceptable is necessary for a dynamic, progressive
society.’
Another friend of mine is a filmmaker who has done
documentaries and public service announcements for
public broadcasting stations. When I told her I was
writing a book on Crumb, she was almost as excited as
I was.
‘I love Crumb,’ she said, ‘and I love Crumb, the
movie,’ she added. ‘I find Crumb a brilliant artist and
progressive thinker as he channels all of his intellect,
dysfunction, sexual perversions, pain, humour, and
political incorrectness into his comics. The movie was
fantastic for a myriad of reasons.The most obvious was
the fact that the filmmaker had known Crumb and his
family for 20 or more years, which gave him the insight
13
D. K . H O L M
and the access to portray Crumb as he really is.

‘I disagreed with the pervading criticism when the
movie came out that the film tried to exploit how
weird and dysfunctional Crumb and his family were.
They were weird and dysfunctional and I think the film
did a good job of leaving to the imagination what
abuses the father must have inflicted on the family, and
why the sisters didn’t want to participate, etc. I think
the film is also successful in its message. For me it illus-
trated what might have become of Crumb had he not
had this gift, or more important, had he not pursued it.’
It’s easy to categorize people and difficult for them
to escape categorization once it’s been claimed for
them. That’s the core of the gripe against both the
media coverage of artists and scholarly studies of them.
Orson Welles will forever be the man ‘afraid of finishing
his films,’ both by newsweeklies and by scholars who
have dedicated their lives to researching him.
Our desire for narrative often causes a distortion; a
need to make a personality fit into the procrustean bed
of a priori story structure can ravage our idea of what
people are really like. Also, it is difficult to acquire a
fully rounded view of another person (Robert Caro’s
biography of Lyndon Johnson is 3,000 pages and
counting). But often it is simply a natural inclination to
recoil from the full weight of humanity in all its facets.
As Eliot said, human beings can only stand so much
reality.
As Crumb himself said in a letter to his friend Mike
Britt dated November 2, 1963, ‘People have to classify
and categorize everything … It makes life look so
14
RO B E RT C RU M B
much simpler … Life is much too complex and vague

to draw lines and put everything securely under certain
headings.’That’s what this book hopes to avoid doing.
Out of the Past: Influences On Crumb

The first time you see a Crumb comic, you’re likely to
think, ‘I’ve seen this style somewhere before.’ Crumb’s
early cartooning manner was both comfortably old and
agreeably new at the same time. It harked back to
something you couldn’t quite put your finger on while
portraying human beings and ‘funny animals’ in
modern, candid situations. Though readers in the
Sixties found his content uniquely comic book-like, his
early style nevertheless evokes vague memories of non-
comic book predecessors.This effect of instant recogni-
tion was especially pronounced in the late Sixties when
various direct cartoon artist influences (Carl Barks,Walt
Kelly) were still active.
Connoisseurs of comics might have thought that
Crumb’s style harked back to Segar’s Popeye, or further
back to George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. The dark lines,
the cross-hatching, the crowded urban streets, the long
flat landscapes across which Crumb’s characters some-
times wander, thinking aloud: these are characteristics
Crumb’s work shares with his traditional comic book
antecedents.
But influences on Crumb’s style go deeper, and
much further back.The more you learn about Crumb,
the more you realize how much of a student of line
drawing he is. Among the artists Crumb has expressed
15
D. K . H O L M
interest, respect, and a degree of influence for are Pieter

Bruegel, George Cruikshank, and James Gillray.
Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525–1569)

Time art reviewer Robert Hughes once famously called
Crumb the Bruegel of the twentieth century.That was
a canny connection. Crumb told interviewer Jean-
Pierre Mercier, ‘It’s hard to be influenced by a guy like
Bruegel. He’s such a perfect artist. Once in a while I
copy a drawing of his and I look at his engravings. I
don’t know how I’d say it influenced me. I like it and I
study it and I look at it and any influence would be
very indirect probably.’ Though Bruegel’s and Crumb’s
styles wouldn’t be mistaken for each other, there is an
emotional sympathy and general subject matter in
common between the two artists. Still, Crumb liked the
artist enough to include an engraving by ‘Pete Brueghel
[sic]’ (The Witch Of Malleghem) in the center of the first
issue of Weirdo and to draw a detail from one of his
paintings in Art & Beauty.
Bruegel was born in Holland, probably as early as
1525, and later studied in Italy. His paintings appear to
have been very popular. He died in Brussels in 1569.
Bruegel’s style was marked by a fondness for Italianate
diagonal compositions and an attention to physical
detail:A massive ship was to Bruegel what a street lamp
is to Crumb. Perhaps under the influence of
Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel specialized in drawing the
common man; peasants in their various gatherings and
celebrations. Hughes characterizes Bruegel as a master
16
RO B E RT C RU M B
of ‘burning phantasmagorias,’ sweeping, crowded colo-

nized landscapes in which multitudes mingle, each
figure a narrative in itself.
The connection between Bruegel and Crumb has
more to do with the loose link of subject matter. Just as
Crumb is heralded as the artist of the Everyman in the
street, bravely dealing with his gross physical demands,
Bruegel also chronicled the boisterous life of the
average inhabitant of his world. Nicknamed Peasant
Bruegel for his habitual retreat to village life as his
choice of subject matter, Bruegel startled patrons of the
arts at a time when religious art predominated. Even
more important, Bruegel satirized human life and
preferred ‘types’ to accurate portraits of real people. Life
goes on; in Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus, Bruegel’s
Boschian version of a religious painting, the mythical
personage Icarus falls, from the sky, his wings melted by
too-close proximity to the sun, as a farmer plowing a
field behind a large steer goes about his work oblivious
to the momentous mythological event occurring off in
the bay to his right. Crumb too is drawn to the quiet
dramas and tragedies occurring daily out of sight of the
masses.
James Gillray (1756–1815)

‘I love Gillray,’ Crumb told Mercier. ‘It’s incredible. The
details, the guy must have done nothing else but draw
every minute for his whole life, thousands and thousands
of detailed political cartoons and social commentary.’
An example of the cartoonist as thinker, Gillray was
17
D. K . H O L M
motivated by rage. Most of his caricatures were barbs

against the political stupidity of King George III
(‘Farmer George’), along with Charles James Fox,
Edmund Burke, and Napoleon, among numerous
others. Gillray’s bloated, bug-eyed royals, often sensually
engorging themselves, are a parade of inhumanity.
Gillray also brought a great theatrical sense to a
cartoon, a whole tale told about an idiot. Gillray’s
engravings were done fast, quickly distributed on the
streets as broadsheets, making them spontaneous, lively,
and timely.
Crumb has not inherited Gillray’s eventual insanity,
but he shares an interest in a crowded frame and in
biting topical satire fueled by rage and hatred.
Coincidentally, Crumb first became nationally known
as a cartoonist by distributing the first issue of Zap on
the street, much the way that Gillray’s cartoons and
caricatures were issued quickly from the shop of his
longtime associate, Miss Hanna Humphrey. Like
Gillray’s work, Crumb’s cartoons evoked judicial
scrutiny. Many of Gillray’s caricatures were blasphe-
mous and licentious, as well as politically raw.
George Cruikshank (1792–1878)

Though today little known by the general public,
George Cruikshank was in his day a remarkably
popular political cartoonist, caricaturist, children’s book
illustrator, and finally artist. The son of an illustrator,
Cruikshank later went on to rival Gillray as a carica-
turist. He became a beloved figure after he began to
18
RO B E RT C RU M B
illustrate books, of which he did over 850, including

some by Dickens. Though popularly thought to be a
Punch illustrator, the magazine having started up in
1841, in fact Cruikshank would have nothing to do
with the publication, which he viewed as full of what
he called ‘personalities,’ or ad hominem attacks. As Punch
biographer Richard D. Altick notes, ‘If John Doyle and
George Cruikshank had come aboard, Punch would
have made a clean sweep of the most gifted comic
artists of the day.’
Primarily what Crumb seems to have absorbed from
Cruikshank is the same thing he likes about Gillray:
broad characters and packed frames filled with detail. In
his interview with Mercier, Crumb likens Gillray and
Cruikshank to Will Elder, one of the many peculiarly
distinctive cartoonists in the Mad stable in the Fifties.
Elder’s style was notable for its clean line but also for
the multitude of in-jokes he would insert in the back-
ground, as well as his reliance on secondary, or even
tertiary creatures; creatures to contribute a parallel
running gag, much like political cartoonists after Pat
Oliphant were prone to do.
Other Influences
Crumb has spoken highly of other artists and illustra-
tors in interviews. Among them are British painter and
engraver William Hogarth (1697–1764), Dutch painter
Hieronymus Bosch (Jerome Van Aeken, c. 1450–1516),
and American cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840–1902),
who did ‘very beautiful black line political cartoons for
19
D. K . H O L M
Harper’s Weekly … very strong stuff.’ Crumb calls Nast

‘the master crosshatcher of all time.’
Finally, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) seems to hold a
fascination for Crumb. He told Mercier,‘I like his work
but it’s mostly him and his attitude about his work that
I envy. I wish I could be more like him because he was
very self-confident. He did what he wanted and didn’t
worry too much about pleasing other people … He
just did his work.’
The resemblance is more than just a sympathy and
admiration. Both artists are as famous for their private
lives as their art, and both enjoyed a series of liaisons
with feisty, fiery women. Sadly, both also have had key
members of their extended family commit suicide.And
both have taken as subject matter the political realities
of their times, as well as the frank treatment of sexuality.
John Richardson, in his superb multivolume biography
of Picasso, writes that Picasso was ‘at the mercy of that
… Andalusian obsession, the mirada fuerte (literally,
‘strong gazing’) … [which] … helps us to understand
his recurrent references to voyeurism; the way he uses
art and sex – painting and making love – as metaphors
for each other; and his fascination with genitalia.’
Crumb has a similar fixation with ‘looking.’
The Lure Of Comic Books

Crumb has made it clear in interviews, memoirs, and
letters that several comic strip and comic book artists
have influenced or inspired him. Among them are Carl
Barks, Marge,Walt Kelly, and Harvey Kurtzman.
20
RO B E RT C RU M B
Carl Barks (1901–2000)

Born in Merrill, Oregon, Barks was an artist and illus-
trator who early on fell into the sphere of Walt Disney
and never left it. He went to work for Disney in 1935,
where he first was a storyboard artist and gag writer,
and he worked on 35 Donald Duck cartoons as well as
such features as Fantasia.
In November 1942, Barks left the studio and made
an arrangement with Western Publishing to draw
Disney comic books for them. Barks wanted to develop
his own characters, but Western hired him to do
Donald Duck stories. He worked for Western for the
next 25 years. In the twilight of his life he did oil paint-
ings of his Donald Duck characters (about 150). He
died in Grants Pass, Oregon, in 2000.
Barks did invent a few characters for Walt Disney’s
Comics and Stories. Among them are, of course, Uncle
Scrooge McDuck, the world’s richest Scots duck, as
well as the Beagle Boys, Gladstone Gander, Donald’s
lucky cousin, the inventor Gyro Gearloose, and his
helper, Gyro, a light bulb.
Barks’s influence was pervasive, yet almost invisible,
and to many kids in the Fifties, Barks was Disney.Their
experience of the Disney canon was filtered through
Barks’s interpretation of Donald Duck and his
nephews.
As children, Charles and Robert Crumb collected
Barks’s comic books, and his ‘medium shot’ approach to
laying out panels is one influence on Crumb the
cartoonist. Legend has it that one particular pair of
21
D. K . H O L M
panels was an influence on Crumb. The panels show

Donald Duck in crisis mode. Barks drew two panels of
Donald, just sitting, staring. In a regular comic, one
would have sufficed. But Barks pulled a movie effect
and provided emphasis by drawing two.
E. C. (Elzie Crisler) Segar (1894–1938)

At the end of his autobiographical documentary, The
Confessions of Robert Crumb, the artist alludes to how
beloved his early Popeye-style comics were. This is
about the only reference I’ve so far been able to find in
which Crumb cites the cartoonist whom many think
Crumb’s style most resembles.
Elzie Segar’s King Features strip Thimble Theatre,
chronicling the adventures of Castor Oyl and his pal,
Ham Gravy, had been appearing since 1919. In 1929, he
introduced Popeye. Within a year, Segar dropped Ham
and developed a romance between Popeye and Castor’s
sister Olive. The hamburger-obsessed Wimpy appeared
in 1932, and Swee’pea was added in 1936.
Most kids from the Fifties probably knew Popeye
from the Max Fleischer cartoons made about him,
starting in 1933 with the release of ‘I Yam What I Yam.’
The Popeye series of 228 Popeye cartoons started to
appear on American television in 1957. In 1980,
Robert Altman directed a poorly received movie
version of Popeye starring Robin Williams as Popeye,
and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl.
Segar died of leukemia in 1938, and Thimble Theatre
was taken over by a succession of cartoonists.
22
RO B E RT C RU M B
Eventually the strip was taken over completely by one

of Segar’s assistants, Forrest ‘Bud’ Sagendorf, in 1958.
From the 1940s until 1984, Sagendorf also wrote and
drew Popeye comic books for Dell (then for Gold Key,
King, and finally Charlton) that are sought after by
collectors. Sagendorf died in 1994. Curiously, in the
late Eighties and early Nineties, the Thimble
Theatre/Popeye comic strip was written and drawn by
former underground cartoonist Bobby London (‘Dirty
Duck’).
Crumb’s bellowing characters talking from the side
of their mouths bear a remarkable resemblance to
Segar’s cast. Segar was also a master of coherent, logical
action from panel to panel, and Crumb has that knack
as well.
Marge Henderson Buell (1904–1993)

and John Stanley (1914–1993)
Marjorie Henderson Buell was that unique personality,
a female cartoonist in the early twentieth century. She
created Little Lulu as a single-panel cartoon strip in the
Saturday Evening Post magazine, where it ran from June
1935 until 1947. In 1945, Little Lulu became a comic
character written and drawn by John Stanley. Stanley
was a refugee from the Max Fleischer animation studios
who ended up at Dell Publishing. Stanley worked on
the Little Lulu comic until around 1961.
Stanley started out doing the whole comic, but its
popularity soon exceeded his ability to keep up, and
Stanley collaborated with artist Irv Tripp, who is cred-
23
D. K . H O L M
ited with developing the more ‘cartoony’ style for Little

Lulu. Stanley wrote the comic books and made prelim-
inary sketches, while Tripp did the final drawing. The
Stanley-Tripp version of Little Lulu is viewed by comic
book historians as the best youth market comic book
ever published.
In the ‘B.C. versus A.D.’ phases of Little Lulu, Marge’s
version is brattier, with the girlish Lulu using her intel-
ligence to best Tubby and his ‘Boys Only’ gang, while
the Stanley version of Lulu was friendly and more
supportive of her friends. But there is little doubt that
Stanley’s Lulu is the more influential.
In 1972, Crumb wrote to his friend Mike Britt, ‘I
just bought a complete collection of Little Lulu comics
up to 1954 for $200 … mostly all in mint condition …
Great stuff, those old Lulus.’
Walt Kelly (1913–1973)

The begetter of Pogo and a host of other characters
created a unique blend of funny animal stories with a
political edge. Born in 1913, Kelly worked for Disney
from 1935 to 1941 and had credits on Pinocchio, Dumbo,
and Fantasia. Kelly also worked on comic books and
introduced Pogo in a Dell publication called Animal
Comics in 1941.The daily strip version of Pogo started
out in the New York Star in 1948 and 1949 and then was
picked up for syndication (the Star having collapsed).
Comic-book-oriented kids especially liked collecting
the series of trade-paperback-sized reprints of the
popular strip that began to appear in 1951 with Pogo. It
24
RO B E RT C RU M B
was followed by I Go Pogo, and the books continued to

appear into the Seventies.
There was always a political, Democrat-party-
oriented political sensibility to Kelly’s Pogo, but the
satire increased as the Fifties wore on. In his book The
Jack Acid Society Black Book, he ridicules Joe McCarthy
and other witch hunters.
Crumb loves animal comics, and Kelly is the master
of the genre. Crumb is also a master of the daily strip
format and the punchline, and perhaps even Kelly’s
model served Crumb well when his own comics
became more political. Crumb told Mercier that he
liked Kelly’s work because it ‘reflected this underlying
feeling about old-time America,’ adding that Kelly was
‘great at lettering!… He had all the old lettering styles
down very well.You know, a great logo is a great piece
of art!’
In a l961 letter to Marty Pahls, Crumb cited a poll
reported in the book Comic Art In America. ‘Children
were asked why they didn’t like Animal Comics … They
were told by the kids that Animal Comics was too dull …
no violence or excitement … just a lot of little bunnies
with blue bowties … something like that … I like them.’
Harvey Kurtzman (1924–1993)

Among the cartoonists who most influenced Crumb,
Harvey Kurtzman is probably the only one he actually
met. Crumb contributed to Kurtzman’s magazine Help!
and black-and-white home movie footage exists of
Crumb and Kurtzman together, creating a comic.
25
D. K . H O L M
Kurtzman is, of course, best remembered for the

early Mad comic book, which he founded in 1952. He
supervised the first 28 issues, employing such artists as
Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Wally Wood, but quit in
1956 after a falling out with EC publisher Bill Gaines.
Kurtzman went on to create Trump (for Playboy maga-
zine), then Humbug, then Help!, where he employed
Terry Gilliam, Gloria Steinem, Gilbert Shelton, and
Crumb. Today he is probably most recognizable for
doing the Playboy feature Little Annie Fanny, started in
1962 with Elder.
Kurtzman was an artist and a writer, providing
Crumb with an almost unique model within the
industry. The comic book Mad and its subsequent
magazine form were major influences on underground
comics. An argument could be made that the protest
movements of the Sixties may not have occurred were
it not for skepticism of the culture bred by Mad. The
magazine taught young people that nothing in the
Fifties could be taken seriously. Kurtzman’s comic
undermined everything that mainstream culture manu-
factured. By the time the Sixties rolled around, its
readers were already well aware of a ‘credibility gap’
between ‘reality’ and what politicians and the nightly
news proclaimed.
Mad went on to influence even more publications,
such as Spy, an American imitator of Private Eye. Spy,
though controversial and much hated by the subjects of
its profiles and jabs, the mocking tone of the magazine
went on to pervade most other American magazines,
from Entertainment Weekly to Sassy.Yet Spy itself would
26
RO B E RT C RU M B
have been unimaginable without the prior partial

model of Mad. Thus Kurtzman’s legacy fanned out in
numerous directions, many of them not even comic
books.
Crumb: The Consummate Cartoonist

And Writer
Though on the surface it may seem ridiculous to
compare Crumb with artists who dwell well outside his
craft, doing so illuminates aspects of Crumb’s art that
might remain under-appreciated. To compare Crumb
to James Joyce isn’t to say that he is as great an artist as
the Irish expatriate. But then again, what’s outrageous
about asserting that in his field Crumb is as great an
artist as Joyce?
Comparing Crumb to a number of artists is telling.
Like James Joyce (1882–1941), another behatted,
bespectacled sartorial exception to every group, Crumb
abandoned his homeland for Europe (though he did so
later in life). Crumb lives in France, while Joyce kicked
around Italy and Switzerland before ending up in Paris.
Like Joyce, Crumb is a poet of busy streetlife. Crumb is
a student of the sort of urban isolation that people,
though mostly males, can feel in a crowd. He also has
affinities with the Bloomian wandering mind, of the
thought processes that grapple with the injustices of life
and the cliquishness of society. It’s not beyond the pale
to imagine Crumb illustrating passages from Ulysses the
way he’s tackled Kafka and Boswell. Like Joyce, Crumb
feels a disdain for his homeland; like Joyce he abhors a
27
D. K . H O L M
hollow modernity and instead honours popular culture

of the recent past. Music was just as important to Joyce
as words and images, along with a set of sexual fetishes,
and the same goes for Crumb. As artists, they are both
painstaking. Biographically speaking, also like Joyce,
Crumb has been married to a woman whom he
publicly celebrates as the bedrock of his life.
Crumb also bears some personal and artistic resem-
blance to the British poet Philip Larkin (1922–1985).A
crafter of deft, witty, jargon-free, and poignant poems,
in his later years Larkin was, in the popular imagina-
tion, a beloved crank and misanthrope, noted for his
melancholy yet amusing verse about jobs, growing old,
and sexual isolation; but after his death, temporary revi-
sionism recast him as a misogynist, racist, and political
retrograde.
Crumb’s career is following a similar arc. Crumb
continues to test the limits of the affection he has
inspired with stories that push the boundaries of polit-
ical correctness. Like Larkin, Crumb inspires an obses-
sive identification with his views, problems, and
sometimes surly attitudes toward society and relation-
ships; people who love him think that he is speaking
directly to them. Also like Larkin, Crumb developed
key and lasting friendships with fellow artists who were
his equals. For Larkin, it was Kingsley Amis, Bruce
Montgomery (Edmund Crispin), Barbara Pym, and
Robert Conquest. For Crumb it was various commer-
cial and underground cartoonists from Harvey
Kurtzman to Spain Rodriguez.
And then there is the music connection. Larkin
28
RO B E RT C RU M B
favoured American jazz from the pre-war era and wrote

about it extensively, blaming the decline of three major
art forms on the three Ps – Ezra Pound, Charlie Parker,
and Pablo Picasso; Crumb seems to abhor music from
the Fifties on, favouring folk and ethnic music and
performers whom most Americans haven’t bothered to
familiarize themselves with.
And, finally, it’s salutary to compare Crumb with
American movie director Woody Allen (1935–). Like
Allen, who began as a comedy writer for television in
its early days and contributed gags to New York City
newspaper columnists, Crumb began at a low level in
his field (drawing greeting cards). Both artists seem
confessional, and both explore the complexities of
domestic relationships. Both ‘started out funny’ but
have changed drastically over the course of their
careers, in some cases leaving behind former fans still
nostalgic for the energy and humour of their early
work. Allen writes, directs, and performs equally;
Crumb draws, but also writes and performs – once
again, there is the music connection. Allen, as is well
known, loves New Orleans jazz, and part of his public
persona is that he plays clarinet in a band at Michael’s
Pub in Manhattan every Monday night (his perform-
ances on the road with this band were chronicled in
Barbara Kopple’s 1997 documentary Wild Man Blues).
Crumb has played guitar and banjo in several bands,
among them the Cheap Suit Serenaders, and has been
reviewed and interviewed as a musician, though obvi-
ously not as extensively as he has as a cartoonist.
Whole books could be written about the similarities
29
D. K . H O L M
between Crumb and these artists. Suffice it to say that

noting some resemblances between Crumb and a
novelist, a poet, and a film director – three of the most
important artists of the twentieth century – suggests the
breadth of his own artistry and his membership in an
awe-inspiring club.
30
The Genesis Of A Future Genius

(1943–1964)
The prime elder of the Crumb family, Charles V.

Crumb, was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota. ‘My father
was raised on a farm,’ Crumb has written, ‘one of 14
children … My father’s people were all farmers.’ The
name Crumb, he continues,‘is supposedly of old Saxon
origin.’ Crumb Sr. entered the Marines around 1936.
Charles Crumb married Beatrice Hall of Milford,
Delaware. ‘My mother came from an unstable urban
lower-middle and working class family who shifted up
and down the east coast.’ Their first child, Carol, was
born in 1940 (or ‘41). Charles Jr followed in 1942,
Robert was born on August 30, 1943, followed by
brother Maxon in 1945, and the family was rounded off
with sister Sandra in 1956.
Robert was born in Philadelphia, but the kids were
Marine brats, and the family moved frequently. By the
time he was 15, Robert had lived in Philadelphia;
Pennsylvania; Albert Lea, Minnesota; Ames, Iowa;
Oceanside, California; Upper Darby, Pennsylvania; and
Milford, Delaware, the town that seems to have had the
most lasting and dire effect on the brothers.
At the urging of his wife, Crumb Sr. left the Marines
31
D. K . H O L M
in 1956 and entered the world of business. He later

wrote a book called Training People Effectively. By all
accounts, he was a stern man who was disappointed
that all his male children were ‘sissies,’ more interested
in comic books than football.
The Crumb children were raised as Catholics, and
the Crumb parents never divorced, instead choosing to
lead separate lives after years of squabbling. The elder
Crumb seems to have become a typical Fifties male in
a bland suit with the common views of his times. A
figure not unlike him pops up a lot in some of Robert
Crumb’s early underground comics (Charles V. Crumb
died in 1982).
Crumb’s mother was apparently addicted to diet pills
from the Fifties through to the Seventies, and spent her
later years in front of the television, surrounded by cats.
Crumb told one interviewer, ‘My mom has been
watching television non-stop for four years. She sleeps
on the sofa in front of the set and she never turns it off.’
Except for Carol, the whole brood drew comic
books, under the supervision of Charles Jr, who was a
stern taskmaster. ‘I was trying to compete with him,’
Crumb told a class of students in 1971. ‘He made me
feel like shit if I couldn’t draw as good as he. He’d crit-
icize my cartoons, tell me how to draw better. I was
always trying so hard to please him that finally I got so
good, he gave it up.’ Chuck And Bob, Brombo The Panda,
and Foo were among the titles they worked on, and
they even formed a family group called the Animal
Town Comics Club. They would try to sell some of
their comics door to door.
32
RO B E RT C RU M B
In his teen years, Robert Crumb began collecting

78-rpm jazz and blues records, in addition to the EC
horror comics and Walt Disney publications that he was
already collecting. Friendships with two other boys
(Marty Pahls and Mike Britt), conducted mostly by
mail, took Crumb outside the family, where he was
desperately unhappy, and outside his school milieu,
where he was equally an outcast. ‘I was one of those
social rejects, but then, you know, a lot of people were
– nothing unusual about being an outcast in high
school,’ he told an interviewer in 1972.
Crumb worked summer jobs to pay for his collecting
habit, and after high school, instead of going to college,
he worked at the American Greetings Corporation,
later promoted to the Hi-Brow department, which
specialized in fanciful and joke cards outside the main-
stream of the usual greeting card style. Crumb worked
in this department for four years (like fellow expatriate
Gore Vidal, Crumb only worked a nine-to-five job for
a short time in his life) and during that time met Dana
Morgan, marrying her in June 1964.Their honeymoon
trip through Europe was enhanced creatively by the
sketchbooks given to Crumb as a wedding gift by his
colleagues at American Greetings. Drawing in sketch-
books became a lifelong habit.
The marriage appears to have been rocky, with
Crumb frequently leaving and returning. He found
himself slipping into the same routine as his father, a
dressed-down corporate drone trapped in a dull cycle
of work and strife-filled home life.
33
D. K . H O L M
Crumb Family Comics

Publication history: This anthology was edited by Maxon
Crumb and published by Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, 1998,
Hardback, 204 pages, Illustrated, ISBN 0 86719 427 8.
Story: Crumb Family Comics gathers together material
by most of the Crumb family. There are essays and
paintings by Maxon, cartoons and letters by Charles,
essays and reprinted stories by Crumb, colour portraits
of notable figures by son Jesse Crumb, sketches and
stories by daughter Sophie Crumb, and collaborations
between Crumb and Aline.
The book also contains a cryptic introduction by
credited editor Maxon Crumb, as well as Charles
Crumb’s ‘talent test’ for the Famous Artists Schools,
some of his squiggle page comics, made famous in the
movie Crumb, and excerpts from four letters he wrote
as an adult to Robert Crumb from 1981 on. Terry
Zwigoff starts off the book off with a foreword and
concludes it with an afterword in which he defends his
film from critics who misunderstood his intentions.
Background: Published in 1998 in the aftermath of
Zwigoff ’s movie Crumb Family Comics serves as a valu-
able adjunct to the movie and even tells the reader
more about the family than could possibly have been
imagined. In his foreword, Zwigoff explains that gath-
ering Crumb family art was ‘an idea that’s appealed to
me since I got to know Robert, Maxon, and Charles in
the early 1970’s [sic].’ Zwigoff rightfully praises the art
in the book for the same qualities that the Crumb
family shows in his movie: ‘It’s honest and it’s personal
34
RO B E RT C RU M B
and those are rare qualities to find in any art form.’

Analysis: What’s fascinating about the Crumb family
art is how different it is from one person to another
while still being recognizably part of the same family.
Maxon has a more mechanistic style.Though highly
individual, Maxon’s art has echoes of Picasso, Basil
Wolverton, and even Rube Goldberg, whose complex
interlocking machinery designed to perform simple
tasks is a concept here put to sexual purposes. Zwigoff
told an interviewer (the author of this book, in fact)
that at the time of Crumb’s release Maxon seemed to
blossom with the attention he got in the aftermath of
the film. Maxon has continued to write and illustrate
books, including Hardcore Mother (City Zen, 2000,Trade
paperback, 113 pages, illustrated, ISBN 3 83111 511 7).
Not to put too fine a point on it, Maxon didn’t seem
to like his mother very much, and there are hints of
anger at Robert Crumb in his introduction as well.
Maxon’s and Charles’s work, for example, is distinct yet
startlingly similar. Charles, who seems to have simply
stopped drawing comics in his teen years, has a very
warm style, much influenced by Carl Barks and other
‘funny animal’ comic artists. As shown in Crumb the
movie, Charles’s style was overtaken by a squiggle line
drawing technique that was at first distinctive but
which came to overtake the art altogether, like a strange
virus killing its host. In the end, he would fill page after
page with unreadable automatic writing. Charles
committed suicide in the late Nineties. Had he been
able to continue as an artist, he might have ended up
not unlike Brice Marden, a Bronxville, New York-born
35
D. K . H O L M
abstract painter whose squiggly lines and colour

schemes resemble Charles’s work.
Also included in the book are written excerpts from
Crumb’s notebooks. One traces his family history.
Another discusses the ‘Chinese curse,’ a hex that
supposedly befell his family because of actions his
father engaged in as a Marine in China during the war.
The Crumb Woman: This is a book about the Crumb
men, for the most part, and the ‘Crumb Woman’ doesn’t
figure in it in an original manner beyond the reprints
of his series, ‘My Troubles With Women.’
Confessions: The most important revelation in the
book is Charles Crumb’s admission that he was, as he
puts it, a ‘homosexual pedophile.’ This lends an insight
into the Crumb family dynamic that the movie wasn’t
in a position to offer at the time of its release.
Collectibility: The book is still in print at $19.95 for
an oversized trade paperback. Bearing in mind that
books from dealers whose wares are offered on the
world wide web are often overpriced, hardback copies
of a limited edition of 400, signed by five of the living
Crumb relatives represented in the book (Aline, Jesse,
Maxon, Crumb, and Sophie), have been offered online
for as much as $100.
The Verdict: Crumb Family Comics is an essential text
for anyone trying to understand the Crumb family
dynamic.
36
RO B E RT C RU M B
Your Vigor For Life Appalls Me:

Robert Crumb Letters, 1958–1977
Publication history: This collection was published by
Fantagraphics in 1998, Trade Paperback, 250 pages,
Illustrated, ISBN 1 56097 310 2.
Story: Essentially, these letters chart the rise and fall of
his friendships with two late childhood friends, Marty
Pahls and Mike Britt.The book also has a fine, detailed,
and contextualizing introduction by Fantagraphics
publisher Gary Groth.
Background: There are two kinds of people in the
world: those who write letters for all the world to see,
and those who believe that personal correspondence is
indeed private. Crumb is a member of the second
fraternity. The letters in this book, though an invasion
of privacy, provide a remarkable insight in the devel-
oping artist.
Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me comprises 50 letters,
ranging in date from 1958 to 1997, the bulk of them
written when the budding artist was from 15 to 20
years old, with a handful of letters written later. The
letters are written to two people, Mike Britt, whom he
had met in eighth grade, and Marty Pahls, an older kid
with aspirations to become a writer, and who had initi-
ated correspondence with the Crumbs after seeing an
issue of their parody magazine Foo. Pahls, whom
Crumb’s ex-wife elsewhere calls ‘weird,’ was later to
marry Crumb’s sister Sandra and then edit some of the
early Complete Collected Crumb comics, before dying in
February, 1989.
37
D. K . H O L M
In his letters (and we only get his side of the corre-

spondence), Crumb mostly discusses comic books and
music; specifically, funny animal comics and cartoonists
of the past, whom he admires, and old jazz records he
had recently begun collecting.
In his letters, Crumb, who had just emerged from a
tumultuous wrestling with religion, raises such issues
and questions as free will, authenticity, and faith.
Crumb declares himself ‘an ardent feminist,’ and there is
an interesting subplot concerning an African-American
friend of Charles’s whom Crumb finds sympathetic.
Crumb shows a critical scrutiny of comic book art, and
evinces a real work ethic that he tries to force on
unwilling others.
Analysis: Though it’s not unusual these days for the
letters of a still living person to be published, it prob-
ably is a little unusual for the letters of a cartoonist to
see print. Cartoonists, after all, are associated with
images rather than words. But as this book makes clear,
Crumb should be esteemed not only as one of the great
modern cartoon artists, but also one of the form’s best
writers.
It’s odd to read the teenaged Crumb complaining
about his inability to draw girls (he couldn’t do noses),
because he was to go on to be one of the best celebra-
tors of the female form. And it’s odd to hear Crumb
express an interest, in fact sympathy, for old American
values and early society, for he was soon to be one of
the fiercest critics of his country.
And it’s even more odd for Crumb to express such
nervousness about travel, for in a few short years he was
38
RO B E RT C RU M B
to evince a restlessness that put in him the same league

as the beat poets and novelists. Crumb would go from
a nervous Nellie traveller, worried about bus connec-
tions and getting stranded, to a modern Beat. Crumb
had already moved around the country a lot with his
peripatetic parents. Like Mark Twain, Crumb had seen
a lot of the United States and its people, more than
most Americans, and was positioned better than others
to satirize it.
If the book has a problem, it’s that only Crumb’s
letters are printed. Had the volume included his recip-
ients’ replies (perhaps unfeasible for budgetary reasons),
the reader would have enjoyed more of the dialogue
these letters represent and perhaps would have seen
Crumb’s badinage in better context.The publication of
Kingsley Amis’s selected letters in 2001 allowed the
reader to see both sides of a dialogue between the
novelist and the poet Philip Larkin, already published.
Similarly, the letters of Barbara Pym, published before
Larkin’s, illuminated the poet’s letters when later read in
tandem with Pym’s collection. A partial collection of
letters, however carefully selected, can only give a
distorted view of their author.
In fact, if these letters remind the reader of any other
artist, it is Philip Larkin. Both betray a surprisingly
detailed interest in jazz and popular music of the past.
Both brooded in print on their difficult, complex rela-
tions with the opposite sex, the push-me, pull-me of
isolation versus socializing. And both pondered racial
tension, though from different perspectives.
The Crumb personality, as revealed in these letters, is
39
D. K . H O L M
at times not particularly pleasant. Bearing in mind that

Crumb was only a kid and did not intend these letters
to be read by others, he comes across as stingy,
hectoring and greedy. He demands that his friends send
him records, books, comics but is on the tardy side in
returning them, and appears reluctant to lend his own
stuff. Nerds may be nerds to athletes, but they are still
males, and, within their own circles, aggression and
competition find expression. Curiously, the eventual
nomad is here a trembling traveller, fearful of getting on
the wrong bus when venturing out to visit Pahls or
Britt in different cities.
Anyone who has been a comic book nerd will
instantly recognize these various traits, which don’t
define the whole person. Outside observers will not
feel so alienated when reflecting how much Crumb’s
letters remind them of themselves. Nevertheless, Vigor
is an essential addition to Crumb’s body of work. It
reveals intentions, themes, and desires that would bear
fruit in later years. It explicates cryptic aspects of
Crumb’s cartoons, such as the various real-life girls who
pop up later in his work.
Most important, Crumb’s letters are a reminder that
Crumb the artist is as much a writer as he is a
cartoonist. In several, he gives writing advice to his
recipients, and he shows an unusually vast knowledge of
‘unfashionable’ American literature and history of the
time. Crumb’s taste, it seems, veered from a very early
age toward the humble, honest, unpretentious quality of
American arts and literature, a perhaps illusory
pastorality that, at least for Crumb, represented an alter-
40
RO B E RT C RU M B
native to the self-satisfied corruptions of the day. He

preferred to look back, rather than be in the present.
Like the character Old Mose in John Ford’s The
Searchers, Crumb was ‘born old.’
The Crumb Woman: The later ‘confessional’ Crumb is
close-mouthed about the true nature of his interest in
women. Perhaps his fantasies had not yet taken a final
form. Instead, Crumb has the usual teen complaints
about shyness, and girls’ preference for powerful, attrac-
tive men.
Confessions: By its very nature, the letter is a confes-
sional format, but Crumb uses these letters to do other
things: complain, wheedle, manipulate, compete and
brag.
Collectibility:Your Vigor For Life Appalls Me is still in
print and at this writing goes for its cover price of
$14.95.
The Verdict: It’s a measure of the esteem in which
Crumb is now held, or at least the degree to which a
market exists out there for any Crumbiana, that his
letters were published when he was still in his fifties.
Nevertheless, Your Vigor For Life Appalls Me is a crucial
text for getting a deeper view of the cartoonist, one
that in a sense contrasts with the person called ‘Crumb’
who appears in his confessional comics.
The Yum Yum Book

Publication history:The Yum Yum Book was originally
published by the Scrimshaw Press of San Francisco in
1975 in a hardback for $6.95 (ISBN 0 912020 50 4). It
41
D. K . H O L M
was reprinted by Snow Lion Graphics in November

1995 in softcover (ISBN: 0 943389 19 4) with an intro-
duction by Harvey Pekar.The cover of the first edition
officially titles it R. Crumb’s The Yum Yum Book, but
the first page of the story, which is also the title page,
bears the title ‘Oggie And The Beanstalk.’
Story: The mock fairy-tale story of ‘Oggie And The
Beanstalk’ begins with a frog or toad named Ogden
(Oggie for short), sent to university by his father.There
the amphibian doesn’t fit in. He can’t compete with his
classmates, he can’t make it with girls, and a lazy return
to the Church fails.
After a drunken binge, Oggie returns home and
squashes a bunch of ladybugs cleaning clothes in his
lodgings and then buries the pulpy corpses under the
stones of the floor. Oggie and his friends are surprised
the next day when a giant green stalk rises from the
burial place. One of the vines grabs him by the foot and
carries him into the sky, and he lands in a lush, green,
fruit-bearing Arcadia.
There, Oggie lazes about, grows bored, and then
meets a giant teenage nude woman of Rubens-esque
dimensions named Gunthra. After some initial tension,
Oggie and Gunthra begin to frolic. But they have a
falling out, and in despair Oggie climbs back down the
stalk.
Upon his return, Oggie finds that the beanstalk has
infested the city. Accused of having inspired this inva-
sion, Oggie is jailed, tried, and sentenced to death. But
Gunthra eventually follows Oggie down the beanstalk,
and rescues him just in time. With a kiss, she turns
42
RO B E RT C RU M B
Oggie into a boy of an equal size to her. Leaving the

decimated city, they set sail for a land where they can
spend their lives together. They discover it in a skyline
that looks suspiciously like Manhattan, where Oggie
and Gunthra live the rest of their lives in traditional
domestic bliss.
Background: Crumb drew ‘Oggie And The Beanstalk’
when he was nineteen years old, over the course of six
months from late 1962 to early ‘63, using (according to
his introduction) Prismacolor pencils, theoretically
averaging a little over one page a day. When he was
finished, he gave the book to his fiancée, later his wife,
Dana Morgan, whom he had met in the interim. The
book was stored with other materials for several years,
then published when Crumb was thirty, possibly at the
urging of his then lawyer, Albert Morse, and/or Dana
(who owned the copyright). In the introduction,
Crumb writes, ‘Personally, it embarrasses me now, but
probably a lot of people will like it better than the stuff
I turn out currently. Others, I’m sure, will put it down
for being too cute, etc … I’ve changed a lot and so has
my work, but this does have a certain innocent charm.’
Analysis: The Yum Yum Book is Crumb’s first major
work, and it’s all here, all the themes and character types
that were to populate his cartoons for years to come.
There’s the giant woman. There’s the miniature male
following her around. There’s the Arcadian landscape
that Crumb returns to often, even as late as 1998 in
Mystic Funnies No. 2 (discussed later), a landscape that
alternates for him with the crowded streets of a bland,
dense city. And there’s the portrait of a society teeming
43
D. K . H O L M
with selfish, oblivious people.The story even starts with

a splash page of Oggie overwhelmed by a crowded city
street, the first of many in Crumb’s later underground
comics.
One of the most interesting sequences in the tale is
a dialogue between Oggie in prison and a pipe-
smoking intellectual cat named Lampe.The cat explains
to the out-of-it and now jailed Oggie what has
happened to the city since the advent of the stalk.The
town has been deemed cursed (a Chinese curse?),
deprived of shipping routes, and all the frogs have been
massacred in an Anurian holocaust thanks to the storm
of hatred stirred up by ladybugs. But so impressed with
this disaster is Lampe, who is writing a book on these
dire times between puffs on his pipe, that he can’t
believe Oggie when the frog describes the paradise at
the top of the stalk. Oh, and look for Fritz the Cat in
the lower right-hand corner of page 3, a classroom
scene appearing on a splash page.
The Crumb Woman: Gunthra is the first of the great
Crumb women. She is big, pink, and lazy, lolling around
on the grass when not engaged in competitive sex
games with Oggie. Often when Crumb introduces a
new female character in a similar context, there is a
lengthy multipage dance of seduction. But Gunthra is
pre-LSD, pre-underground, and so, though she is nude,
she doesn’t do much. Compare the equally long
sequence between the Moron and the Fairy
Godmother in Mystic Funnies No. 2 with this much
tamer version to see the changes thirty-five years have
wrought.
44
RO B E RT C RU M B
Confessions: ‘Oggie And The Beanstalk’ is, unsurpris-

ingly we would learn later, an autobiographical work.
The tale presents Oggie’s father as a cold man who
doesn’t understand his son. And a brief fling with the
Church comes to nothing for Oggie; it’s a tedious
experience for him, and he is even kicked out of the
building. In general, Oggie is a victim, spurred by
women and belittled by his buddies, but in fact he isn’t
a perfect person himself, being somewhat lazy and
easily bored. In short, he has all the carefully observed
traits found in most Crumb males, and Crumb self-
portraits, to follow.
Collectibility: Copies of the 1975 edition of The Yum
Yum Book are offered online for between $35 and $75.
Identifying a true first edition is difficult, but the book
probably had only one print run. The hardback wasn’t
put together well, and the pages have a tendency to fall
out if the book is poorly treated. The trade paperback
reprint is also out of print and is offered for around $18.
The Verdict: The Yum Yum Book is a rather amazing
production for a nineteen-year-old. The colouring is
beautiful, the framing is relaxed and confident, and the
story is coherent over its 143 pages. Except for its
sexual content (tame by today’s standards), it’s a work
that was perfectly publishable at the time. It’s an impor-
tant step in the Crumb story because it is his first large
effort and announces many of the themes, character
types, and situations that were to preoccupy Crumb for
the next forty years.
45
The Bitter Years Of Early Struggle

(1965–1970)
‘I escaped to San Francisco when I met two guys in a

bar [in January 1967] who said they were driving west.’
Thus Robert Crumb told Rolling Stone how he first
took the path that led to his becoming the father of
underground comics.
But the groundwork for this revolution in comic
book art had begun much earlier, in June 1965, when
he started taking LSD. Still in Cleveland, and still
working for the Hi-Brow division of American
Greetings, Crumb was in a difficult marriage and was
trying to break free of corporate America, with
minimal success. And acid was legal at the time.
Taking acid ‘changed my head around,’ he told an
interviewer.‘It made me stop taking cartooning so seri-
ously and showed me a whole other side of myself.’ His
acid trips were a mix of good and bad. Expansive
though they may have been, a hit of acid he dropped in
New York in October or November of 1965 caused a
six-month state of mental fuzziness. ‘It started out like
any other LSD trip,’ Crumb told bibliographer Donald
Fiene.‘But then, somewhere in the middle of it, every-
thing went fuzzy … It was in this state that I broke up
46
RO B E RT C RU M B
with Dana [for the first time], and I remained in this

weird electric fog for several months.’ This fuzzy state
ended only when he took another trip on some
powerful acid with Dana in April 1966.
Confusing as the experience might have been, it was
in this period that Crumb invented most of the charac-
ters who were to populate his comics for years to come.
‘All this crazy stuff came out of my brain.That’s how I
invented all those characters – Mr Natural, Angelfood
McSpade, Mr Snoid.’ In this brief but productive phase
of major creativity, Crumb resembles certain artists (and
even some scientists) who accomplished most of their
primary creative work by their early twenties. Dylan
Thomas is an example.The poet more or less coasted on
the poems and poem fragments that he conjured up in
his teen years to early adulthood. Unlike other artists
who succumbed to this cycle, however, Crumb stayed
remarkably prolific for the rest of his life.
Then in January 1967, Crumb made a break for San
Francisco, which had entered his consciousness as a place
where good work was being done by a group of young
psychedelic poster artists. He ran into two friends, Skip
and Tim, during happy hour in Adele’s Bar in Cleveland.
They said they were driving to San Francisco, and
Crumb asked if there was room for one more.
Once ensconced, Crumb felt guilty about aban-
doning his wife and soon summoned her. At the same
time, he started contributing to publications such as
Yarrowstalks and, encouraged by someone who prom-
ised to publish an independent comic book, started
drawing the first two Zaps.
47
D. K . H O L M
‘I figured it out somehow – the way to put the

stoned experience into a series of cartoon panels,’
Crumb wrote in the introduction to Vol. 4 of the
Complete Crumb Comics. ‘I began to submit LSD-
inspired strips to underground papers … not for pay …
never gave it a thought … but they loved them.These
1967 strips of mine contained the hopeful spirit of the
times, drawn in a more lovable ‘bigfoot’ style.The stuff
caught on. They wanted more. Suddenly I was able to
churn it out … late that summer one of the under-
ground paper publishers asked me to do an entire issue
of his paper Yarrowstalks (corny hippie spiritual stuff –
‘yarrowstalks’ are what they used to throw the I Ching).
This went over so well that he suggested I draw comic
books and he would publish them.This was a thrilling
idea to me – a dream come true.’
After a complicated series of difficulties, Zap No. 1
was published by Don Donahue in early 1968, and
Crumb sold it on the streets, much in the manner that
he and Charles would sell issues of their magazine Foo
door to door when they were kids.
Crumb formed alliances with various new
publishers, met other burgeoning cartoonists who
wanted the freedom that underground comic books
offered, and the underground comic book as a
phenomenon took off. The means for distributing
comic books was derived from a network already in
place to distribute rock posters. Crumb travelled a lot
during this period, meeting cartoonists and record
collectors all across the country.
By the end of the Sixties, Crumb had a son, Jesse,
48
RO B E RT C RU M B
born in 1968, and had bought some property in Potter

Valley, in Northern California. He came to be involved
with several women, though he also has said that he
didn’t feel any more a part of the hippie movement
than he did of his high school. ‘I never did become a
hippie… I used to live in the Haight-Ashbury and go
to the love-ins and all, but I never could get into the
spirit of it somehow.’ By the middle of 1970, Crumb
experienced something akin to a nervous break-
down.There was an important and obvious difference
between the early underground comics and commer-
cial comic books:The undergrounds were in black and
white. This two-tone colour scheme did two things. It
created a sense of ‘seriousness’ that colourful comics
usually didn’t exude. And it links underground comics
to daily newspaper strips and Mad magazine, which are
the true inspiration for the kind of comics that Crumb,
at least, was trying to produce. Less like a given month’s
batch of Archie or Superman or Marvel comics, under-
ground comics embraced the anarchic spirit of Mad.
‘Mr Natural In Death Valley’

Publication history: ‘Mr Natural In Death Valley’ was first
published in Zap No. 0, in October 1967. It has been
reprinted several times, most prominently in The
Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 4, Fantagraphics (1989,
Trade Paperback, ISBN 0 930193 79 2, pages 85–89)
and in the Fantagraphics collection The Book Of Mr
Natural (1999, Oversize Trade Paperback, 120 pages,
ISBN 1 56097 194 0).
49
D. K . H O L M
Story:A hungry Mr Natural, wandering in the desert,

is hosed down by Flakey Foont.Telling Mr Natural that
he wants ‘just a couple of straight answers,’ the elusive
guru plays hard to get, putting Foont off. Mr Natural
fools him with the mirage of a city in the distance and
then lists all the things Foont should do to achieve
enlightenment (‘Buy some asparagus [sic]! Then meet a
new person, go home, take LSD, say a prayer…’).
Dismayed, Foont complains, ‘Why do I keep thinking
you can tell me anything?’ and they tromp off in
different directions.
Background: Mr Natural is Crumb’s most frequently
drawn character. His constant acolyte Flakey Foont is a
close second. Mr Natural first appeared in Crumb’s
sketchbooks in 1966. This was during a several-month
phase in which Crumb was feeling ‘fuzzy’ thanks to
some bad acid he had dropped in New York. Under the
influence of the LSD, as well as a stack of Forties comic
books he and friend Marty Pahls had picked up in
Chicago for a nickel each, Crumb also invented the
Snoids, Eggs Ackley, Shuman the Human, the Vulture
Demonesses, Shabno the Shoe-Horn Dog and
numerous others both obscure and famous.
As Crumb tells the story, he was listening to the
radio when a disc jockey announced that a just-finished
tune was by ‘Mr Natural.’ Crumb incorporated that
name into his sketchbook.
Mr Natural probably has as many antecedents as
Alfred E. Newman. His short, robed body and long
beard put one in mind of a cross between Gestalt ther-
apist Fritz Perls and a Thirties cartoon character. The
50
RO B E RT C RU M B
style in which he is drawn evokes old Segar Popeyes.

Crumb bibliographer Donald Fiene has traced Mr
Natural’s source back to a character called ‘The
Hitchhiker.’This robed, long-bearded figure spoke one
surrealistic phrase (‘Nov shmoz ka pop,’ a sentence that
has popped up in some early Crumb strips) and was
created by Gene Ahern (1895–1960) for the ‘Squirrel
Cage’ section of the Sunday edition of his newspaper
strip Room And Board, which began publication in
1936.
The first Mr Natural strip appeared in the San
Francisco underground newspaper Yarrowstalks No. 1
(May 5, 1967), published by David Auten and Brian
Zahn. Mr Natural became a regular, and Flakey Foont
made his first appearance in issue No. 3. Mr Natural
went on to make his national debut in Zap Comix No.
0, then in issue No. 1 in 1967 (No. 1 came out before
issue No. 0, but was drawn second). In 1970 Crumb did
three issues of a self-titled Mr Natural comic, and also
did a short-lived weekly strip for the Village Voice in
1975.
One thing to note about Mr Natural is what he has
not become, which is an endlessly exploited
commodity, such as an animated cartoon character.
Crumb has only allowed two non-Crumb uses of the
character, first as a small squeeze-toy, distributed by
Kitchen Sink Press in 1993, and then as a ceramic table
lamp figure, produced by his son Jesse Crumb in 1998,
in a limited edition.
Analysis: Mr Natural is the guru’s guru. One of the
distinguishing characteristics of the hippie movement
51
D. K . H O L M
was an interest in Asian religions. Crumb skewers that

aspect of hippiedom with Mr Natural, an apparent
fraud who bedevils his disciple Flakey Foont with
cryptic and contradictory remarks.
Foont is Mr Natural’s Sancho Pancha, his Lou
Costello to Mr Natural’s Bud Abbott. He seems to have
made his first appearance in ‘Mr Natural Outwits
Flakey Foont’ but is now almost unimaginable without
Mr Natural, although true to the nature of their
dynamic, Mr Natural is imaginable without Foont.
Foont is tortured by doubts and torn between the
life of the mind and sensual pleasures. He is especially
weak in the face of Mr Natural’s opaque Socratic ques-
tions. Mr Natural tricks him constantly, one of his worst
tendencies being the gift of various girls. One of the
early ones is Ruth, a hippie who ends up becoming
Foont’s domestic burden with their two kids.
Their relationship puts the reader in mind of Charlie
Brown and Lucy but has a larger context, the ‘unan-
swerable questions’ of the rinzai branch of Zen
Buddhism. Foont is probably the worst Buddhist in the
world. Fakery would be irrelevant in the real world if
Foont were able to get something out of it to aid his
training.
‘Mr Natural In Death Valley’ is also one of the earliest
stories in which Crumb used a thicker line and a larger
panel size.
The Crumb Woman: The almost feral Mr Natural is
always in the market for another giantess for his own
collection or to give to Foont.
Confessions: With the creation of Mr Natural and
52
RO B E RT C RU M B
Foont, Crumb owned up to his disenchantment with

or his skepticism of the hippie movement, of which he
was presumably a committed member. Instead, he felt
like an outsider. He has told interviewers that he hated
rock music, felt alienated at love-ins, and couldn’t
handle the insecurity of the lifestyle. Crumb elucidates
these feelings fully in his introduction to Vol. 4 of the
Complete Crumb Comics.
Collectibility: Most Mr Natural stories are easily avail-
able in modern reprint editions for the cover price.The
three issues of Mr Natural the comic book from the
early Seventies are offered by dealers online for sums
ranging from $50 to $100.
The Verdict:Aside from the phrase ‘Keep on Truckin’,’
which Crumb didn’t invent anyway, Mr Natural
remains Crumb’s most enduring creation. He is also a
sly dig against what Crumb took to be the vacuity of
much hippie thought.
‘Dirty Dog’
Publication history: This story was first published in Zap
No. 3, December 1968, and reprinted in the Complete
Crumb Comics,Vol. 5, Fantagraphics, 1990, pages 74–76.
Story: The tale of Dirty Dog begins simply enough.
God, in the form of a funny bunny rabbit, sits at a large
television floor camera and invites us to join him in
scrutinizing a typical Earth dweller. This creature is
Dirty Dog, one of Crumb’s earliest urban wanderers,
garbed in a long coat, alone with his thoughts, failing to
connect with the people around him. When he
53
D. K . H O L M
attempts to pick up a cute dog girl standing next to him

at a street signal, she absolutely ignores him, continuing
to stare straight ahead.
At this rejection, he plunges further into the depths
of despair. In response, he slinks into an adult bookstore
and comes upon a copy of a magazine called Lez Be
Friends. As Dirty Dog flips through the issue, he imag-
ines himself frolicking with the two girls. He has found
his selection. Dog takes the magazine to the intimi-
dating clerk, and with cheery beams emanating from
his head, Dirty Dog exits the store, with a presumably
satisfying afternoon of masturbation ahead of him. As
God says, ‘Poor ol’ Dirty Dog! But he’s happy!’
Background: When he did ‘Dirty Dog,’ Crumb had
been publishing cutting-edge comic stories for some
time. On the one hand, even amid the enthusiasm he
met within the counterculture, he must have already
been receiving criticism for the ‘outrageousness’ of his
sexual content. On the other hand, given the times, the
artist must have been aware that a censorship trial
might come up sooner or later. Intentional or not,
‘Dirty Dog’ is a compassionate defense of the right to
view pornography.
In fact, by March 1970, bookstore owner Si
Lowinsky was on trial in Berkeley for selling Snatch
magazine. One of the defense witnesses was Peter Selz,
who was curator of the art museum at the University
of California-Berkeley. The jury voted for acquittal,
another landmark in the counterculture’s battle over
freedom of speech.
Analysis: Like Wally Wood’s Disneyland orgy drawn
54
RO B E RT C RU M B
for Paul Krassner’s magazine, The Realist, ‘Dirty Dog’

shockingly takes funny animal characters who have a
Disney flavour to them and casts them in licentious
roles. Dirty Dog himself could be a variation on Pluto,
and the clerk looks like one of Mickey Mouse’s villains.
‘Dirty Dog’ begins with a quote from a song,‘Rather
drink muddy water, Lord/ sleep in a hollow log/ than
be up here in New York City/ treated like a dirty dog.’
Crumb’s interest in old-time blues songs gives him his
title. But though the song suggests that the story is
taking place in New York, the setting feels like the West
Coast. One clue appears in the opening panel:A ‘super-
market’ in the background sports what looks like a Nazi
swastika but which is, in fact, a decorative emblem
found on many pre-war West Coast houses.
A lot of Crumb themes and images are here in
miniature. Urban, jobless wanderers.The city landscape,
meticulously drawn by Crumb. The blend of funny
animals and animal lust, so to speak. Crumb’s mid-
career drawing style is at its peak here.
Particularly relevant are two frames on the third
page. Both are close-ups of Dirty Dog. In the first, the
fantasy he has just had vanishes in a ‘pop’ of exploding
air. Dirty Dog looks apprehensive, with beads of sweat
hopping off his brow and a focused, intense look in his
eyes.
But Crumb doesn’t stop there. He follows that image
with an almost identical panel of Dirty Dog now
looking to his left. This sort of emotional detail is
unusual in comics but harks back to Carl Barks, who on
occasion would dedicate two panels to Donald Duck in
55
D. K . H O L M
repose when the convention would be to stick with

one.The story doesn’t require the additional panel, but
it helps the reader also ‘wake up’ from Dog’s fantasy and
share for a moment the cold reality he has re-emerged
into.
The Crumb Woman: In his fantasy, Dirty Dog says,‘Eat
her shoe you dirty bitch!’ in an early manifestation of a
unique Crumb interest.
Collectibility: Zap No. 3, published by the Print Mint,
was a double issue, the second half to be read by flip-
ping the magazine over and beginning again from a
secondary cover. A true first printing is offered by
dealers for about $100.
The Verdict: ‘Dirty Dog’ represents perhaps the
clearest, briefest, and funniest defense of pornography
ever written. Shunned by his fellow funny animals,
Dirty Dog finds solace in the fantasy of erotica. The
bunny rabbit, looking down on him and perhaps
guiding Dirty Dog to the right magazine, is not an Old
Testament God (judgmental, vindictive, harsh), but a
New Testament God (compassionate and under-
standing).
‘Lenore Goldberg And Her Girl Commandos’

Publication history: ‘Lenore Goldberg And Her Girl
Commandos’ was first published in Motor City No. 1,
April 1969, published by the Rip Off Press. It was
reprinted in The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 5, July
1990, pages 112–119, and in R. Crumb’s America, Last
Gasp Eco-Funnies, 1995 (pages 56–63).The adventures
56
RO B E RT C RU M B
of Lenore Goldberg were continued in a fifteen-page

story in Motor City No. 2.
Story: Lenore, leading a team of four, including
freckle-faced Janet Jones, bursts into a meeting of
American intellectuals. After subduing the guards, they
challenge the prejudices and politics of the group.
Having made their point, the women leave, only to find
the building surrounded by the police. All escape but
one, who is killed by the police.Those remaining agree
to meet again later, and Lenore is next shown in bed
with her boyfriend.
Background: Crumb sometimes maintains that he was
apolitical before the Sixties. His childhood letters,
however, belie that claim. He was certainly unhappy with
America. As he writes in The Complete Crumb Comics
Vol. 5, Crumb and his friends S. Clay Wilson and Robert
Williams had long discussions about the role of art in
society. ‘They had this image of themselves very clearly
as art out-laws, sticking it to the booshwah, the big lie,
the mass delusion of mainstream culture, both high and
low. I was coming from a rather more conventional
cartoonist-as-entertainer background … For better or
worse, the influence of Wilson and Williams began to
show in my work. I, too, became more of a rebel.’
Crumb told Mercier that ‘Lenore Goldberg’ is almost
a satire on feminism in a way, taking the hippie
‘woman’s lib’ thing and putting the super hero comic
tradition on top of it … I thought it had some good
points but there’s a lot of stuff I did where I think I was
caught up in taking my role too seriously as a
spokesman for my generation.’
57
D. K . H O L M
Analysis: Radicals confront a bunch of uptight

squares with their hypocrisy.This was a scenario played
out a million times in the Sixties.The Commandos do
so mercilessly.The story sets up a dichotomy: dried-up
boring intellectuals ruling a country they are out of
touch with, versus vibrant women freed of the
constraints that inhibit free speech and sexuality.
Though the intellectuals and their acolytes have the
power, the Commandos have moral authority.
There are more sexual politics than straight politics in
the confrontation. Mid-speech, Lenore is distracted and
looks down to find one of the intellectuals licking her
boot (‘I … I … can’t help it … I’m hopelessly neurotic
… I … I … ’). Hauling him to his feet, Lenore congrat-
ulates him (‘You broke th’ mental barrier!!’), and Janet
offers up a boot (‘Here! You can lick mine!! Feel free!’).
The intellectual runs from the room sobbing. Another
intellectual is compelled to admit that he wishes her to
‘suck me’ but ‘N-not here!!! Later … in my hotel,’
before also being reduced to a blubbering mass.
The humour often isn’t subtle. A cop (named
Muncie) beating Janet Jones screams, ‘You’re Sick!
You’re Sick! You’re Sick!’ as he pounds her face into the
cement sidewalk. Janet survives to appear in Motor City
No. 2.
‘Lenore’ shows Crumb at the height of his narrative
powers. The eight-page story follows a traditional six-
panel page with variations, but with jagged, parallelo-
gram squares, as if the world were out of joint. One of
the best panels is placed in the middle of the story’s
sixth page. It shows the intellectuals in the aftermath of
58
RO B E RT C RU M B
the invasion, shaken, each alone with his or her

thoughts.You can almost feel the silence in the room.
In the opening splash panel, Lenore is shown fending
off a cop with a finger to the throat, crowing, ‘Thank
God for Yubawazi!!!’Those unfamiliar with mainstream
comics of the Sixties won’t recall the delightfully wordy
full-page ads for this faux martial art featuring this catch
phrase.
The Crumb Woman: Lenore Goldberg is an early,
coherent manifestation of a figure who is soon to
populate Crumb’s comic: the brash, athletic, big-legged
woman who takes no nonsense and no prisoners.That
she is cast here in the role of an activist is not impor-
tant. She is a vibrant creature whose activism merely
conforms with Crumb’s fantasies. Long-haired, wide-
hipped, short-skirted, and booted, the Commandos are
not that far from the clan of the Vulture Demoness, just
without the political component.
Confessions: With whom does Crumb feel affinity?
The rebellious girls? Or the stuffed shirts with their
sexual secrets? I would hazard to guess that, though he
may admire the girls, a lifetime of scorn from the femi-
nine contingency has made him feel more like the
awkward intellectuals grappling with their sexuality in
the face of female ridicule.
Collectibility: True first publications of Motor City are
offered online for around $100.
The Verdict: In this early example of Crumb’s political
bent, Crumb manages to mix his sexual fantasies with
his politics.Those who were not born before the ‘revo-
lution’ cannot know the sweetness of life.
59
D. K . H O L M
‘Joe Blow’
Publication history: ‘Joe Blow’ first appeared in Zap No.
4, June 1969. It has been reprinted in The Complete
Crumb Comics, Vol. 6, Fantagraphics, 1991, Trade
Paperback, pages 341–39, ISBN 1 56097 056 1.
Story: Joe Blow and his wife are home. He intrudes
on his daughter, Sis, who is masturbating. Popping a
pill, he instructs his daughter to come to him ‘front and
center’ and fellate him. Joe Junior returns home from a
baseball game only to find his father and sister having
intercourse. Disturbed, he goes into the kitchen, where
Mom provides solace by dressing up in stockings, black
underwear, and boots (‘Gee … You must be the greatest
mom a guy ever had!!!’). In the aftermath of their
sexual antics, Junior and Sis realize now what they must
do and march off to make ‘even more new discoveries
… and to build a better world.’
Background: In their sexual excesses, many of the early
underground comics of this period feel more like
‘Tijuana bibles,’ the oblong dirty comics that featured
movie stars and other prominent people in sexual situ-
ations, than funny animal books. But this excess was
planned. Under the influence of cartoonists Spain
Rodriguez and S. Clay Wilson, Crumb began to let out
the anger, political frustration, and sexual fantasies in his
mind. In fact, the freeing up of fantasies has become a
large component of his philosophy. Crumb is impatient
with cartoon stories that hew to the conventional and
do not show evidence of autobiographical exploration.
Analysis: ‘The family that lays together stays
60
RO B E RT C RU M B
together,’ runs an old joke, and Crumb’s story is a picto-

rial representation of that quip. It’s also the story that
irked some of the interviewees in Terry Zwigoff ’s
Crumb.What’s important about the story is not what it
advocates but rather what it implicitly attacks. What
Crumb puts on display in this story is the falsity behind
the surface of the robust American family. Sex isn’t
avoided, sexual feelings aren’t hidden in Joe Blow’s
family, but are out in the open. Parodying the kind of
inspiration comics one might find coming from reli-
gious publishers, Crumb mockingly suggests that incest
could lead to a better America.
The Crumb Woman: Mom’s willingness to dress up in
black stockings and boots makes her a pre-eminent
Crumb woman.
Confessions: Crumb is of course not admitting to
actual incestuous activities in this story (though in the
cramped, hothouse atmosphere of post-war American
life, sexual tensions were rife). Instead, he is exploring
the uptightness of American life as represented by his
Marine father and his family. This is the opposite
extreme of Whiteman (or Flakey Foont).The Joe Blow
family is perfectly happy in its taboo-busting together-
ness.
Collectibility: Zap No. 4 is offered by dealers on the
Internet for sums ranging from $20 to $50.
The Verdict: In its efforts to ridicule down the number
one taboo in America, ‘Joe Blow’ is an achingly hilar-
ious broadside directed at the residue repression of
Fifties America.
61
D. K . H O L M
‘It’s Really Too Bad’

Publication history: ‘It’s Really Too Bad’ first appeared as
the lead story in (Plunge Into The Depths Of ) Despair.
The 28–page publication with a cover price of 50 cents
was published by the Print Mint in 1970. It is reprinted
in The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 6, Fantagraphics,
1991, Hardcover, January (pages 90–94), with an alter-
native cover to the magazine also included on page 88.
Story: Less a conventional comic story than the story-
board for an industrial or education movie, of the kind
that kids in the Fifties might see in a classroom or on
television on a slow-paced Sunday afternoon, ‘It’s
Really Too Bad’ is designed to bring the reader to the
brink of despair. It is a tone poem set to the hollowness
of contemporary American life.
One of the most brilliant three panel progressions in
all of Crumb’s work, it’s like Bob Dylan’s story-of-a-
typical-life as an argument for drug use that forms the
last stanza of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ (‘Get
born, keep warm/Short pants, romance, learn to dance/
Get dressed, get blessed/ Try to be a success/Please her,
please him, buy gifts,/Don’t steal, don’t lift/ Twenty
years of schoolin’/ And they put you on the day shift’).
Background: The conformist Fifties, the America
rejected by Kerouac and the Beats, was also to have a
profound influence on the hippie movement in general
and on the peripatetic Crumb in particular. It’s a
rejected life encapsulated by just three panels in this
story.‘The man in his youth is pathetically hopeful and
optimistic …/ As he grows more ‘mature’ he begins to
62
RO B E RT C RU M B
‘face up to the harsh realities’ of life …/ and he ends up

old and embittered, regretful of shattered dreams,
feeling cheated by fate, his days filled with aches and
pains so that he looks forward to death!!’
Analysis: It’s telling that the cartoon immediately
preceding this lead story (found on the inside front
cover of the comic) is the ‘autobiographical’ ‘Morbid
Sense Of Humour,’ in which an artist, vaguely resem-
bling Crumb, admits to finding ‘the strangest things
amusing’ and to being ‘fascinated by … by … psycho-
logical sadism … with you, the reader, as victim!!’ ‘It’s
Really Too Bad’ is bound to make any thinking
American deeply depressed.
Confessions: ‘It’s Really Too Bad’ is in many ways
another story about Crumb’s father.
Collectibility: First printings of Despair (which is hard
to determine, Despair having no copyright information
inside and few, if any, variations from printing to
printing) are offered by dealers from $40 to $75.
The Verdict: One of Crumb’s brilliant comics, it also
introduces his ‘lecture’ mode. Its tone is essential to
understanding Crumb’s later confessional comics.
63
Life On The Farm: Brutal Years Of

Breakdown And Defeat (1971–1979)
For Robert Crumb, the Seventies were all communes,

lawyers, divorce settlements, the IRS, and Keep On
Truckin’.
It started out with a period of exhaustion that
seemed to be the hangover of five years of peak
creativity, domestic restlessness, and growing fame.
Crumb had been everywhere. Between 1968 and
1970, he published around ten comic books filled
exclusively with his own work and contributed to
scores of others. He did an album cover for Janis
Joplin, and Ballantine Books published an oversized
anthology of his work. As the Seventies began, he
published XYZ Comics, a comic including a collabora-
tion with Charles, who had suffered a breakdown,
material that harked back to the work they did in
Oceanside, California. Crumb also formed a band and
bore witness to the creation of a movie based on Fritz
the Cat.
The Seventies would be much different. He told one
interviewer,‘I’m a has-been … Jeez, I’m old hat.There’s
a million stories about me. I’m part of the 1960s –
passé.’ In comparison to the previous five years, Crumb
64
RO B E RT C RU M B
did much less work. There was another anthology, R.

Crumb’s Carload O’ Comics, and there were still the
single comic publications, but there was a change. It was
in this phase that Crumb killed off his character Fritz,
and his work took a more explicitly confessional bent.
Not long after what Crumb has characterized as a
nervous breakdown, he met Aline Kominsky (né
Goldsmith). In July of 1974, he moved to Winters,
California, with her, then later to Dixon. After another
move to Madison, they married in early 1977.
Meanwhile, a lawyer named Albert Morse brought
actions against various businesses and publications for
using Crumb material without permission.There were
over 1, 000 suits.
This income would lead to tax troubles, over
$28,000 in back taxes. In 1976 a judge ruled that ‘Keep
on Truckin’’ and Mr Natural are in the public domain.
Various colleagues came to his aid, and eventually
Crumb was able to pay off the debt, but he signed over
the Potter Valley house to his ex-wife and sold his
current house, ending up back in Winters in a rented
home.
Crumb wasn’t inactive. Throughout this decade he
continued to draw and publish. And in 1978, as the
period came to an end, a German publisher began to
issue reprints of his sketchbooks, just one sign of a
building esteem that was to expand a few years later.
65
D. K . H O L M
‘Bo Bo Bolinski:
He’s The No. 1 Human Zero’ and ‘A Gurl’
Publication history: ‘Bo Bo Bolinski: He’s the No. 1
Human Zero’ first appeared as one of a set of Bolinski
stories in the Uneeda Comix one-shot from 1970. It is
reprinted in The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 7, page
78.
‘A Gurl’ made its first appearance in Big Ass Comics
No. 2, from August 1971. It was reprinted in The
Complete Crumb Comics,Vol. 7, pages 57–62.
Story: Bo Bo Bolinksi is found sitting in a chair, his
arms crossed, staring at nothing. We view him from
nine angles. He does not speak.
Meanwhile, in ‘A Gurl,’ an unnamed lass is alone in
her room. She is bored, starring out a window, her
mouth drooping. She begins to fidget and ends up
balancing on her toes, her teeth clamped on the
windowsill. She stops, pounds her buttocks (appropri-
ately enough for a magazine called Big Ass), and then
masturbates. After a moment of post-come contempla-
tion lying on the floor, she remembers that the news is
about to come on and goes downstairs to watch TV.
Background: ‘Zero’ is the last of about five one-page
Bo Bo Bolinski stories chronicling the adventures of a
lout. Bo Bo (‘a nutty little nobody from Newark, N. J.’)
is easily amused by simple things, such as a rolling tyre.
He tends to fall down after leaving a bar. He vomits a
lot, in bars and on his girlfriend. The Gurl is one in a
long line of Crumb women.
Analysis: Both Bo Bo and the Gurl are common
66
RO B E RT C RU M B
creatures in Crumb’s characterological universe. Bo Bo

is like someone out of a Thomas Pynchon gang, a
carousing ninny for whom Crumb seems to have a
sweet affection. He’s like Crazy Guggenheim, the char-
acter that singer Frank Fontaine played on CBS’s Jackie
Gleason Show in the early Sixties. In this particular strip,
Crumb does not offer him a voice. Bo Bo sits, and we
look at him. Bo Bo does not speak, and it is clear that
there is nothing in his mind. Crumb’s fascination with
this kind of character recalls the incomprehensible
lowlifes and characters found in the strips of Segar and
Ahern and in Abbott and Costello and the Dead End
Kids movies.
As for the Gurl, this is what teenage girls in America
do (boys do it, too). They spend a lot of time in their
room doing nothing, but a nothing with all the meta-
physical weight of humanity behind it (all that’s missing
from Crumb’s scenario is music). Perhaps responding to
early complaints about his ‘sexism,’ Crumb here finds
himself merely studying a girl in private, providing a
peek into what lonely people do when they are alone
(which, in Crumb’s view, is masturbate). Both these
stories are more like art school assignments, portrait
studies for a future project yet still fully realized.
The Crumb Woman: With her prominent teeth and
glasses, the Gurl looks more like Crumb than any
woman he has drawn.
Confessions: As Crumb revealed for the first time in a
story for Mystic Funnies No. 3, he has had a lifetime of
dental pain. Crumb’s teeth have been a source of
discomfort for him since he suffered a foolish incident
67
D. K . H O L M
in his youth, in which he stepped into the line of fire

of a kid hurling stones. That the Gurl can balance on
her teeth may be a form of wish fulfillment on Crumb’s
part.
Collectibility: Uneeda Comix is offered by dealers for
prices ranging from $15 to $110, while Big Ass No. 2
has an asking price of from $20 to $125.
The Verdict: Both ‘Bo Bo Bolinski: He’s the No. 1
Human Zero’ and ‘A Gurl’ find Crumb in a serene,
contemplative mode.
‘Pete The Plumber’

Publication history: ‘Pete The Plumber’ was first
published in Your Hytone Comix by Apex Novelties in
1971. The story was reprinted in The Complete Crumb
Comics,Vol. 7, 1991, pages 112–120.
Story: While helping a client with a plugged toilet,
Pete The Plumber is horrified to see the woman fall
into the bowl. With mounting bills at home and the
police looking for him, Pete decides to commit suicide
by flushing himself away. But after descending through
numerous pipes, he only ends up in a room with many
other feces-covered failed suicides. Eventually, he and
the others make their escape, at the urging of one of
their number who wants to stay behind alone. Bursting
through a manhole cover, they emerge from the depths
and march down the street. The next day, Pete returns
to work with renewed vigour.
Background: ‘Pete The Plumber’ was conceived and
published at the height of the madness that Crumb calls
68
RO B E RT C RU M B
the early Seventies. In the introduction to The Complete

Crumb,Vol. 7, he notes that he was ‘amazingly prolific
in this period,’ but partially it was because ‘all the small
publishers of underground comics at that time pleaded
with me to supply them with comics … I felt it was my
sole responsibility to keep these several little companies
in business.’ It should be noted that Crumb still does
this. He has been incredibly loyal to the publishers he
started with and has no exclusive contract with any one
house, preferring to ‘spread the wealth’ around.
Analysis: With its talking toilet plungers (Pete’s
buddy and assistant, Plungo) and its dot-eyed characters
who talk out of the side of their mouths, ‘Pete The
Plumber’ is an optimum story for showing how Crumb
draws upon the quality of mid-century and earlier
comics and animated cartoons. Crumb is also a master
of the dingbat and the sound effect. Crumb obviously
worked hard at, or had a knack for, coming up with
onomatopoeic words to illustrate the noises of his
cartoon world. (My favorite in this story is ‘ngogn
ngogn ngogn,’ the sound of clanging pipes as Pete
makes his descent.)
Another habit with Crumb is the increasingly
crowded panel (or the succession of panels that get
smaller and smaller: See ‘Bad Karma’ in Mystic Funnies
No. 2). These most often lead to purgation of some
kind; that happens twice in ‘Pete The Plumber,’ first
when Pete commits suicide and later when he makes
his escape.
Also, for all the comic’s ‘underground’ freshness,‘Pete
The Plumber’ shows a profound sympathy for the
69
D. K . H O L M
lower-class economic condition and an ‘old man’s’

obsession with bills and a crabby wife. His only solace
is his loyal buddy Plungo.
‘Pete The Plumber’ also introduces a theme that one
would expect to see more often in Crumb’s work,
given how much of it teeters on the edge of despair.
The subject is suicide. People close to Crumb have
committed suicide, and the artist has admitted to
contemplating the act, roughly around this time. But,
surprisingly, suicide does not figure in his work, which
suggests that beneath the cruel despair he chronicles,
there is a strangely sunny optimism of spirit lurking
there.
The Crumb Woman: ‘Pete The Plumber’ is nearly
female-free.The exception is Pete’s wife. She is a typi-
cally harassed, tired American housewife.
Confessions: ‘Pete The Plumber’ continues the cloacal
obsession that occasionally pops up in Crumb’s work.
The Snoids, little creatures who live in the bowels of
pretty girls, and the large buttocks of many of the
Crumb women attest to that theme in his work. In a
story from around the same time, Honeybunch
Kaminski uses her poop as a weapon against the merce-
nary Mr Man (a straight-laced hustler with a taste for
degradation like the ‘liberals’ Lenore Goldberg faces
off). More important, the story is dedicated to ‘my good
ol’ Uncle Pete.’
Collectibility: First editions of Your Hytone Comix is
offered by dealers for as little as $15.
The Verdict: The panel of Pete in the toilet about to
commit suicide (‘Good-bye cruel world’) by pulling
70
RO B E RT C RU M B
the plunger is priceless. Crumb is critical of much of his

output from this period, but ‘Pete The Plumber’ is
indicative of the darker strain that was coming to
dominate his work.
‘Fritz The Cat “Superstar”’

Publication history: The last Fritz the Cat story first
appeared in The People’s Comics in 1972. It’s been
reprinted several times, most recently in The Complete
Crumb Comics, Vol. 8, Fantagraphics, 1992 (pages
122–136).
Story: Fritz, now a popular media personality, is home
frolicking with his latest girlfriend, Abigail (an alli-
gator). His lawyer shows up and proceeds to bore Fritz
with tedious number-crunching. Next, Fritz goes to a
meeting with Ralphie and Stevie, the producers of his
latest film. Afterwards, he sees a sexy rabbit walking
down Sunset Boulevard. He picks her up, and after
unloading all his angst on her, makes his attacks. Next
he’s off to be a guest on Johnny Giraffe’s talk show. On
the street afterward, he runs into his old girlfriend
Andrea Ostrich. Their encounter turns sour for Fritz,
and he leaves. However, Andrea follows him into the
hallway, where she stabs him in the head with an
icepick. Fritz:Yet another casualty of the Sixties.
Background: A book (movie dramatization) could be
written just about the background of this particular
story, which is almost bigger than the strip itself. The
death of Fritz the Cat is the culmination of a thread
that began in Crumb’s childhood.
71
D. K . H O L M
As a child, Crumb, to amuse his siblings, made

pencil-drawn comics featuring a family cat named
Fred. Later collaborating with his brother Charles, he
created further adventures for Fred, whom Charles
renamed on paper Fritz.
The character stuck with Crumb, and his first
published cartoon was a Fritz strip, sold to Help! maga-
zine. Eventually, after his profile rose, Crumb published
more Fritz stories, refashioning tales he had conceived
much earlier but had never been able to publish. In
one, Fritz was a distracted layabout with female prob-
lems. In another, he was a secret agent. In the third big
story, ‘Fritz The No-Good,’ he gets involved tangen-
tially in radical politics. The whole Fritz biography is
gathered in The Complete Fritz The Cat (Belier Press,
1978,Trade Paperback, 128 pages, ISBN 9 7464 16 8).
At the height of his hippie fame, Crumb was
approached by Ralph Bakshi and Steven Krantz to let
them adapt the Fritz character for an animated film.
Apparently against his wishes, but under the urging of
his first wife, who had his power of attorney, the project
went ahead anyway.The subsequent film, Fritz The Cat,
released in 1972, and its sequel, The Nine Lives Of Fritz
The Cat, also produced by Krantz but directed by
Robert Taylor, proved to be a souring experience for
Crumb, who has discussed the history of the films in
numerous interviews, but the full story of the making
of Fritz the Cat the movie is recounted in Mike
Barrier’s detailed two-part article in Funnyworld maga-
zine (‘The Filming of ‘Fritz the Cat,’ issue Nos. 14 and
15, spring 1972 and fall 1973). The only method
72
RO B E RT C RU M B
Crumb had at hand to cleanse himself of the whole

affair was to kill off Fritz.
Crumb told interviewer Mercier, ‘Actually I felt
sorry for Bakshi! He really tried to do something! He
really did try!… [But] There is something missing in his
creative approach, in his vision. Something’s lacking
there. It all comes out a little half-baked … Too bad! He
really broke his butt to make these animated cartoons
… He is a seething character, intense and neurotic …’
Analysis: Though born from Crumb’s revulsion of all
things Hollywood,‘Fritz The Cat “Superstar”’ ended up
a very funny parody of the commercial entertainment
industry, with a sad peek into the loneliness and prema-
ture aging that world induces.
The first Fritz stories were drawn in Crumb’s early
sketchy thin-line style, an unusually light and airy look
for a comic, but somewhat similar to Jules Feiffer’s
strips. By the time of ‘Fritz The Cat “Superstar”’
Crumb was in the full flower of his confident dark-line
style. But this, too, was to change and evolve.
The Crumb Woman: In ‘Superstar,’ the women tend to
be the compliant brand of Crumb woman, star-struck
by even a meager fame, and willing to do anything to
stay close to her famous man.
Confessions: If there is any ‘confession’ within this
story, it’s subterranean and has to do with the artist’s
own sense of world-weariness.
Collectibility: Various editions of The People’s Comics
go for wildly fluctuating prices, ranging from $5 to $50.
The Verdict:‘Fritz The Cat “Superstar”’ marks a signif-
icant stage in Crumb’s career. By killing off a character
73
D. K . H O L M
whom other cartoonists might have viewed as a gravy

train, Crumb was re-affirming his rejection of corpo-
rate America. But the story is entertaining in its own
right, not just as a stage in Crumb’s career. Fritz has had
a messy life, and this was, in a way, its inevitable conclu-
sion.
‘Whiteman Meets Big Foot’

Publication history: This lengthy story first appeared in
Home Grown Funnies published in 1971. It was
reprinted in The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 8, 1992
(pages 8–29).
Story: On a vacation with his family in their new
Winnebago, Whiteman is kidnapped by a Big Foot.
Back at his camp, Big Foot gives Whiteman to his
daughter Yetti, and, though at first resistant, Whiteman
grows fond of the giant, hairy beast.
At Whiteman’s urging, the two attempt to visit civi-
lization so that Whiteman can reassure his family about
his new life. Unfortunately, Big Foot is captured and
Whiteman returns to his home, sullenly doing nothing
all day, to the irritation of his wife. Then the institute
where Yetti is under study invites Whiteman for an
interview on Yetti’s eating habits and other behaviours.
Yetti and Whiteman escape, and after dressing her in
urban clothes,Whiteman attempts to secret Yetti in the
Winnebago and return her to the wilderness. His wife
catches them. But Yetti grabs Whiteman and they run
off. In the last panel,Whiteman and Yetti have returned
to their domestic bliss.
74
RO B E RT C RU M B
Background: ‘Whiteman Meets Big Foot’ appeared in

one of the many one-shot comics Crumb did in the
Seventies. Other titles included The People’s Comics and
Black And White Comics. At 22 pages, it is almost epical
in length, aside from some of the early Fritz the Cat
stories, it was the longest comic book tale he had drawn
to date.
Whiteman is, of course, the same character Crumb
wrote about in the story ‘Whiteman,’ from Zap No. 1
in 1967.
Analysis: A little-emphasized aspect of Crumb’s work
is his interest in nature and the environment, evinced in
posters and cartoons such as ‘A Short History of
America,’ originally published in Co-Evolution Quarterly
No. 23. But fans of the highly-urban seeming Crumb
would probably be surprised at how much of a country
fellow he really is. Crumb has lived most of his adult life
in isolation from dense urban centres, and as he told
Mercier,‘You really have to work hard to get away from
people in the United States. As big a country and as
wide open as it is, it is hard to get out to the wilderness
… Here [in France], I just walk up there … I tried very
hard to find a place like that in California, where I
could go out in nature, but it was just too difficult!’
The Crumb Woman: Yetti is an early version, after
Gunthra of The Yum Yum Book, of a thereafter common
Crumb figure, the giant female.
Confessions: Crumb has discussed how the original
Whiteman from Zap was based on his father. This
story’s Whiteman, however, has some of the earmarks of
Crumb himself, the harassed domesticated man finding
75
D. K . H O L M
sexual fulfillment with a giant female. Crumb has also

revealed that he has a mystical side and is a sucker for
anything to do with flying saucers, and other Fortean
occurrences, into which Big Foot sightings fall with
some ease.
Collectibility: First printings of Home Grown Funnies
are offered by dealers for as much as $60.
The Verdict: ‘Whiteman Meets Big Foot’ has the
coherence and concision of a movie plot.Taken up by
a filmmaker, it might make an excellent short or even
feature-length film. In effect, ‘Whiteman Meets Big
Foot’ shows the confidence with which Crumb can
plot out a complex tale and make it work, hitting all the
narrative high points and all the emotional ups and
downs.
‘Singing In The Bathtub,’ R. Crumb

And The Cheap Suit Serenaders
Publication history: This Shanachie compact disc is copy-
righted 1993, with an ASIN of B000000DSP. It’s a CD
reissue of the third Cheap Suit Serenaders record orig-
inally released on Blue Goose records in 1978.
Background: Crumb had been recording music, off
and on, since 1972. But his interest in music began back
in his youth when he started collecting old 78-rpm
blues and jazz records at the same time as his friend
Marty Pahls.As his collection increased and his interests
expanded, his collection grew to include international
folk music, among many other genres. By 1972 he
already had over 900 discs.
76
RO B E RT C RU M B
Story: The Cheap Suit Serenaders, at least in this

manifestation, include Crumb (on banjo and guitar),
Terry Zwigoff (cello and banjo), Robert Armstrong
(accordion, musical saw, banjo, guitar and steel guitar),
Bob Brozman (steel guitar and Mano-Uke), Allan
Dodge (violin, viola, ukulele, mandolin, and
harmonica), and Tom Marion (guitar and six string
banjo), along with John Lundberg (vocals on one tune),
Geoff Antipa (saxophone), Paul Woltz (saxophone), and
Rick ‘Gizmo’ Elmore (trombone and tuba). Singing in
the Bathtub contains 14 tunes:‘Singing In The Bathtub’
by Herb Magidson; ‘Chile Blues’ by Rodney Rogers; a
traditional tune called ‘Dream Of Heaven;’ ‘Suits
Crybaby Blues,’ an original by Armstrong, Crumb, and
Zwigoff; a ‘Collier Medley’ of the ‘Ben Hur March’ and
‘Napoleon March;’ ‘Shopping Mall’ by Armstrong;
‘Yearning and Blue’ (the perfect Crumb title) by J. C.
Cobb and Al Dodge; ‘Hula Girl’ by Sunny Cunha;
‘Pedal Your Blues Away’ by Miller-Wells-Griffin; ‘La
Gima Polka’ by Fazio; ‘Sing Song Girl’ by McCarthy-
Hanley; ‘Home’ by Van Steeden and Clarkson; ‘My Gal
Sal’ by Paul Dresser; and ‘Hano Hano Hawaii’ by
Kealoha.
Though Crumb met Janis Joplin and drew the cover
for one of her records, and was asked to do a Rolling
Stones cover, he actually hated that kind of music. By
way of contrast, in the Crumb Family Comics, he lists the
six ‘Tunes That Are Always Running Through My
Head.’They are ‘Kentucky Blues’ (Fess Williams and his
Royal Flush Orchestra from 1929), ‘Love Is Like That’
(Ray West and his Cafe Ray West Orchestra from
77
D. K . H O L M
1930), ‘Decatur Street Rag’ (Bennie Moten’s Kansas

City Orchestra from 1925), ‘No No Blues’ (Willie
Baker, from 1929),‘Jig Walk’ (Ben Bernie and his Hotel
Roosevelt Orchestra, from 1926), and ‘Bay Rum Song’
(Billy Hays and His Orchestra, from 1929).
In 1972, after something of a nervous breakdown the
previous year, Crumb organized the Keep on Truckin’
Orchestra with Robert Armstrong and Alan Dodge,
and with them he made a few 78 records. They
performed live in Aspen in April, 1972, and then on
New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. Renamed the Cheap
Suit Serenaders, they became intermittent and ineffec-
tive street musicians near Fisherman’s Wharf. In 1974,
the band recorded its first LP, and in spring of 1975 the
band went on a college campus tour. But after reviews
in Rolling Stone and an invitation to appear on Saturday
Night Live in 1977, Crumb decided to drop out of the
band, as he would later choose to leave the Zap comic
collective. He recorded with them occasionally after
that, but in July of 1978, amid many moves and tax
problems, Crumb made his last recordings with the
Serenaders, including the material on this CD.
In the introduction to the Complete Dirty Laundry
Comics, Crumb recalls those times. ‘Hanging out
together, playin’ old tunes ‘n’ eating donuts, havin’
adventures on the road, flirting with girls … So we had
a few ego battles, so I was pestered to death by comic
fanboys and media hypsters at every fuckin’ band job,
what’d they [the other band members] care? But
y’know, it really was fun for a while … It was the only
one time in my life I ever had like a group of buddies
78
RO B E RT C RU M B
to hang out with … So they were riding on my coat-

tails, I still liked all those guys. Mainly, I think I quit
because I wanted to get back and devote more time and
energy to the drawing … And I did … I think my work
improved a lot right around that time, and I have come
to despise the “business” part of the music business.’
Analysis: Figuring out the connection between the
artist Crumb and the musician Crumb is like trying to
reconcile Noam Chomsky’s political views with his
linguistics: It can be done, but the connection is evanes-
cent and subtle. Obviously, the man just loves music,
and like most people, feels the urge to perform himself.
But there is a deeper relation between the kinds of
comics Crumb draws and his musical tastes.
To Crumb, the early American music he likes
bespeaks authenticity. In an interview excerpted in the
introduction to Your Vigor For Life Appalls Me, Crumb
made clear his loathing of popular music.‘I hate Sinatra.
I can’t stand him, his attitude, the whole gestalt, to me
the sensibility of that music is just repulsive.The whole
sensibility of all that Fifties, Sixties pop music of the
middle class, that bourgeois element that tended
towards admiring and liking this kind of sleazy, almost
gangster-Mafioso kind of lifestyle … I much preferred
the new teen-age music of the Fifties, that down-and-
out rockabilly, criminal juvenile delinquent music, I
couldn’t stand [Stan] Kenton and all that slick Las Vegas
sounding big-band jazz. Ugh. I just can’t stand it.’
The Crumb Woman: She is the target of these songs,
not the subject.
Confessions: The only song on this particular disc that
79
D. K . H O L M
has a confessional element is ‘Suits Crybaby Blues,’ in

which the musicians lament, ‘Nobody likes our music.
They all want stuff that’s loud.’
Collectibility: This disc is still in print for the rather
typical price of $14.95.
The Verdict: Crumb’s musical excursions sometimes
tax the patience of his fanboy followers, but to not
understand the music connection is not to understand
Crumb.
80
The Retreat To Realism (1980–1993)
Whew! The Seventies. Relatively quiet, compared to

the Sixties, but what a decade! Tax problems, relation-
ship shuffles, major decisions of a personal and public
importance.Yet Crumb survived.
Less is known, or at least is currently accessible, about
the next 13 years of Crumb’s life, and that’s for a very
simple reason: Donald Fiene’s detailed bibliography of
Crumb ends in 1980.
The struggling author of a book on Crumb must
hail Fiene as a sterling example of the bibliographer’s
art, even though he modestly calls his book a checklist.
His work is equal to the standards set by other serious
bibliographers, such as Michael Juliar on Nabokov and
Dan Laurence on Shaw (two artists in comparison to
whom Crumb is just as prolific, and who also published
in many obscure and difficult-to-find publications).
But Fiene goes beyond the bibliographer’s mandate
to include what amounts to a biography of Crumb, a
year-by-year account of what Crumb was doing and
where, presented as a humanizing adjunct to the cold
list of works. In the event that Fiene ever updates his
book, we will have a definitive biography of Crumb
and of Sixties and Seventies American popular culture.
81
D. K . H O L M
As the Eighties opened, Crumb was 37. In many of

his Seventies interviews, the artist presented himself as
passé, a has-been, washed up, while reminding his inter-
locutors that, yes, he still does music and some
cartooning, thank you very much.
Married to Aline, still living in Northern California,
Crumb served on the editorial board for Winds of
Change, where he also published illustrations. He was
also soon to be the father of a girl, Sophie, born in
1981.
The most significant changes seem to have occurred
later in the decade. In 1985,Terry Zwigoff, Cheap Suit
Serenader and documentary filmmaker (Louie Bluie),
began putting together Crumb, and Crumb himself
spearheaded another documentary about himself for
British television. But probably the most far-reaching
project for Crumb was the publication of his own
magazine.
Weirdo made its debut in the spring of 1981. It was
distributed by Last Gasp Eco-Funnies (spelled Last
Ghasp on the first issue) with a cover price of $2.25.
The magazine lasted 28 issues, its final cover price
$4.95. Most of the later issues are still in print (early
ones are offered by dealers for between $8 and $20). It
ceased publication (for now?) in the summer of 1993.
Over those 12 years, Weirdo came out on average of
about twice a year.
Officially, Crumb’s editorship lasted through the first
eight issues (the eighth was published in the summer of
1983).With issue No. 9, readers were invited to send art
and letters to Peter Bagge (first in New Jersey, then
82
RO B E RT C RU M B
Kirkland, Washington). With issue 17, Aline Kominsky

took over the magazine until its final issue (re-titled
Vierre D’eau for the nonce).
Nevertheless, Crumb’s sensibility permeates all 28
issues. Crumb has explained that, ‘The whole idea for
Weirdo magazine came to me in a flash in the fall of
1980. I was performing my daily meditation exercise
one day when the vision of this kooky, screwball maga-
zine erupted in all its tacky, low-life dumb-ass essence,
a style-mix of the old 1940s and Fifties girlie-and-
cartoon “joke books,” Harvey Kurtzman’s early Mad
and Humbug and their sleazy imitators, and the self-
published ‘punk’ ‘zines of the period.’ There is some-
thing purposely cheap about the early issues, and much
of the text is written out by Crumb, including letters to
the editor, giving the magazine a uniform Crumbian
appearance.
Weirdo was very much a family affair, with close
friends and even his children contributing material.
Robert Williams, Drew Friedman, and Spain
Rodriguez were among the notable names, but several
‘unknowns’ made their first appearance in Weirdo’s
pages. From its strong covers to its blend of stories
about sex and domesticity by both Crumb and other
artists, and in its embrace of Fifties low culture in the
form of various fake ads and in articles that explored
minor cultural objects and companies, it’s an unpre-
dictable, yet strangely personal, magazine.
Yet at the same time, there is something ambitious
about it. ‘My favorite part of doing Weirdo, aside from
the photo-funnies, was making the covers. I was so
83
D. K . H O L M
deeply inspired by the early Mad and Humbug covers

with those detailed borders and creative title logos. I
always thought the cover was the most important part
of any magazine, in making each issue a powerful arti-
fact in its own right.’The magazine was not universally
popular. Crumb laments the fact that his photo-funnies
were never popular, and Raw editor Art Spiegelman is
said to have called the magazine as a whole ‘a piece of
shit.’
The most personal aspect of Weirdo was the series of
fumetti that Crumb authored. He did about 15 of them
and then dropped the format after issue No. 8, with the
advent of a new editor.
Crumb describes his motivation for this hybrid
photo-essay in his introduction to Vol. 14 of the
Complete Crumb Comics. ‘A big part of my excitement
was my anticipation of all the fun I was going to have
putting together my own ‘photo-funnies’ featuring cute
girls, just like in the old pin-up mags, a brilliant idea I
couldn’t wait to get started on.’
Stories included such titles as ‘Suburban Cowgirls,’
with black and white photographs, augmented with
boxes and word balloons and special effects noises by
Crumb. Early images are credited to ‘Stomp’ Ganos,
later ones to T.‘Stiglitz’ Zwigoff.The series ended with
‘Girls Turned Into Vibrator Zombies,’ starring
cartoonist Dori Seda, a notably un-Crumbian woman.
Crumb’s fumetti do not appear in the collected
Crumb; they can only be seen in the early issues of the
magazine. ‘It was decided not to include any of the
photo-funnies in the Complete Crumb series,’ Crumb
84
RO B E RT C RU M B
wrote. ‘There’s not much in the way of art work in

them.’ He attributes what he perceives to be the
unpopularity of his fumetti to the divergence between
his taste in female physiognomy and the general
public’s. ‘I s’pose if I’d used only skinny women the
photo-funnies would have been more popular, but no,
I had to go chasing after my own big-assed ‘muse’ with
my usual obsessiveness.’
Weirdo also represents aspects of Crumb that get little
recognition: his generosity to other cartoonists, the
breadth of his interests, his political sensibility, and his
charming interest and celebration of the domestic
world.A thorough examination and history of Crumb’s
Weirdo years by the present author can be found on-line
http://homepage.mac.com/dkholm/iblog/index.html.
Finally, to round out the decade, in 1987
Fantagraphics introduced The Complete Crumb Comics.
This massive undertaking was up to 16 volumes as of
this writing.
‘Excerpts From Boswell’s London Journal

1762–1763’
Publication history: With a banner introducing the story
as ‘A Klassic Komic,’ ‘Boswell’ first appeared in Weirdo
No. 3, Fall, 1981.The story is copyrighted 1981. It was
reprinted in The Complete Crumb Comics,Vol. 14, 2000
(pages 38–42).
Story:‘Boswell’ recreates 12 entries in James Boswell’s
diaries, beginning Tuesday, 14 December, 1762, and
going through Thursday, 28 July, 1763. In the first entry,
85
D. K . H O L M
presented in text only, Boswell laments that he has not

partaken of London’s sexual offerings. Then the diary
goes on. Friday, 17 December, 1762: Boswell attempts
to seduce an actress whom he calls Louisa, and then has
dinner with a churlish Thomas Sheridan and his wife.
Tuesday, 21 December, 1762: Sitting next to Louisa on
a couch, he suddenly flings himself on her, only to be
rebuffed. Saturday, 25 December, 1762: Boswell makes
the rounds of various notables such as actor and book-
seller Thomas Davies, including a simian-looking
Oliver Goldsmith, where they debate the merits of the
poet Thomas Gray. Wednesday, 12 January, 1763:
Boswell finally conquers Louisa, having sex with her
five times in one night. Thursday, 20 January, 1763:
Boswell has a sleepless night thanks to guilt feelings and
an eruption of gonorrhea. Thursday, 30 March 1763:
Boswell has sex with a whore in a park. Tuesday, 12
April, 1763: Boswell passes on a large-rumped whore
who demands too much money. Thursday, 19 May,
1763: Boswell takes two whores to an inn. Friday, 20
May, 1763: Boswell makes the rounds with some of his
intellectual friends. Wednesday, 20 July, 1763: Boswell
dines with Dr. Johnson, who expounds on goodness.
Thursday, 28 July, 1763: As Johnson and Boswell are
walking down the street, they are approached by a
hooker, whom Johnson shoos away, then philosophizes
about her lot in life.
Background: ‘Excerpts From Boswell’s London
Journal’ inaugurates Crumb’s so far short-lived ‘Klassic
Komic’ series. James Boswell (1740–1795), biographer
of Samuel Johnson, was the son of a Scottish lawyer. He
86
RO B E RT C RU M B
aspired to the writer’s life and cultivated friendships

with prominent literary figures in London and abroad.
His extensive and frank diaries were discovered in the
1920s and have enjoyed slow publication through Yale
University Press since 1950. Boswell is surely one of the
great diarists after Samuel Pepys and until Franz Kafka.
Klassic Komics is an allusion to Classics Illustrated, a
series of comic books initiated in 1941 by publisher
Albert L. Kanter, who, perhaps without cynicism, sought
to utilize comic books as a medium for educating chil-
dren in the great classics of world literature. The series
was taken over by the Jerry Iger Shop in 1945.The first
issue was an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three
Musketeers in October 1941. Classics Illustrated later
distinguished itself by using paintings on its covers
rather than coloured line drawings. According to the
invaluable article ‘Understanding Classics Illustrated,’ by
Dan Malan, in the 1993 edition of the Overstreet Comic
Book Price Guide, the series also enjoyed distribution as a
book, rather than a magazine, thus both costing a bit
more but having a longer shelf life than its competing
monthly publications. New titles ceased in 1962 with an
adaptation of Faust, but the idea of Classics Comics has
been revived several times, including First Publishing’s
attempt in 1990.Thanks to revisions and re-done adap-
tations, there are almost 1400 different versions of all the
Classics Illustrated comics.
Analysis: With the advent of Weirdo, Crumb began to
explore and question the possibilities of comic book
art, and one of the outcomes was an interest in appro-
priating other people’s realities in comic book form.
87
D. K . H O L M
First up was Boswell. Among the things that seem to

have drawn Crumb to this subject matter is the vast
difference between Boswell’s idealistic and even fan-
like adulation of his writing gods and the gross inde-
cencies he pursued in private. And it should be noted
that given some of the other adaptations that lay ahead,
Crumb comes across as a well-read man with eclectic
interests. Crumb does a remarkable job of evoking 18th
Century London, and his likenesses are close to his
subjects while still having the Crumb flavour.
Crumb Women: It’s hard to tell if Boswell was a misog-
ynist or just a hedonist, or both. The women in the
story are viewed through Boswell’s eyes and id, and yet
Crumb found here a sympathetic subject who appeared
to share with the cartoonist an affection for large-
rumped woman.
Collectibility: Early copies of Weirdo are offered from
$8 to $20.
Verdict: Despite its modesty and subservience to its
source material,‘Boswell’ announces a major change in
Crumb’s work in both drawing style and subject
matter. Yet it remains also remarkably of a piece with
Crumb’s other work, showing a character in the throws
of doubt and lust alternately, while also featuring
another famous ‘couch’ scene, a recurrent setting in
Crumb’s universe.
‘Psychopathia Sexualis’
Publication history: With a banner headed ‘A Klassic
Komic,’ the story first appeared in Weirdo, No. 13,
88
RO B E RT C RU M B
Summer, 1985. A note to the reader dates it March

1985. The story was reprinted in The Complete Crumb
Comics,Vol. 15 (pages 34–43).
Story: ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ recreates and illustrates
16 cases from the 238 recounted in Dr. R. von Kraft-
Ebing’s psychoanalytic volume of the same name. The
comic announces that the excerpts are culled from the
twelfth German edition of Kraft-Ebing’s book,
published in 1906.
The story begins with an introduction by a cartoon
Kraft-Ebing, who notes that ‘few people are conscious
of the deep influence exerted by sexual life upon the
sentiment, thought and action of man in his social rela-
tions to others.’ After that, Crumb recreates the
following accounts: Case number 2 (senile dementia in
an 80–year-old man with homosexual leanings); Case
number 9 (absence of sexual feeling in a young man);
Case number 11 (hypersexuality in a married man);
Case number 31 (onanism and vampirism); Case
number 35 (defilement of women by soiling them in
public); Case number 48 (sadism in women, a wife who
must suck the blood from a cut on her husband’s arm
for sexual satisfaction); Case number 59 (a married man
who likes to be walked on by prostitutes); Case number
75 (a married man with a fetish for nails in the soles of
women’s shoes); Case number 97 (self-cannibalism);
Case number 98 (hair fetish); Case number 110 (ladies’
handkerchief fetish); Case number 114 (shoe fetish);
Case number 152 (androgyny); Case number 165
(lesbianism); Case number 220 (male sadism); Case
number 231 (compulsive bestiality).
89
D. K . H O L M
Background: After ‘Excerpts From Boswell’s London

Journal’ in Weirdo issue No. 3,‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ is
Crumb’s second ‘Klassic Komic’ and further explores
Crumb’s interest in the past, in the differences and
continuity between past societies and the present, and
the discrepancies between people’s public and private
lives.
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, a baron, was
born in Mannheim, Germany in 1840, died in 1902,
and was a professor of psychiatry at Strasbourg from the
age of 32. His magnum opus was published in 1886.
Kraft-Ebing was succeeded by Magnus Hirschfeld and
Alfred Kinsey as catalogers of sexual aberrations, but
Kraft-Ebing was the pioneer. His findings were so
shocking that the frank portions of his cases were
printed in Latin.Though he was associated with Freud,
Kraft-Ebing seems to have concluded that sexual aber-
rations were organic, or associated with syphilis, rather
than based on developmental interruptions. On the
cover of Weirdo No. 13, Crumb alludes to other cases,
numbers 78, 88 (an eye fetish), 142, 160, 170, 180, and
229. It’s a parade of characters that in sheer volume is
unlike anything previously shown in Crumb. Also on
the cover, Crumb calls Psychopathia Sexualis the ‘dirtiest
book ever written’ (illustrated by ‘America’s dirtiest
cartoonist!!’).
Analysis: There are a number of recurring ideas reit-
erated here. One is Crumb’s view of man as relentlessly
obsessive about sex, which occupies all his waking
hours. The implicit message is that quashing these
impulses does no good. Science is shown to fail in its
90
RO B E RT C RU M B
attempts to explain or treat these obsessions. An excep-

tion is Case 114, the victim of a shoe fetish. He finally
attains full heterosexual potency when his physician,
Dr. Hammond,‘advised him to hang a shoe up over his
bed, and look at it fixedly during coitus, at the same
time imagining his wife to be a shoe,’ a rare happy
ending in these tales.
Stylistically, Crumb cross-hatches like crazy in this
story, and with its top hats and canes, its ankle boots and
full skirts, provides the cartoonist with rich, atypical
fodder for his pen. For the most part, the case histories
are presented in medium shot.
There is something Oscar Wildeish about case 152’s
androgynous male. Case 75 is a classic Crumb char-
acter, a shoe fetishist with sweat beads popping off his
head and dark, clouded eyes focused on something
interior.
Confessions: If there is anything ‘confessional’ in
‘Psychopathia Sexualis,’ it is indirect and found in
Crumb’s choices among the 238 cases in Kraft-Ebing’s
book. But the subtext of the story may well be confes-
sional. Crumb, the self-revealed sex obsessive, may feel
a certain kinship with this line-up of sexual renegades
whose minds are preoccupied with their sexual
fantasies.
Crumb Women: This is a man’s tale. It’s a catalog of
mostly male sexual perversions. The women here are,
for the most part frigid wives, prostitutes willing to don
shoes and walk on a client, or victims of the men’s
bizarre predilections.The one exception is case number
165: ‘Congenital Sexual Inversion in Women
91
D. K . H O L M
(Virginity),’ which is a 38–year-old woman who wore

male attire and pursued women. After her death, an
autopsy revealed ‘dura adherent to vault of cranium. No
atrophied brain. Convolutions broad, not numerous,
regularly arranged.’
Collectibility: Like other copies of Weirdo, No. 13 is
still in print for its cover price of $3.95.
Verdict: Is it possible for Crumb’s vision of humanity
to get any darker? And here he is drawing upon an
important figure who also peered into the darkest
recesses of human behavior.We see a lurid interest in the
oddities of the mind, yet also compassion in Crumb’s
account of Kraft-Ebing’s patients. This is an important
chapter in Crumb’s ongoing factual chronicles.
The ‘Devil Girl’ Series

Publication:The Devil Girl stories ran in unofficial serial
form through four issues of Hup comics.The first story,
‘Here He Comes Again!’ appeared in Hup No. 1 (Last
Gasp Eco-Funnies, 1987, pamphlet, unpaginated), on
pages 27–33.The second story,‘The Meeting,’ appeared
in Hup No. 2 (Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, 1987, pamphlet,
unpaginated), on pages 23–35 (which include the back
cover). The third story, ‘He’s A Natural Man,’ appeared
in Hup No. 3 (Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, 1989, pamphlet,
unpaginated) over pages 25–34 (which include the
back cover). Finally, the series’ most famous story, ‘A
Bitchin’ Bod,’ appeared in Hup No. 4 (Last Gasp Eco-
Funnies, 1992, pamphlet, unpaginated), on pages
21–33.The tale of Flakey and Cheryl receives its coda-
92
RO B E RT C RU M B
like last mention in Mystic Funnies No. 1 (Alex Wood,

1997, pamphlet, page 26), when Flakey Foont
complains about Mr Natural foisting her on him in the
first place.
Story: The four Devil Girl stories chronicle Flakey
Foont’s relationship with one Cheryl Borck, otherwise
known by her nickname, Devil Girl. She is a tempes-
tuous female whom Mr Natural has recently recruited
to his cult. When they first meet in ‘Here He Comes
Again!,’ Flakey is married to Ruth and has two kids.
But he is lured out by Mr Natural to meet his new
acolyte, this aggressive girl with a long tongue who
immediately captivates the mind of the domesticated
Foont.
In ‘The Meeting,’ Foont is summoned to a meditative
gathering, but goes only on the basis that Devil Girl will
be there, as he has found himself fixated on her.
Hypnotized by Mr Natural’s flute, Devil Girl is then
victim to Foont’s sexual imagination, until they tear up
the apartment and Mr Natural throws them out.
In ‘He’s A Natural Man!’ Foont discovers that Mr
Natural has mounted the Devil Girl’s head on his wall
as a trophy. But it’s just a trick, and after a sexual
encounter with the old codger, Devil Girl admits that
Mr Natural is the only one who knows how to handle
her because he is a ‘natural man.’
But that humiliation is but a prelude to worse indig-
nities visited on DG, which include Mr Natural seem-
ingly beheading her in ‘A Bitchin’ Bod.’ He presents the
now headless Devil Girl to Foont as a gift, but after
toying with her, Foont feels guilty. He returns her to
93
D. K . H O L M
Mr Natural, who ‘retrieves’ the Devil Girl’s head, which

now looks more devilish than ever, with flaming hair,
almond eyes, and sharp teeth.
Background: Hup made its debut three years after
Crumb gave up the actual editing of Weirdo. Published
concurrently with Id, comprising selections from
Crumb’s sketchbooks, Hup represents a burst of energy
that belied the artist’s age, taking him through his 40s.
These comics also preceded renewed interest in the
artist, fanned by Terry Zwigoff ’s Crumb.
Analysis: The sequence of Devil Girl stories hark
back to an early Mr Natural-Foont tale, ‘The
Girlfriend,’ from Mr Natural No. 2, October, 1971.
In that story, Mr Natural annoys Foont by dropping
in when Foont is expecting a visit from his girlfriend
(later his wife) Ruth Schwartz. Mr Natural and the
leather-clad, bespectacled Ruth run into each other,
and, beguiled by Mr N., she submits to Foont’s passion,
inspiring a mid-fuck phone call to Mr Natural
thanking him for his help.
Hup represents, among other things, a deeper explo-
ration of Crumb’s sexual fantasies, all within the
context of a vaguely ‘male’ magazine.‘Hup,’ the word, is
of course also the first word in the basic training
marching chant. (Is that why Crumb stopped after four
issues? ‘Hup,Two,Three, Four’?)
But Crumb has used the word ‘hup’ before. In the
story ‘It’s a Hup Ho World,’ originally printed in Co-
Evolution No. 21, 1979, and reprinted in R. Crumb’s
America, page 37, it’s used as a musical nonsense word.
One recurring figure in Hup is the helmet-haired
94
RO B E RT C RU M B
‘host’ of the magazine, Stan Shnooter, who announces

on the inside cover of Hup No. 1, that this is a more
mature enterprise then ‘those dazzling escapist fantasies
designed to keep you in a state of arrested adolescence.’
He’s wrong, of course. There is still a lot of ‘unmas-
culine’ male angst and worry here:There isn’t that much
distance between ‘hup,’ the march command and ‘hulp,’
the gasp that Foont often utters as his feet fly into the
frame.Thanks to the animated cartoon style title panels
of ‘Bitchin’ Bod,’ the reader is put in mind of the
movie-like quality to Crumb’s work at this stage,
confirmed when Zwigoff chose ‘Bitchin’ Bod’ to
‘animate’ in his documentary.
Crumb Woman: The Devil Girl is consistent with
other Crumbian representations of aggressive women
who strangely give themselves over to sensual pleasure,
even at the hands of inferior males. As we come to
know the Devil Girl, she grows more monstrous and
extreme, but she is not all that distant from the Vulture
Demonesses and Yetis of Crumb’s earlier fantasies, a
figure as alluring as she is terrifying.
Confessions: Crumb has suggested to interviewers
that both Flakey Foont and Mr Natural represent
aspects of his character. But is it possible that the Devil
Girl also represents an aspect of Crumb’s real-life
persona? The Devil Girl template may in fact represent
an aspect of Crumb’s complex psychology, the strong-
willed careerist subject to the demands of his own
hedonism. Just as Devil Girl (and so many other
females, from the ‘feminists’ Crumb battles in ‘R.
Crumb Versus the Sisterhood’ in Black And White
95
D. K . H O L M
Comics, from 1973, to the Fairy Godmother in Mystic

Funnies No. 2) can’t help but submit to her sexual side
once a male figure attacks her, the ‘Crumb’ portrayed in
his autobiographical comics is easily distracted from his
comic book work by the dictates of his roving passion
for women. It’s a thin analogy, but it’s arguable that
there’s a little bit of Crumb in all those crazy women.
Collectibility: All issues of Hup are still in print, with
cover prices ranging from $2.50 to $2.95, though some
dealers offer ‘fine’ condition copies for as much as $25.
The story, ‘A Bitchin’ Bod,’ has been reprinted several
times and figures prominently in Terry Zwigoff ’s
Crumb. Kitchen Sink eventually issued Devil Girl
chocolate bars and Dark Horse distributed a Devil Girl
lunch pail. Through Jesse Crumb a limited edition
signed statuette of Devil Girl is available.
Verdict: After the material that appeared in Weirdo,
the four issues of Hup represent Crumb’s best narrative
work of the Eighties and Nineties. The artist is in full
command of his craft. Other strong stories that first
appeared in Hup include ‘My Troubles With Women,
Part II,’ ‘The Story O’ My Life,’ ‘Nausea’ (a Klassic
Komic), ‘Can You Stand Alone And Face Up To The
Universe?’, ‘If I Were A King,’ and ‘You Can’t Have
Them All: Magnificent Specimens I Have Seen.’ That’s
quite a run of iconic, much-reprinted stories.
‘The Confessions Of Robert Crumb’

Publication history: A 55–minute quasi-documentary
made for the British Broadcasting Company’s arts
96
RO B E RT C RU M B
program, Arena, and aired in 1987, The Confessions Of

Robert Crumb is now available for home viewing from
Home Vision Entertainment, 2002, DVD, ISBN 0 7800
2482 6.
Story: After ‘shocking’ the viewer with a brief précis
of Crumb’s sexual preferences, Confessions settles into a
chronological account of the artist’s life up through the
mid-Eighties: his early family life, with rare home
movie footage of his parents and siblings; his first
marriage; his move to San Francisco; his rising fame
(which he says induced a resentment and unhappiness
that darkened his work at the time), and his subsequent
nervous breakdown, brought on by lawyers and agents
and the movie version of Fritz the Cat.
The film also takes detours to Crumb’s view of
modern life, his interest in music, and his reaction to
fans and fandom.The film ends on a rather happy note,
with Crumb discovering a renewed interest in drawing
that took his work in unusual and unpredictable direc-
tions from the early Eighties on.
Background: It’s not yet fully known how this docu-
mentary came about, but BBC producer Mary
Dickinson seems to have approached Crumb to collab-
orate with her on the piece.Though most people have
probably seen Terry Zwigoff ’s 1994 documentary,
Crumb, which portrays the cartoonist as a product of a
dysfunctional family, Confessions offers up a slightly
different view of the cartoonist and makes a fine
companion piece and counterstatement to Zwigoff ’s
bleaker though still sympathetic film.
At Confessions’ conclusion, Crumb still lives in
97
D. K . H O L M
Winters, California, where he describes himself as a

family man and breadwinner who worries about bills,
mows the lawn, bickers with the wife, and takes crap
from his bratty daughter. Zwigoff ’s Crumb, begun a
couple of years later and released in 1994, picks up
where the earlier film leaves off. It follows the artist’s
move to France, where Crumb, having lasted long
enough to become respectable (like politicians, ugly
buildings, and whores, in Mark Twain’s famous quote),
enjoys international recognition. Crumb also goes
deeper in the Crumb family dynamic.
What made Crumb succeed as a documentary is that
Zwigoff, a longtime friend of the artist, really knew his
subject, though it’s a slant on Crumb that the cartoonist
himself would probably not have selected. For example,
Zwigoff places Crumb in the larger context of comic
book history and the world history of art.And it dwells
on the still painful subject of his brothers Charles and
Maxon.
Analysis: Here’s an interesting question: Is Crumb
really ‘confessional?’ And just what is a confessional
writer or artist anyway?
One way to address the issue is to cite the grand-
daddy of confessors, Saint Augustine. His The
Confessions (published c. 400) is the chronicle of a
conversion. But what was he confessing to, and to
whom was he confessing?
Augustine is ‘confessing’ to difficult truths, and he is
confessing them to God.‘I do this, my God,’ Augustine
wrote, ‘not because I love those sins, but so that I may
love you. For love of your love I shall retrace my wicked
98
RO B E RT C RU M B
ways. The memory is bitter, but it will help me to

savour your sweetness, the sweetness that does not
deceive but brings real joy and never fails. For love of
your love I shall retrieve myself from the havoc of
disruption which tore me to pieces when I turned away
from you [Book II, i].’
Among other things, he confesses that he loved a
woman but abandoned her to further his career. And
such a dire tale still has currency. Crumb, on the other
hand, is confessing to the authentic lust that in large
part defines his character, to sexual peculiarities and
thoughts that many entertain but few are willing to
share with the public, thoughts that are so horrific to
the self that one often leaps to attack them in others.
Augustine presents confession as a means for the
corrupt to treat sin in a truthful fashion. We are so
corrupt that if we don’t confess, our corruption will
only deepen. Crumb, on the other hand, is confessing
to the public. But why? I believe he does so in part to
help create a new kind of society in which people like
himself can exist equally with others. Crumb confesses
to change the world.
Crumb was raised a Catholic, and, obviously, confes-
sion plays a large part in Catholic ritual. The views of
Saint Augustine, an early bishop and theologian of the
Church, also permeate the theology of Catholicism.
Crumb would have encountered these views even if he
didn’t read Augustine’s Confessions or City of God.
Among Augustine’s influential views is the belief that
sex should be confined to procreation, that the sex act
is inherently corrupt. Through the corruptions of sin,
99
D. K . H O L M
sex has become dirty. (Protestants, in contrast, tend to

view pride as a large part of sin.) This is an extreme
view of human nature, but Crumb may share it, in
part.While revelling in his own sexual shenanigans, he
is also putting forth human nature as irredeemably
corrupt.
With whom can the reader identify more, Saint
Augustine or Crumb, the saint or the sinner, the pearl
diver of the soul or the chronicler of domestic distur-
bance? Perhaps they are not really all that different. Just
as Jesus, for example, attacked the Pharisees as ‘white
sepulchers’ (beautiful crypts on the outside but filled
with death and corruption on the inside), Crumb, very
much influenced by Fifties culture, views the orderly
world of suburban life as one rife underneath with
sexual perversion, greed, and disharmony.
As Peter Brown writes in Augustine of Hippo,
‘Wandering, temptations, sad thoughts of mortality and
the search for truth: these had always been the stuff of
autobiography for fine souls, who refused to accept
superficial security.’ Crumb is a chronicler of the
domestic. Though on the surface there may not be all
that much difference between Blondie and certain
aspects of Crumb’s comics about his home life, done by
himself or in collaboration with his wife Aline in Dirty
Laundry, the point of them is that Crumb refuses to
leave any aspect of his life unexamined.
Crumb himself was later drawn to other ‘confessors,’
though never to Saint Augustine himself. For Weirdo,
Crumb eventually did stories adapted from the diaries
of Franz Kafka and James Boswell, and a story about
100
RO B E RT C RU M B
science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s paranoid reli-

gious fantasies.
It’s important to think back on the nature of comic
books at the time that Crumb began to issue Zap and
its successors in San Francisco. Consumers could
choose from funny animals, Archie, superheroes
(though there were neurotic heroes in the comics over
at Marvel), or political cartoons. What Crumb intro-
duced was … himself. By inserting R. Crumb the
cartoonist into his cartoons, the medium suddenly
became very personal.
It’s possible that someone else would have come up
with the concept of the confessional comic book. But
Crumb was the man who did it. Without his prece-
dence, subsequent artists such as Peter Bagge, Joe Sacco,
and so many others would have not had the forum,
much less the freedom, to pursue their individual
visions.
‘If you do exceptionally good work,’ he says in the
narration to Confessions, ‘you’ll be hounded to death.
The media and people with ideas, they’ll kill you,
they’ll destroy your concentration forever. They won’t
let you breath.You’re either on or you’re off.You’re in
the limelight, blinded by the glare, or in the gutter
being stepped on.’
The Crumb Woman: The film is rife with Crumb
women, from some dance class students Crumb spies
on, to the ‘perfect woman’ offered up for illustration by
‘Professor’ Crumb.
Confessions: ‘Nuff said.
Collectibility: Crumbologists, that corps of fanatical
101
D. K . H O L M
Crumb aficionados who must have copies of every-

thing the artist has ever done (be it napkin sketches or
wedding announcements for friends), have long known
of this program.The film appeared on VHS a couple of
years ago, and now Home Vision Entertainment’s DVD
release helps the Crumb buffs to fill out their collec-
tion.
The Verdict: The Confessions Of Robert Crumb, which
bears the imprimatur of Crumb himself by virtue of his
writing the script, is more for fans of the artist than for
students of the documentary form. Still, the short
movie has its charms, and, in a way, you get to know
Crumb much better than you do in Crumb.
Crumbologists, though, will not learn anything new
from Confessions. For one thing, Crumb is a confes-
sional artist to begin with, and all the ‘confessions’ have
already been vented in his work. However, it is fun to
see Crumb enact certain of his sexual fantasies and
revisit places from his past. The Confessions Of Robert
Crumb makes a fine companion piece to Zwigoff ’s
Crumb.
‘R. Crumb, ‘The Old Outsider,’ Goes To The …

Academy Awards’
Publication history: Commissioned as a piece for the
American mainstream film monthly, Premiere, ‘…
Academy Awards,’ first appeared in its April 1991 issue.
The story was reprinted in Hup No. 4, 1992, pages
11–14, and R. Crumb’s America, Last Gasp, 1995, pages
52–55.
102
RO B E RT C RU M B
Story: As the tale opens, we find the artist at home,

receiving tickets to the Oscar ceremony. He goes to
‘that hateful Megalopolis,’ Los Angeles, where he
observes the pre-ceremony antics, sees some
protesters, walks down the red carpet, and sees Spike
Lee at a pre-ceremony lounge looking as isolated as
Crumb. From the third balcony he watches the broad-
cast, but finally can’t take it and leaves early, marvelling
at the fans outside and their commitment to the stars
inside.
Background: Premiere hired Crumb to go to the 1990
Oscar awards, which may have been one of the last big
events of American excess he witnessed before moving
to France. The magazine published the story to coin-
cide with the following year’s event.
Analysis: In 22 brilliantly crafted panels across four
pages Crumb immerses us into the, to him, hateful
world of Hollywood, while also speculating about its
attraction to the public.‘Why do they care so much …
What’s in it for them?’ In the penultimate frame, he
quotes Thomas Merton, who advises avoiding places
where ‘they gather to cheat and insult one another.’
One thinks of Crumb as a strictly comic book guy,
contemptuous of American pop culture, but movies
permeate his work just as they do of most contempo-
rary American artists. Many of his stories draw upon
the models of cartoons, educational films, and narrative
films. He’s also appeared in a few films, was the ‘star’ of
Crumb, and participated in the making of his own
documentary for British television. In interviews,
Crumb has alluded to how he has seen films such as
103
D. K . H O L M
The Exorcist, and seems versed in the work of Woody

Allen and other favoured filmmakers.
‘… Academy Awards’ contains several high- and low-
brow movie references embedded into its text and
images. Crumb quotes Kurosawa (‘To be an artist
means never to avert one’s eyes’) as he walks down the
red carpet. Unable to look up, he stares at the Oscar
statuette images woven into the rug.When Aline comes
into the room in the last panel, bearing a stack of videos
to watch that night, ‘Crumb’ reacts: ‘Movies? Did you
say … movies?’ adding in a box, ‘Slowly I turned …
step by step … inch by inch.’ The box quotes a scary
character from the old Abbott and Costello movie Lost
In A Harem (1944), who is inspired to violence when-
ever a certain name or word is mentioned.The bit itself
is derived from an old burlesque routine.
The Crumb Woman: Crumb draws himself ogling the
muscular leg of a girl straining to see a star from behind
the barricades. His horror of the ‘classic’ high-fashion
American woman is captured in panel 15, which
portrays four over-dressed and over-made up Medusas
staring maliciously.‘And the women – Oh lord save me
– The women were truly terrifying, with all their
‘glamour,’ their predatory eyes, their cruel, lipsticked
mouths … EEK!’
Confessions:‘… Academy Awards’ is explicitly autobi-
ographical.
Collectibility: Old copies of this issue of Premiere are
offered by dealers for around $10.
The Verdict: No better story by Crumb captures in
miniature form the artist’s puzzlement and despair over
104
RO B E RT C RU M B
American behaviour. The country’s obsession with

fame, stars, and show business looks bleakly pathetic in
the hands of the dyspeptic artist.
‘When The Niggers Take Over America’

Publication history: ‘When The Niggers Take Over
America’ was first published in Weirdo, in the issue re-
titled Verre D’eau, No. 28 (Last Gasp Eco-Funnies,
Summer 1993 pamphlet, unpaginated); it has been
reprinted in R. Crumb’s America (Last Gasp Eco-
Funnies, 1998, Trade Paperback, 94 pages, ISBN 0
86719 430 8), pages 72–77.
Story: ‘When The Niggers Take Over America’ is
another story in Crumb’s occasional ‘slide show’ or
educational documentary style. The narrative begins
with a vision of black triumph, with the robust leader
of the black army being fellated by the President of the
United State’s wife while The Prez looks on. At the
point of spurting orgasm, an aide shoots the President
through the head.
The narrator of the piece then lays out this dire
vision of the future in more detail. He charts uncon-
tainable black rage. Armies of blacks on the rampage
through white suburban neighbourhoods raping
women. Black leaders like tribal kings carried through
the cheering streets on the backs of Caucasian servants,
‘your daughter’ chained nude to his throne. Black
masters meaner than the old white slave owners.
Plantations wherein whites sing to ease their pain in
parody of the supposed roots of black music, and whip-
105
D. K . H O L M
pings done for public amusement. The narrator also

envisions a world of breakdown, because the ignorant
inheritors of the globe won’t know what to do with it.
But the story doesn’t end with the blacks. In part
two, ‘When The Goddamn Jews Take Over America,’
the narrator provides a dire vision of Jewish practices
akin to prejudices common out of the writings of
Henry Ford, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and other
diatribes. Powerful Jews control the media and hypno-
tize youth.They wreck the economy in their relentless
greed. Jews invented psychoanalysis in order to manip-
ulate coveted shiksas into sex.
Finally, in a one page coda, the narrator urges and
envisions a banding together of the white races, all
marching proudly toward an apocalyptic nuclear purifi-
cation of the planet, final destruction the only way to
finally cleanse the planet of the niggers and Jews, as the
Good leave it behind on their way to heaven.‘Our dear
Lord Jesus Christ awaits us with open arms on the
other side. Amen.’
Background: If Crumb wanted Weirdo to go out with
a bang, this was it. He had abandoned editing the maga-
zine, and Aline was then in charge.And his wife has the
notable tendency to free Crumb unconditionally to
express whatever is coming out of his imagination. He
told interviewer Mercier that ‘Neo Nazis … actually
reprinted it in one of their magazines … It was a joke
on them, and they don’t even get it.’ For Crumb, the
humour of the piece was ‘implicit in being so extreme.’
Analysis: ‘When The Niggers Take Over America’ is
arguably the most controversial recent comic story by
106
RO B E RT C RU M B
Crumb. It’s an explosion of the racialist fears, beliefs,

assumptions, and hate-triggers of the American middle
and lower classes.
‘When The Niggers Take Over America’ raises the
tired complaints about racism in Crumb’s work – tired
because such a charge can never be thoroughly given a
rejoinder to those who want to see his work as only
racist, sexist, and hate-filled. It’s as if the artist had said,
‘Hey, you think I’m a racist? Wait ‘til you read this.’
Crumb not only plays with common prejudices, but
goes even deeper into a more fearsome nightmare
vision of evil and potential for cruelty.
For the record, it should be mentioned that Crumb
was surrounded by racism in Milford, Delaware, among
other towns he lived in as a youth in the Forties and
Fifties. As his letters show, he always resisted the
common prejudices around him. Crumb has also been
a student of black music since his youth, and both his
wives have been Jewish. But one would like to think
that such statements are unnecessary, so clearly is the
strip a parody. It does happen to be, however, a parody
that treads a very thin line between the ridiculous and
the hidden fears that Americans rarely lay claim to.
In the spirit of the old National Lampoon, it plays with
racialist notions.Yet not really.The common defense of
such humour is that, by freely exposing prejudices, the
work nullifies them, renders them impotent. This may
be a bogus argument. Americans are bred to hate
‘difference.’ Indeed, all Western countries are, but
Americans are also taught to feel guilty about their
private feelings. In the end, what Crumb’s comic does
107
D. K . H O L M
is record what a nation was thinking at a specific time

and place, a document left for some kind of vague
posterity that with luck can make use of it. In the
present, however, it merely amuses with its extremism,
making it a parody of itself.
‘When The Niggers Take Over America,’ is actually
elegant in the way it builds up emotion. The story
begins with a nightmare vision of black rebels
executing the President of the United States while he
sees his wife perform fellatio on the new ‘king.’ From
this vision, horrific to the sexual fears of white
American males of a certain vintage, the strip returns to
the present, lecturing the reader on the rage felt in
African-Americans; then the fantasia returns, with a
race reversal showing blacks running plantations where
whites become musically inclined to ease their burden.
In the Jewish half of the story, the narrative makes a
transition from ancient prejudices to a rousing
emotional white Christian celebration of nuclear holo-
caust to rid the planet of its vile vermin.
‘… America’ is not, strictly speaking, a comic book
strip. It’s more in the tradition of propagandistic uses of
the comic format, from the religious pamphlets of
Chick and the (little-known) right wing fantasias of
Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko. In tone, it harks back to
Crumb’s early Despair story, ‘It’s Really Too Bad.’ That
tale, a blend of existential brooding and cruel humour,
also followed the ‘slide show’ format of disconnected
images linked by ‘voice-over’ narration boxes that speak
to the reader from a cynical, seen-it-all, no-hope view-
point.
108
RO B E RT C RU M B
There is no consensus among Crumb readers about

the story. On an Internet chat board recorded in early
2002,‘Rev. Syd Midnight’ wrote that the story is ‘Easily
the most offensive thing that Crumb ever did, and
brother that’s saying a lot.’ Crumb-fan Dave Garrett
wrote,‘I still think that those two pieces are the funniest
comics I’ve ever read.’ Ethan wrote that ‘anyone who
takes something like the ‘let’s eat some nigger hearts!!’
[sic et al] strip as an indication of his racism is way off,
these are probably the same people who think Tom
Tomorrow is evilly conservative.’ Jess responded, ‘ethan
is 50% right. i *do* think that robert crumb is a racist.
I *do* think he’s a misogynist. I still think he’s a genius.
the really uncomfortable part is that he may be a genius
because of his ability to express the little black droppings
at the bottom of his heart.’While Kerry responded,‘ As
a woman, I never felt outrage at his more ‘offensive’
strips about women. I don’t know why … I don’t find
them threatening. There are a lot of reasons for this –
one is that Crumb doesn’t exempt himself from ridicule.
So it comes off as a confession or a revelation of what
really exists rather than an act of aggression that is
intended to hurt … Also, there’s something inherently
burlesque in comics that leads you to expect the ridicu-
lous: they convey impossible, satirical and ugly things in
a way no other narrative medium can.’
The Crumb Woman: They are at a minimum. Basically
the only women in the story are the victims of the
black hoards, and the black women observing in the
background while a scrawny white guy is being slave
whipped.
109
D. K . H O L M
Confessions: In the Dirty Laundry story, ‘Euro Dirty

Laundry,’ from 1993, Crumb has ‘Crumb’ say,‘Why, I’m
practically a Jew myself. I’ve been hanging around with
Jews so long … Often I find myself the only goy in a
room full of yidlocks.’ But then, ‘Suddenly an ancient,
evil fearfulness stiffens his Anglo-Saxon blood, that old
insidious, poisonous unreasoning Jew paranoia!!!,’ and
‘Crumb’ thinks,‘Who are these dark oily people? How
clever they seem! How sophisticated! What do they
want from me?’ Crumb here is rather bravely exposing
the core of his reactions, if only to refute it later. It’s this
‘unreasoning’ core reactionism that ‘… America’
ponders.
Collectibility: This, like other copies of Weirdo, is still
in print, and goes for its cover price.
The Verdict: With this one comic story, Crumb both
pushed the level of his outrage and excited yet further
excitement from the group of readers who disparage
the rawness of his material.
110
Post-Crumb,The Later Years Of

Fruitful Harvest (1994–2005)
Robert Crumb was taken by surprise twice in his life.

The first surprise came not long after he began
publishing his comics when he was deemed the ‘dean,’
the ‘father,’ the ‘grand old man’ of underground comics.
Thanks to this status, he was assailed by fanboys,
publishers, movie people, lawyers, and tax investigators.
The second surprise came 25 years later with release
of the documentary Crumb. The fame Crumb’s early
appearances in the media brought him was startling.
But the second round of fame was staggering.The film,
Crumb told Mercier, ‘escalated my notoriety, my fame
hugely, way beyond what it was before … I was
completely surprised.’ Fortunately, he was in France by
the time the film came out.
It’s hard to get a straight story as to when Crumb
moved to France, or why. Mercier says the move
occurred in 1990, but he was still signing introductions
to The Complete Crumb Comics from Winters, California
in that year. Meanwhile, a Dirty Laundry collaboration
between Crumb and his wife, dated 1992, mentions
that they moved to France a year earlier.
The main impetus for the move seems to have come
111
D. K . H O L M
from Aline, but Crumb himself (after his worries as to

how his 78-record collection would weather a transat-
lantic trip finally abated) seems to be have acclimated
himself to rural France, with its village life, aperitifs, and
walks in the nearby woods. The movie Crumb ends
with their farewell to America.
In Crumb, Terry Zwigoff paid curious homage to
Crumb’s angst and universally recognizable drawing
style. Just over two hours long, Crumb is a profile of the
artist in extremis. Though seemingly meandering, the
film actually has a fascinating and coherent narrative
line.
Zwigoff introduces the viewer to Crumb in his
sanctum sanctorum, the small studio behind his house in
Winters, California, listening to old blues 78s. He
follows Crumb to his Mom’s house in Philadelphia,
where the viewer meets Charles. Zwigoff catches
Crumb on Market Street in San Francisco, one of the
places where Crumb likes to sketch. He shows Crumb
talking to his brother Maxon, then being interviewed
by a reporter, and enjoying an uncomfortable photo
shoot for Leg Show magazine. Finally, Zwigoff shows
the artist packing up his possessions for the move to
France (which is ‘slightly less evil than the United
States’). Zwigoff and his editor, Victor Livingston,
cunningly arranged the footage that came out of a
lengthy shoot into a logical, orderly journey into the
mind of an artist. As Zwigoff bird-dogs Crumb, he –
and the viewer – learns fascinating, amusing, and
touching things about the man, his art, his family, and
his sexuality. It’s a Crumb fanatic’s dream.
112
RO B E RT C RU M B
What first time viewers may be surprised at is how

much the notoriously misanthropic Crumb laughs.
Though it might be nervous laughter, especially when
his sex life is under analysis, nevertheless it is a happy
laughter.
There’s one thing Zwigoff doesn’t tell us, however,
and that’s why Crumb has become such a cult figure.
People – or should I say men –- are obsessed with him.
Collectors leave no avenue untrammeled in their
efforts to acquire everything to which his name is
attached.
But the ‘ordinary’ Crumb fan, the one who doesn’t
need to own original comic book pages or Crumb T-
shirts, decals, stickers, or puppets, the fan who simply
wants to read his work, knows exactly what sparks the
obsession.
Reviewers described the Crumbs as the most
dysfunctional family in America. Sensible people
watching the film will see them instead as the most
typical. All families are weird, if you look at them from
the outside. Maybe even the inside.
Crumb is the optimum common man, one of those
artists able to put into print what it’s really like to live
in America. He feels the difference between what we
are inside and how we come across in the hard real
world and puts it on the page. He’s a champion of the
regular Joe’s life in the quotidian. By being himself, he
tells us about ourselves.
Victorian writers and poets, those brilliant pre-
moderns who thought of themselves as modernists,
lamented the fact that their ‘true’ self resisted revelation.
113
D. K . H O L M
Somewhere between thought and execution, this self

was lost, and they could only look on as that lesser
‘them’ was put forward to the outside world. In ‘The
Buried Life,’ Matthew Arnold groaned that men had
grown alienated from their real selves: ‘I knew they
lived and moved/ Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest/
Of men, and alien to themselves/ And long we try in
vain to speak and act/ Our hidden self, and what we say
and do/ Is eloquent and well – but ‘tis not true.’ His pal
Arthur Hugh Clough knew what Arnold was talking
about: ‘Excitements come, and act and speech/ Flow
freely forth – but no/ Nor they, nor ought beside can
reach/ The buried world below.’ Such lamentations
make the Victorians seem as much like us as the befud-
dled characters in a Woody Allen movie, and Crumb’s
great achievement is to capture in the modern era this
same problem of the buried self.
Crumb both expresses the problem and conquers it.
In his own drawings starring himself – and Crumb has
always used himself as a character in his comics – he is
the hunched, awkward figure who can’t get the girls,
who rages at the hypocrisy of society, at the vacuity of
media, but who can’t do anything about these prob-
lems. Crumb seems to have a direct line into male
angst, and males of a certain background and
psychology, when reading about Crumb’s experiences,
know exactly where he is coming from. According to
the Marty Pahls,‘The theme [of Crumb’s early comics]
is almost invariably the sensitive young man against the
callous, misunderstanding world. Girls are brainwashed
victims of Hollywood and Madison Avenue; guzzling
114
RO B E RT C RU M B
Cokes and wetting their Capri pants over Fabian, not

noticing that Mr Sensitive even exists. Guys are Big
Booby Bastards, period.’
In the film, Crumb says that around the age of seven-
teen he felt the need to succeed in art as an act of
revenge against all the schoolgirls and bullies who
abused him. Now, despite all his angst and despair,
Crumb is doing quite well for himself. He lives in
France. His marketing arm has come up with every-
thing from plastic figurines of Mr Natural to screen
saver software and candy bars. He has been bibli-
ographed.
After the release of Crumb, the artist soon found
himself busier than ever.Aside from an increased output
of publications, in spring of 1998 there was the show,
‘Out of Chaos: Art of the Brothers Crumb – paintings
and drawings by Charles, Robert and Maxon Crumb,’
at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, and a CD
of favourite recordings from Crumb’s massive record
collection, called That’s What I Call Sweet Music, was
released shortly thereafter. The Hip Pocket Theatre of
Fort Worth presented R. Crumb Comix 3, a revue
adapted from his work.
The range of his activities has been phenomenal. In
2000, Crumb did a cover illustration for Fate magazine,
of all things (suggesting again his interest in all things
Fortean), and had a show at New York City’s Paul
Morris Gallery. In 2001, there was something of a
Cheap Suit Serenaders reunion at Berkeley’s Freight
and Salvage Coffee House (though it is not clear if
Crumb was there), and there were exhibits in Germany
115
D. K . H O L M
and France (at the Musee de L’Erotisme in Paris). In

June, 2001, work by Crumb appeared in Legal Action
Comics, an anthology of strips by over 70 artists
published to raise money for artist Danny Helman’s
legal defense fund. And Crumb’s work was featured as
part of the ‘Eye Infection’ show at the Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam in 2001. In the summer of
2002, there was the coincidence of no less than five
Crumb-related shows throughout New York City,
including a show of Aline’s work at the Jewish
Museum, Sophie’s at the Matthew Marks Gallery, and
Charles’s notebooks as part of a group show at the 303
Gallery. Crumb’s work was among a group at Feigen
Contemporary, and then he had his own show, again at
the Paul Morris Gallery.
Crumb has been remarkably active since turning 60
on 30 August 2003. Among other things, he submitted
to a rare interview about his record collecting for Brett
Milano’s book Vinyl Junkies: Adventures In Record
Collecting (St. Martin’s Griffin, Trade Paperback, 230
pages; Crumb’s interview appears in chapter 11, pages
131 – 145). He continued to do New Yorker covers and
the occasional comic story within its pages, and in 2004
David Eggers’s prestigious and culty magazine
McSweeney’s Quarterly published a two-page strip by
Crumb called “The Unbearable Tediousness Of Being”
in its 13th issue, dedicated to “North American comic
drawings, strips, and illustrated stories” (Crumb’s colour
cartoon appears prominently early, on pages 14 – 15).
Crumb’s story (meant only for readers for whom
“every second of life on this planet is an excruciating
116
RO B E RT C RU M B
ordeal”) is another examination of the blend of selfish-

ness and guilt with which, in Crumb’s view, all rela-
tionships are marbled, and in this case told equally from
the perspective of a woman trying to brush off a hope-
less suitor. Crumb’s anatomization of relationships, via
the contrast between the speech and the thought
balloons of the characters, is on the level of lacerating
domestic dramas of Ibsen, Edward Albee, and Neil
LaBute. Crumb also published Gotta Have ‘Em, a collec-
tion of his portraits of women (discussed later).
In the new century, Crumb’s work seems to be
continuously on display in at least one institution some-
where in the world. Museum Ludwig in Köln
(Cologne), Germany mounted a retrospective of
Crumb’s work called Yeah But Is It Art?, curated by Alfred
M. Fischer. The accompanying catalogue, edited by
Fischer and museum director Kaspar Konig, published
by Verlag der Buchhandlung in 2004, reveals the range of
material on display, realizing the institution’s goal of
creating “an international platform from which the full
breadth of Crumb’s work shines and spreads throughout
the world.”The book divvies up Crumb’s work into the
usual components, one chapter devoted to each: his
confessional tendencies, his interest in music, strong
women, and proselytizing against the corruptions of the
world. Each chapter opens with a survey of quotes drawn
from Crumb interviews and book forwards.There is also
a healthy selection of rare family photographs to accom-
pany a chronology that takes Crumb through to early
2004. (Germany takes Crumb very seriously. The
previous year the Karikatur Museum in Krems published
117
D. K . H O L M
a catalogue of its show from 2002, Die Vielen Gesichter Des

Robert Crumb. The book is beautifully produced, but
given its blend of familiar images and reprinted
chronology, for rabid Crumb collectors only.)
Meanwhile, Fantagraphics continued its long-term
compilation of Crumb’s work in the encyclopedic The
Complete Crumb Comics. Vol. 16, subtitled The Mid-
1980s: More Years Of Valiant Struggle appeared in early
2003, and 2005 saw Vol. 17, called The Mighty Power
Fems. In spring of 2004, the University Press of
Mississippi published R. Crumb Conversations (Trade
Paperback, 244 pages), an anthology, edited by the
present writer, of 18 interviews with Crumb conducted
by various journalists and comics buffs between 1968
and 2002, including hard to find but revealing items
such as Al Davoren’s interview with Crumb from the
‘zine Promethean Enterprises, and a delightful profile of
Crumb’s life in France by Brendan Bernhard.
In August 2003 Crumb made another cinematic
appearance of sorts in American Splendor, Shari Springer
Berman and Robert Pulcini’s film adaptation of Harvey
Pekar’s autobiographical comic books. Crumb figures
significantly in Pekar’s life, and is played in the film by
James Urbaniak (Henry Fool) who does a good imita-
tion of Crumb’s vocal and sartorial style.
American Splendor, however, is a film that, from its first
seconds, puts forward an utterly unpleasant central
character. And, with their heads hung low, the film-
makers seem to be aware of this. Indeed, the whole goal
of the directors is to find something, any thing good to
say about their protagonist.
118
RO B E RT C RU M B
American Splendor tells the self-aggrandizing story of

an annoying Cleveland lad who grew up to be a clerk
in a VA hospital. He had a collecting mania but also a
lack of personal cleanliness skills (a contrary set of
tendencies, usually). Nevertheless, as a comic book
collector, then a jazz record collector, he eventually
meets the similarly inclined R. Crumb, who had moved
to Cleveland in the early ‘60s and got a job at American
Greetings. The good luck to have Crumb in his life
eventually leads, 13 years later, to Crumb illustrating
some of the stories that Pekar has written about his life
as a drudge in a large institution and in a typical
American town that crushes its denizens.
The film follows Pekar as he loses a wife, garners a
certain measure of fame as a comic book creator,
acquires another wife, appears on the David Letterman
show, has his comics turned into a stage play, contracts
cancer (which he manages to beat), allows his wife to
adopt the daughter of one of his illustrators, and then
has a movie made of his life, like his mentor/
competitor Crumb.This would all be very interesting if
it weren’t so – boring.
American Splendor begins innocently and bucolically
enough.
A bunch of kids are trick or treating. One is
costumed as Superman. Another is Batman. A third is
dressed as Robin.The last one is in “civilian” clothes.
When queried by the lady of the house whose candy
the lads are seeking, the non-costumed element of this
group says with exasperation that he is not a super hero,
but merely “Harvey Pekar.” At which the nickname
119
D. K . H O L M
prone kids in his clan cough into their hands,“Pecker.”

Pekar is in fact put out that the dispenser of candy
should interrogate him. Indeed, he stalks off,
bemoaning the stupidity of all humanity, and throws his
sack of candy onto the ground.
But there are several things wrong with this scene.
For one thing, the Pekar character is presented as if
he were unaware of the rituals of Halloween. Is this
conceivable? What kind of kid in America in the ‘50s
did not know of this holiday? OK, so maybe Pekar
didn’t know about it, never saw a horror film on TV,
never went out before on the last day of October.The
film does not convey that ignorance in a plausible
manner. Plus, why would a kid hang out with a gang
that takes the first opportunity to call him “Pecker”?
And finally, what kid in the world would toss away a
perfectly good sack of hard earned candy, especially a
character who, later in the film, is shown to be an eager
consumer of “gourmet” jelly beans?
American Splendor is a fine, middlebrow celebration of
a working class guy who made something of himself
but who still isn’t happy.That the film is so enamoured
of its supercilious central figure bespeaks a saintly
patience on the part of its makers. But anyone who
needs further evidence can simply pick up the August
15 2003 issue of Entertainment Weekly, which features a
long-winded six-page comic book story written by
Pekar about the impact the movie had on his life.
There is a big difference between Pekar and Crumb.
The cartoonist is an admirable person who has never
sold out, while Pekar, whose conversation all too
120
RO B E RT C RU M B
frequently turns to the issue of money, has apparently

been dying to sell out since he was born.
Given Crumb’s supposed press phobia and his pride
in never selling out, it was surprising that the normally
reclusive Crumb would commit to so heavily
promoting another book, The R. Crumb Handbook,
which came out in spring of 2005.
To help promote The R. Crumb Handbook Crumb
appeared on the BBC’s The Culture Show on March
10th, engaged in a public interview with the book’s co-
writer Pete Poplaski at Foyles Bookshop and public
interviews at the NFT with the Guardian’s Steve Bell,
and at the New York Public Library in early April.
Meanwhile, the NFT screened a series of Crumb
related movies throughout mid-March. And there were
showings of Crumb’s work at Bonhams’ Gallery, and at
the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Most dispiriting of all to
those who respected Crumb’s disdain for commercial-
ization, he designed a T-shirt for Stella McCartney,
which she previewed on 17 March in London, and 12
April in New York City.
The book itself is a 400-plus-page autobiography
that includes over 80 photographs and 300 images from
Crumb’s sketchbooks and comics, divided into four
categories that Crumb views as “enemies of man”: fear,
clarity, power, and old age. The publicity material for
the book indicates that it is filled with Crumb’s contro-
versial views on “Disneyland, growing up in America,
hippie love, art galleries, and turning 60.”
One might wonder why Crumb, who has always
been autobiographical in his cartoons, felt at this late
121
D. K . H O L M
date to write an official “memoir.” He may have been

influenced by the interest some writers, such as David
Hajdu (Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan
Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina),
or the author of this volume, have shown, in writing his
authorized biography.
Finally, in August 2004, W. W. Norton publishers of
New York City won a bidding war for what may prove
to be his magnum opus, a cartoon version of The Book
Of Genesis. Piloted by his agent, Dennis Kitchen (his
former publisher), the bidding resulted in a contract in,
as they say in publishing, the high six figures, and news
reports indicated that Crumb would deliver the book
to Norton for publication in 2006. In an interview
with the comics website Egon, Kitchen indicated that
the high advance would give Crumb breathing space.
The site quoted him as saying that the book “was based
on an idea Robert had originally brought to me at
Kitchen Sink … We couldn’t do it because it was late
in the day there, but it was an idea that I loved, and I
never forgot about it. I brought it up with Robert again
a few months ago, and he said he’d still like to do it if
he had the time and enough money to dedicate a
couple of years to it, because it’s a major, major project.
… We’re pleased it ended up [at Norton], and obvi-
ously, Robert’s pleased too, because he can take the
time without worrying about compensation – that’s
what advances are about. I can’t say what it was, but it
was substantial, and allows him to work two years
without worrying.”
Norton announced that Crumb’s version of Genesis
122
RO B E RT C RU M B
would be a “literal” account of the “non-fiction” book.

Genesis, of course, is the first book of the Bible, and it
chronicles the Creation, the story of Adam and Eve,
what happens to their children Cain and Abel, and the
stories of Noah and the Ark, the tower of Babel,
Abraham and his son, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacob and
Esau, Jacob, Rachel, and Leah, and finally the life of
Joseph.
This is not the first time the Bible has come under
cartoon scrutiny. There is a rich tradition of religious
mockery in underground comics, and 1987 saw the
publication of Outrageous Tales From The Old Testament,
an anthology in which numerous cartoonists retold
some of the more extreme biblical tales. And obviously
pictorializing stories or incidents from the Bible has a
long tradition, with some of the genre’s practitioners,
such as Bosch and Picasso, being direct or indirect
influences on Crumb.
If Genesis, which will appear when the cartoonist is
65 or older, proves to be Crumb’s last great work, his
career will close as it began, with a long, epical tale set
in a fantasyland. In 1962 Crumb began to draw what
we now would call a graphic novel, The Yum Yum Book,
which he eventually gave to his first wife and which
was published in the 1970s (see the earlier discussion of
The Yum Yum Book for more details). Just as that book
announced in diluted, inchoate form many of the
themes that would later plague Crumb’s work, Genesis
may well draw together in definitive form some of the
same themes, still haunting him: voluptuous women in
edenic locations easily beguiled by wily manipulators,
123
D. K . H O L M
apocalyptic visions of nature’s destruction, the attrac-

tion to and revulsion from hedonism, and the chasm
between successful people and failures. Crumb, a lapsed
Catholic who lays claim to believing everything
psychic, strange, and metaphysical that falls under the
rubric Fortean, may be returning in some modified
way, to the philosophical questions that tortured him in
adolescence. Crumb may have evolved, but in many
ways he hasn’t changed.
Art & Beauty

Publication history: Subtitled ‘To Uplift & Enlighten,’ Art
& Beauty was published by Kitchen Sink Comix in
1996 (32 pages, pamphlet with covers of sturdier paper,
ISBN 0 87816 556 8). A second issue was announced
for summer of 2002, from Fantagraphics (Kitchen
having gone out of business).
Story: Art & Beauty is a collection of 38 captioned
images, 33 of them of women (either from life, from
magazine ads and photos, or from personal photo-
graphs), plus one of a Sumerian statue, two that contrast
a wilderness scene with Los Angeles, one of a dance
contest, and one of an anonymous banjo player. ‘There
is infinite, neverending variety to the human body,’
notes a caption, ‘and the poses in which it may be
placed by the skilled artist. It is in these unusual angles
of the body that the true artist finds inspiration for the
creation of innovative and exciting compositions.’
Interspersed among the images are 43 quotes about
art, culled, according to the contents page, from Pete
124
RO B E RT C RU M B
Poplaski’s personal collection,‘Great Art Quotes for All

Occasions.’ The quoted speakers range from Leonardo
to Robert Hughes.
Background: With the suspension of Weirdo, and the
move to France, Crumb’s work eventually began to
take on a reflective, inward turn.Though the self-lacer-
ating questioning of Eighties Crumb didn’t exactly
disappear, occasionally Crumb could show the relaxed
spirit and a pure joy in drawing. Art & Beauty Magazine
can be construed as an example of a kind of newly
found harmony and relaxation. There’s nothing ‘dirty’
in Art & Beauty Magazine: no scenes of small snoids
humping vixens from the rear. Instead, Art & Beauty is
a series of simple poses, celebrating the female figure.
Analysis: In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, ‘The Oval
Portrait,’ a driven artist sets about to paint an image of
his bride. But he is so intent on the work that he
doesn’t notice how the light is hurting his loyal mate or
that indeed later that she has died. Poe concludes, ‘Yet,
for one moment the painter stood entranced before the
work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he
yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast
and crying with a loud voice ‘This is indeed Life itself!’
Poe’s tale is a story of an artist so in thrall to art that he
is impervious to the life around him. Life and art are
inextricably entwined.
Crumb, in interviews and ‘confessional’ comic stories
is equally in thrall to his art and to the women he
frequently, obsessively draws. Art & Beauty Magazine
finds Crumb completely captivated by a set of lovelies,
some from his own past, some copied from the media.
125
D. K . H O L M
If you have seen any of the original images from which

Crumb copied, you can detect how much he altered
them slightly to conform to his fantasies, for example
making the legs heavier.
Each drawing has a caption. Partially mimicking the
kind of language that seeks to legitimize the content of
hard core pornography from the Victorian era to the
Sixties, the words serve as an amusing counterpoint to
the on-the-surface innocent images of women
sunbathing, exercising, looking at themselves in a
mirror, or skating. A sense of serenity and natural
simplicity pervades this scene. In addition, the artist has
infused warmth and life into his fine penwork.‘A more
splendid model could not be found by an artist.’ The
bucolic tone fails to hide the lascivious sneer.
From the front and back cover drawings of Aline, to
the centre spread of some girls from the Crazy Horse
Saloon in Paris, the book is an anthology, a scrapbook
of Crumb favourites. Some are people from his real,
private life. Each is rendered with an attention to detail
and a thick, fine line with much cross-hatching and
shading.The body builder Rachel McLish is shown on
an exercise machine in an orgy of dark hatching. The
emphasis is on shading and legs, the way light accents
leg muscles already tensed by high heels (the drawings
on pages 10 and 11 represent the pinnacle of Crumb’s
leg art).
The Crumb Woman: Art & Beauty Magazine is a legal
brief on behalf of the Crumb woman. One can imagine
the artist a smidge frustrated at the seeming interna-
tional preference for the fashion model type over the
126
RO B E RT C RU M B
more robust Crumbian woman, and maybe the feeling

of isolation led to this anthology of images with their
jokey yet serious captions.
Confessions: It doesn’t get any more confessional than
publishing a collection of drawings of women you like.
But the collection of quotes that go with the images
bears looking at, as well. Each quote reflects an attitude
or a belief that Crumb has expressed over the years.‘Do
not fail to draw something every day, for no matter how
little it is it will be well worthwhile, and do you a world
of good,’ said Cennini in the 1300s, and Crumb the
sketchbook keeper would echo that sentiment, as he
would virtually every other sentiment expressed in the
quotes.
Collectibility: Art & Beauty Magazine is still in print,
with a cover price of $4.95.
The Verdict: Crumb once revealed in an interview that
for a long time he drew animals because he was intim-
idated by drawing people. He seems to have overcome
that worry. The women in Art & Beauty Magazine are
superb.Also, Art & Beauty Magazine is further evidence,
if any were needed, that Crumb is still exploring both
the extent of his artistry and the limits of the magazine
and comic book format.
The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book

Publication history: This awkwardly large volume, edited
and designed by Peter Poplask, was published by Little,
Brown and Company in September, 1997 (250 pages,
$40, ISBN 0 316 16306 6), and in Great Britain by
127
D. K . H O L M
Bloomsbury in early 1998 (ISBN 0 7475 3816 6).

Story: This anthology, published in America to coin-
cide with the Christmas buying season, gathers
together scores of examples of Crumb’s work from
throughout his career, ranging from his earliest comics
done in competition with his brothers, to some of his
greeting cards, to work published in the Nineties.
Stories, illustrations, magazine and album covers, paint-
ings, and even sculptures are all represented, and some
of the comic stories, such as ‘The Adventures Of Fuzzy
the Bunny’ (based on an original story by Charles)
appear in colour for the first time. Non-Crumbian
images are included as well, from Harvey Kurtzman’s
Mad magazine covers, to the covers of some of his
favourite comic books, and there are numerous photo-
graphs as well. Selections from Crumb’s sketchbooks
alternate with the stories, marking his development.
Epoch marking essays by Crumb are interspersed
throughout the book.
Background: It seems that by the end of the Nineties,
everybody was publishing a piece of Crumb. Besides
this Little, Brown book, Crumb continued to do busi-
ness with Fantagraphics (which was publishing his
sketchbooks, the Complete Crumb Comics series, one-
shots anthologies on Mr Natural and other subjects,
and even some of his comic books), as well as some of
the firms whom he had started out with in the Sixties:
Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, Kitchen Sink, and others.
But what did Crumb want out of all this publica-
tion? Perhaps, just to tell his story. In effect, the
RCCTAB comprise a form of memoir.
128
RO B E RT C RU M B
Analysis: In the hubbub about Crumb’s drawing

style, one thing that is forgotten is that he is a damn fine
writer. His ear for dialogue is superb. He knows how to
construct a story.And his autobiographical writings, the
only kind of prose work he seems to do, are fascinating.
The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book is divided by long
essays by Crumb, setting the stage for the art to follow.
In these 17 lengthy essays, Crumb guides the reader
through his art and life. Coupled with the introductions
he has written for some of the Complete Crumbs, his
whole story is laid out.These essays could be gathered
together in a separate volume and serve as an autobi-
ography. What’s important, however, is that the essays
are well written. Crumb has a frank, unadorned writing
style. He has a natural sense of writerly rhythm,
breaking up paragraphs to create a sense of drama and
flow. His images can overwhelm his words, but taken
alone, the words rank as the work of one of America’s
finest writers.
The Crumb Woman: There are many sketches of the
Crumb woman, and one section of the book toward
the back is dedicated to the history of a huge wooden
Devil Girl statue, carved by a team of artists after
Crumb moved to France.
Confessions: Crumb doesn’t tell the experienced
Crumbologist anything he doesn’t already know, but
Crumb does organize his life into handy chunks.
Collectibility:The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book is still
in print, in both hardcover and in oversized trade
paperback, but is still offered online for many dollars
above its cover price, even though the book was
129
D. K . H O L M
remaindered in some books stores for under $20.

The Verdict: If you don’t know anything about R.
Crumb, and want to figure out what all the noise is
about, start here.
‘Bad Karma’
Publication history: ‘Bad Karma’ appeared in Mystic
Funnies No. 2.The magazine is copyrighted April, 1999,
but the story itself is signed and dated 1998 by Crumb.
Mystic Funnies No. 2 was published by Last Gasp. The
first issue of Mystic Funnies was published by Alex Wood
in 1997, and a third issue was published by
Fantagraphics in the Summer of 2002.
Story: As the tale begins, the Moron, a Snoid-like
character wearing short pants and a tiny sailor cap, is
introduced trudging across a bleak landscape that
consists solely of people’s heads.They are stretched out
before him in the millions, bunched together, crying,
pleading.Yet The Moron must walk on them in order
to keep going. It’s a traumatic experience, and he can
barely take it.‘What’s it all mean?’ he cries. One female
head begs,‘Do me, Mister Big Shoes!! Please! Now!’ In
defiance of her husband, whose head is right next to
hers, The Moron does as asked, then falls asleep,
drooling into the faces of the heads beneath his.
Prodded awake by the hand of a God-like figure, he
sees the landscape change from the heads of what was
really his imagination to a stony world.The God-hand
prods him forward, telling the Moron not to look back
at him. But on the brink of a great chasm, the impatient
130
RO B E RT C RU M B
Moron finally does look back, and instantly explodes

into protoplasmic organic debris that slides down the
wall of the chasm. ‘Isn’t there some force of love or
compassion in the universe that, you know, cares about
me?’ the Moron whimpers.
At this point, in a surprise visit Mr Natural interrupts
the story to offer a demonstration of the power of the
media. After this two-page interlude, we return to the
Moron, who awakens to find himself in an Arcadia,
cuddled by its sole inhabitant, a gigantic nude woman,
who identifies herself as his Fairy Godmother. She
gives him a robe and they dance a bit, and then she
announces that she has to go. ‘I have a lot of things to
do … people to see …’
The Moron falls instantly in love, or lust, with his
FG, and in typical Crumb fashion imposes himself on
the weakly resisting woman. Across 13 pages, the
Moron fondles his Fairy Godmother to orgasm, but his
and her blissful state is interrupted by the appearance of
a man on a horse, a cross between a knight in shining
armour and a surfer. He whisks away the FG, whose
name we now learn is Cassandra. She abandons her
charge with barely a thought, but with instructions to
make his way through a thick forest with a sword and
clippers. But as the Moron embarks on this second
journey, he is caught up in the unyielding brambles,
suffocated by them, as the panels he inhabits increas-
ingly decrease into nothingness.
Background: There are hints in some of Crumb’s
recent work that his mind is taking a spiritual bent.This
is not uncommon of lapsed Catholics, who, in the
131
D. K . H O L M
twilight of their lives, find their minds tilting back to

some version of the faith pressed upon them in youth.
On the other hand, Crumb has admitted to a fascina-
tion with the mystic or unexplained side of life. In The
R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book, Crumb tells us that, ‘I
believe in everything … UFOs, Bigfoot, channeling,
ESP … I believe it all!’
In any case, Crumb introduced Mystic Funnies in
1997 as a full-colour comic (note ‘Dirty Dog’s bunny
God up in the right-hand side of this issue’s cover) that
told several Mr Natural and Flakey Foont stories.There
he presented a still frustrated, but now graying, Foont,
still determinedly pestering Mr Natural with questions
about the Big Picture and not grasping Mr Natural’s
carefree, hedonistic approach to life. Crumb also
brought back after a long hiatus Shuman the Human, a
typically phony practitioner of the Eastern arts, resur-
rected from the old days. Crumb added yet more new
characters, including Shuman’s Japanese girlfriend,
Tuki, and Wendy, a one-eyed girl (has any cartoonist
invented more characters than Crumb?).
In Mystic Funnies No. 2, however, Crumb veers off in
a new direction, with new characters but in vaguely
familiar Crumbian settings and situations. Moreover,
there is a deeper bleakness, a sense of unanswered ques-
tions, mixed in with the customary sexual hijinks.
Analysis: ‘Bad Karma’ is about contingency. It’s about
the horror of realizing that one’s actions have an effect
on others and that their actions affect us. The Moron
goes from literally walking on others to get ahead, to
having his life affected by a brief interlude with the
132
RO B E RT C RU M B
Fairy Godmother. The story evokes the existential

quandaries of Fifties literature and films, which Crumb
may have absorbed at the time in diluted form. The
Moron is unhappy, but gets no answers.Yet he must act.
More Beckett than Sartre, the story portrays an apolit-
ical figure with little perspective on his lot in life, yet
whose every move invariably has an effect on others.
In his landscape of heads, Crumb has come up with
a brilliant visual metaphor for life, or at least life in late
twentieth century corporatized America. In its visceral
vividness, it’s an image worthy of Samuel Beckett at his
most abstract and specific. It also draws upon
Herriman’s surrealistic Krazy Kat strips with their
strange landscape and ritualistic antagonisms.
At the same time, we also find Crumb, through the
oracle of Mr Natural, showing alarm at and questioning
the power of the media. Over two pages and across 18
panels, Mr Natural taunts the reader before stepping
out like the Wizard of Oz to show the mechanics of
manipulation.‘But see how you let me jack you around
emotionally in a few comic book panels?’ he asks.
‘That’s what happens when ya give your attention to
the media … you give them a hell of a lot of power!!
The power of the Media, man …’
Technically, ‘Bad Karma’ is an orgy of dingbats.
There’s onomatopoeia, symbolia, agitrons, spurls,
squeans, oculama, plewds, blurgits, and waftaroms, as
well as jarns, quimps, nittles, and other maladicta.They
conspire to give the story a sense of roiling, subter-
ranean action whose surface consists of journeys and
seduction.
133
D. K . H O L M
The Crumb Woman: This story is all about the Crumb

Woman. Except for the woman being blandly ethnicity
free (but then again, she is a Fairy Godmother) and
having a diastema, she is the optimum Crumb female.
She is big, distracted, but easily swayed into a sexual
liaison. In the throes of passion, the Moron notes that
‘Her normal obnoxious self seems to be temporarily
out of commission. Heh Heh!’The Moron indulges his
oral fixation (playing with the FG’s tongue and
smacking her lips) and also indulges in his fascination
with her footwear (‘I love to watch her legs kick and
thrash around in those boots! … The sound of her heels
knocking together is driving me crazy!’). The Fairy
Godmother is also a typically Crumbian woman by
virtue of her attention deficit disorder; she is hard to
pin down, says whatever comes into her mind, and
alternates between being dismissive of the Moron
(‘Pffff! I think you like my boots better than you like
me!’) and being flattered by his attention.
Confessions: The Moron’s hacking through the
thicket is reminiscent of a remark by Crumb to Mercier
about his forays into the French wilderness around his
village: ‘It’s very rugged and hard to get around in. I
make my own path a lot of times, cut my way through
all the thorn vines.’ And incidentally, the early version
of Shuman the Human is popularly thought to be a
version of Crumb’s brother Maxon.
Collectibility: Mystic Funnies has a cover price of $4.95
and is still in print.
The Verdict: A searing indictment of corporate
America disguised, like so many Crumb stories, as a sex
134
RO B E RT C RU M B
fantasy. Here, nearing 60, is the artist at the peak of his

abilities.
‘From Cradle To Grave’

Publication history: ‘From Cradle To Grave’ appeared in
Mystic Funnies No. 3, published by Fantagraphics in
August 2002.
Story: In this one-page story, a boy is born, but just as
the baby is coming to enjoy suckling at his mother’s
breasts, the clowns come.These four circus fools, some
with X’s for eyes, race him along life’s path at high
speed. Like the astronaut at the end of 2001: A Space
Odyssey, he ages before our eyes: childhood games, first
date, first sex, marriage, daughter, bills, old age, sickness.
In the end, they slide his corpse into its resting spot,
their work done.
Background: Death has started to crop up in Crumb’s
work, as perhaps it must in an artist turning 60. He
seems also to be pondering death. He told Mercier that
‘Death advises you every day and helps to put things in
perspective.You realize the urgency of getting on with
whatever it is you want to do with your life and not
wasting time with nonsense. Time becomes valuable.
Death is an instructor.’As the last comic on the last page
of Mystic Funnies No. 3, the strip is like a parting shot
of seriousness amid the frivolity.
Analysis: In an early comic book story called ‘City Of
The Future’ (first published in Zap, No. 0, 1967),
Crumb envisions a wacky future that includes popula-
tion control. At the age of 65, citizens are approached
135
D. K . H O L M
by a band of clowns (even if you are on the golf course,

as in the story) delivering the ‘final exit’ of a cyanide-
filled pie.Thirty-five years later, Crumb, consciously or
not, revisits that notion with ‘From Cradle To Grave.’
But here he has greatly expanded the idea, while
presenting it with great economy.
Just as ‘It’s Really Too Bad,’ from Despair comics,
summarized the grim life of a man in only three panels,
‘From Cradle To Grave’ accomplishes a similar task in
12; and, like the Despair story, also evokes Bob Dylan’s
song ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues,’ with its arch
evocation of a life spent bossed by others, with drugs as
the only solace.
Like the landscape of human heads that the Moron
must trudge in ‘Bad Karma,’ the four pall-bearing
clowns in ‘Cradle’ represent a brilliant Beckettian
metaphor for life. The boy in the story, as he grows
older, is always puzzled. Only the four miniature clowns
beneath him, propping him up through life, ‘know.’
The Crumb Woman: The Crumb woman is carried
away by the same furies as the men.
Confessions: Insofar as Crumb, like everyone else,
must deal with death, the strip is confessional.
Collectibility: Mystic Funnies No. 3 has a cover price of
$3.95 and is still in print.
The Verdict: A bleak, brilliant summary of the human
condition,‘From Cradle To Grave’ shows the command
Crumb has of his craft in using it to explore with an
awe-inspiring economy his view of life. Call it the
revenge of the nerd.As a constant complainer, he seems
happier than ever. As his brother Charles might have
136
RO B E RT C RU M B
said, ‘How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be

sure.’
Gotta Have ‘em

Publication history: Subtitled ‘Portraits Of Women,’ Gotta
Have ‘Em was published by Greybull Press, dated 2002
but really only available in 2003 (232 unpaginated
pages, hardcover with an embossed illustrated board in
a slipcase, ISBN 0 9672366 8 1).
Story: Gotta Have ‘Em gathers in chronological order
some 240 sketches, cartoon excerpts, and portraits of
the women Crumb has known, fantasized about, or
seen in the media.The book kicks off with a revelatory
introduction by Crumb, dated July 2002.
Background: In his later years Crumb appears to have
grown more reflective, given over to reviewing inci-
dents in his past and reflecting on the people he has
known. Gotta Have ‘Em is an outgrowth of this retro-
spection, Crumb being especially prone to dwelling on
his past loves, crushes, and relationships. Also, Crumb
has always been very generous with his material,
spreading it around numerous publishing houses.When
it published the book, Greybull was a relatively new
firm, co-founded by photographer Lisa Eisner, along
with Roman Alonzo and designer Lorraine Wild. It
specialized in art and photography books. The press is
named after Eisner’s birthplace of Greybull,Wyoming.
Analysis: Basically a hardback variation on Crumb’s
Art & Beauty series, Gotta Have ‘Em presents in sleek
form the progression of Crumb’s style, from the early
137
D. K . H O L M
light lined sketches of his youth through his brush

phase to the heavily crosshatched manner of his late
style.
The Crumb Woman: Like Art & Beauty Magazine,
Gotta Have ‘Em is an explicit celebration of the Crumb
woman.
Confessions: Crumb calls Gotta Have ‘Em “an autobi-
ography of sorts,” and the biggest revelation in the
volume is Crumb’s confession in his introduction that
he has had a long-term secondary relationship with
another woman, identified here publicly for the first
time as Carol Vinson, who lives on the west coast of the
United States. From both the intro and the various
portraits of her,Vinson comes across as a strong willed
woman with even less tolerance for mainstream society
than Crumb himself.
Collectibility: Apparently Greybull printed only 500
copies of Gotta Have ‘Em. It retailed for $55 upon
publication but already various dealers are offering it
for as much as $600 dollars, for a limited edition version
of the book signed by Crumb.
The Verdict: In his old age, Crumb is beginning to take
on the manner of his beloved Mad magazine, an insti-
tution that had no qualms about attempting to sell its
fans the same material repeatedly, in annuals, mass
market paperback reprints, and in recent years in pres-
tige anthologies. Fortunately, Crumb also mixes in new
drawings with the material that Crumb fans have
already purchased in one form or another several times
over. A rough estimation is that about a third of the
book consists of images that are new to Crumb buffs.
138
RO B E RT C RU M B
The introduction, however, makes it a must for Crumb

aficionados.
139
The Latest Confessions:

An Interview With Robert Crumb
The following interview with Robert Crumb was

conducted by mail in April of 2002.
Is there anything left for the ‘confessional’ Robert
Crumb to confess? If so, I’m listening.
Hmm … Let me think … Is there anything left to

‘confess,’ anything I haven’t told? Y’know, I’m prob-
ably one of the few, maybe the only human on this
planet with no secrets. My deepest, bizarrest
thoughts and fantasies are known by millions of
people! Between my comics and published sketch-
books and the Crumb documentary, and various
published interviews and articles about me, there’s
not a corner or cranny of my life and psyche that
hasn’t been publicly explored, put on display, held up
for ridicule, for laughs, to ogle at, as an example, as a
freak show, or just out of my own narcissistic
compulsion to exhibit myself, like when Lyndon
Johnson pulled up his shirttail and showed his scar. I
wanted to be loved so badly that I was compelled to
show them the worst, most despicable part of myself,
to test their love. Once I agreed to be interviewed by
140
RO B E RT C RU M B
a nice young woman journalist in Chicago, and after

talking to me for about an hour she stared at me and
said,‘Y’know, you’re actually a pretty nice guy! After
reading your comics I thought you’d be some kind
of a monster.’‘Well, ya see,’ I explained to her,‘I foist
all that on the public, so it’s easy for me to be a nice
guy in real life.’
I confess! When I was twelve years old I was sexu-
ally aroused by a dead sea-gull! When I was fifteen I
had my first ejaculation while wrestling around with
my little sister! I admit it! I once entertained briefly
the idea of pushing my first wife off a high building!
I was very very cruel to my younger brother Maxon
when we were kids. I constantly tormented him
psychologically. But I feel bad about it now.
Even for a ‘confessional’ artist, it must be difficult to

have things such as childhood comics or the letters
from one’s teenage years published, regardless of how
sympathetic or ravenous the fan base is. Or is it diffi-
cult?
Yes, it is quite embarrassing to see stupid letters I

wrote when I was 16 or 17 years old published for
all the world to see! They never asked me for my
consent, they just went ahead and published those
letters … Legally, I guess, they only need the permis-
sion of the person who OWNS the letters, the recip-
ient or his descendants, and they got that – for a
price. But it’s equally embarrassing to look at a lot of
my early published comics … Some of it appears
141
D. K . H O L M
very sophomoric, silly. I was a punk, trying to shock

people, trying to, you know, stir things up, like an
obnoxious guy at a party who does something stupid
such as putting ice-cubes down the back of some
woman’s dress. Some of my work is embarrassing in
its attempt to make some meaningful or profound
point about life. I often fell into the trap of taking
myself too seriously and trying to live up to the
‘genius’ image I had of myself – a fatal, egoistic error
that many artists, writers, even comedians make.You
think you have to make some big, important state-
ment to the world every time you pick up your pen,
or brush, or whatever your tool may be.That’s a hard
thing to overcome. I work on it every day.
You have travelled extensively, whether by early family

fiat or adult restlessness. In your experience, is that
unusual among American artists, and would you
‘recommend’ that sort of life to aspiring cartoonists?
I can’t speak for other American artists, but a lot of

the travelling I’ve done was the act of running away
from a situation. I had to get out of there! Very often,
I was running away from a woman – a wife or a girl-
friend. Often, I was running to the arms of another
woman. In my youth I would sometimes run away to
a strange city and just walk the streets, feeling utterly
lonely and blue, lost and confused.
I also did a lot of travelling when I played music
in a band, but now I’ve quit the music business
entirely. I can’t take the crowds anymore.Then there
142
RO B E RT C RU M B
was the phase when I travelled at the invitation of

others, who paid my expense. Comic conventions,
publishers promoting books of mine and the like. I
went through a phase of not being able to resist free
airline tickets, free hotel rooms, the prospect of
meeting girls who were impressed with my fame.
But I always ended up feeling very depressed by this
type of travel, and I rarely ever met any girls, so I’ve
cut out most of that. Mostly I stay home now.
Would I ‘recommend’ that sort of life to aspiring
cartoonists? Not necessarily. Carl Barks, who wrote
and drew those great Donald Duck and Uncle
Scrooge McDuck comics in the ‘forties and ‘fifties
got most of his inspiration for the stories he did
about far away places from his set of encyclopedias.
But it’s true that when he was young he worked at
many different kinds of jobs, including hard manual
labor. I’m sure that helped to give him a broader
perspective.
This is another rather obvious question, but now that

you have lived in France for almost a decade, has the
distance softened or has it increased and hardened your
stance on American culture and American history
(which you were interested in as a teenager)?
Every time I think my feelings about my homeland,

the U.S.A., are softening, they turn around and pull
some stunt that is so stupid, mean, arrogant or
destructive that my contempt shoots right back up to
where it was when I left there eleven years ago …
143
D. K . H O L M
And I go back every year and stay for a month or six

weeks, and then it all comes back to me, what a bleak
corporate monoculture it is over there! Horrible!
Still, living outside of the U. S. for this long has
given me a new perspective. Living in France, a
somewhat different sort of culture from the U. S. A.,
I get to make comparisons. I can see the advantages
and disadvantages to both countries. Some of the
negative qualities of any given society are hidden
from outsiders when they first arrive there. France,
with its old ways, looked very appealing to the
American disgusted with America’s shallow moder-
nity. But after living for years in France, you begin to
see the downside of those old ways, the narrow,
insular, class-stratified, peasant-aristocrat mindsets
that still pervade all social life here. The U. S. is free
from a lot of that old baggage, which is why
Europeans, first arriving in the U. S., find it so exhil-
arating. The U. S. still appears wide open to
Europeans, even while they might also see Americans
as uncouth, loudmouthed, simple-minded louts.
After awhile, though, most Europeans start to miss
the depth of culture that Europe possesses and the
U.S.A. lacks. The U.S. is still a raw, unsettled land
compared to Europe, believe it or not!
You have been collecting stuff for a long time. Where

do you keep it all? Or, as you have gotten older, do you
start to cease taking a lot of it seriously and start
throwing it out or selling it off?
144
RO B E RT C RU M B
I’ve been an obsessive, compulsive collector since the

age of nine, except for a brief interlude in the late
Sixties when I was taking L.S.D. I guess the collective
urge, along with my obsessive sex drive, has tapered off
in recent years. I don’t spend nearly as much time
dwelling on items that I ‘must have’ for my collection
as I used to.That said, I recently found an old collector
willing to sell me a whole bunch of fabulous and rare
old 1920s blues records, stuff I’ve been trying to find
for decades, such as Blind Blake’s ‘Diddie Wah Diddie’
and Memphis Minnie’s ‘Cherry Ball Blues.’ They’re
not cheap, but not top dollar either. I’m still enough
of a collector to be in a sort of euphoria over this deal,
sort of like a heroin addict after a good hit of junk.
Pathetic, I know, but there it is. Bukowski had the
racetrack, I collect old 78 records.As for throwing stuff
out – never! I never throw anything away. Fortunately,
we have a big house here in France – it is full of stuff!
I enjoy my stuff immensely, all my cultural artifacts:
records, books, comics, toys, etc., etc. My appreciation
deepens with age!
Funny the way collecting is somehow a disrep-
utable pastime … people have a certain contempt for
collecting and collectors. It is viewed as creepy, and
collectors viewed as creeps. Mel Gibson would never
play a collector in a film. But serious collectors are
preservers of culture. Quite often, it’s true, though –
most collectors are creeps.
Now that there is a website selling your wares, can we

take it that you are now more comfortable with the
145
D. K . H O L M
commercial side of art? Or were you always comfort-

able with that side of things, just not the people
involved with the commercial side?
Actually, I don’t have a website. I have nothing to do

with computers. Lucky me, huh? It’s my son Jesse
who operates the ‘Crumb Products’ website. He
invented it, he designed it, he sells the stuff. It’s his
own little business. I get royalty payments. I never
had any qualms with the ‘commercial’ aspect of what
I do. Comics are intrinsically a commercial medium,
an industrial product. It’s built-in. It’s not ‘fine’ art.
You gotta make sales.You gotta make the stuff read-
able and entertaining. Keep ‘em laughing.You gotta
turn out a certain amount of product in order to
make a living at it – I’ve always known and accepted
this part of it. Sure, I abhor the thought of becoming
a commercial hack. That’s a danger that’s always
lurking … But it’s no worse than the “fine” art world
where, in order to be successful, you must learn how
to kiss the asses of important critics, museum cura-
tors, gallery owners and other influential types in
that world. If anything, that’s even more repulsive
than having to deal with crass, venal publishers and
other business people. Better to have a day job and
keep the art purely a separate, sacred endeavour, free
of the exigencies of money or kissing ass. Fortunately
for me, I have a large enough following that I can
earn a very decent living without having to ‘prosti-
tute’ myself. I just have to keep it coming, keep a
certain amount of new work coming out every year.
146
RO B E RT C RU M B
But I am not what you’d call a rich man. I’m better

off than most of my friends, but Art Spiegelman is
much richer than me! I know, because he told me
how much money he has!
Here’s a boring question (but maybe they’re all boring):

Any reflections on turning 60 (or are you doing a
comic story about it)?
Yawn … Ho Hum … oh yes, how boring it all is …

I will turn 59 this year, on about August 30th (2002)
… I seem to become increasingly concerned with
being ready when the hooded figure with the scythe
shows up … more and more it seems that all of life
is about preparing yourself for that crucial moment
when you must leave the body, leave everything that
you know, love, hate … How you experience that
moment may be the point of the whole life experi-
ence; what you’ve done in your life, how much time
you’ve put in, how aware you’ve made yourself of
that inevitable moment. I seem to feel more and
more that the whole purpose of this life is somehow
bound up in that fateful moment, the most ‘defining
moment’ there is, after birth. If you don’t study
death, if you ignore death, you’re just one of the
cattle being led to the slaughter … you won’t know
what’s up until you are already on the ramp, next in
line to receive the final knock on the head, and
suddenly it’ll dawn on you and you’ll have, maybe,
two minutes left … too late to prepare for it then …
and we’re all headed for that final moment … no
147
D. K . H O L M
escape … But I feel more and more that we all, us

humans, are given this gift, this chance-at-a-chance,
to … uh … to … uh … make something significant
out of that moment … I’m not precisely sure just
what … I’m working on it …
How much pre-visualization do you do with a typical

page of a comic book? Or does it just ‘come to you’?
Or, do you imagine one specific frame, and build the
rest of the page around it logically? Or is it too difficult
(or too boring) to describe?
I usually have sort of a vague idea what I want the

finished page to look like over-all … A mood, a
feeling … it is as much about the lay-out of the
panels, the amount of darkness or lightness, the
amount of ink on the whole page, the positioning of
the characters, as it is about the story line. The look
of the whole page is important, aesthetically, to the
appeal of comics. Some of those old-time comic-
strip artists understood this very well when making
their big Sunday, full-page, colour strips. Many of
those Sunday pages, in the 1910s & ‘20s, are beautiful
works of art. Even some of the cartoonists of that
time who weren’t especially aware of “composing”
their Sunday pages made beautiful ones, uncon-
sciously, just by the bold, vigorous simplicity of their
style – early Mutt and Jeff, the Gumps, Buster
Brown, and many lesser-known, obscure strips, are
just charming as hell to look at … Usually the visual
part is much better than the writing. The humour
148
RO B E RT C RU M B
was most often very lowbrow in those early strips –

in the last panel somebody is falling out of the
picture after hearing the punch-line. These news-
paper comic strips were looked down on by the
upscale cartoonists of the weekly magazines coming
out of New York; the New Yorker, Life, Judge, etc.
Comic strips and comic books were for the working
classes. Literate people did not read them, and often
did not allow their children to read comic books.
Really, what have you got against comic book fans;

what did the fans ever do to you?
Comic fans – God bless ‘em! Who ever said I had

anything against comic fans? Did I ever say that?
Where would I be without them? I’d still be working
at the American Greetings Corporation in
Cleveland. I just had to stop appearing at comics
conventions, that’s all … I used to be invited to those
things and for a few years I accepted and went to
them, and because they paid my plane fare and hotel
bill, I dutifully fulfilled my obligation to them, did as
I was expected, sat at a table for two or three days
signing autographs, signing books and making draw-
ings for the fans. It was a lot of work. The only
pleasure I had at those affairs was in meeting and
talking to other cartoonists. Not that the fans were so
awful as individuals, but cumulatively, after dealing
with endless lines of them for hours, you can develop
a sort of phobia towards them. And in my particular
case, the fans were almost never attractive girls. If an
149
D. K . H O L M
attractive girl came to the table to get my autograph,

it was invariably for her boyfriend, who was A Big
Fan of My Work.‘And what about you? What do you
think of my work,’ I would ask these girls. They’d
shrug, say something like, ‘I don’t really like comics,’
or ‘It’s too weird for me …’
Comic fans … Once at one of these conventions I
managed to strike up a conversation with a very cute,
full-lipped young lady who was deeply involved in
Star Trek fandom. I was asking her all about the inner
workings of this particular sub culture, and she
seemed to warm up to me. A young fellow came up
and stood there listening to us talk for a bit, and then
he intruded in our conversation and turned it to my
work and begin to talk about some raunchy, sexually
bizarre story I’d done, laughing and describing the
action of the story in crude and vulgar language until
the cute young miss was so offended that she turned
and walked away. The young man then said, ‘Well,
now that I got rid of her we can really talk!’ ‘b-but I
liked her,’ I protested.‘Ah, she’s just a trekky! She’s not
even into comics. Whataya want to talk to her for?
Hey, didja read the Comics Journal interview with Jack
Kirby,’ etc. etc. I hadda quit going to those comics
conventions. I still get invited to them here in
Europe, but I just don’t go.
What’s the one thing about making comics, from the

creator’s point of view, that the fans, the critics, the
comics conventioneers, and the collectors don’t under-
stand?
150
RO B E RT C RU M B
They don’t understand – and of course, how could

they? One comics critic, writing in the Comics
Journal (a magazine about comics put out by
Fantagraphics, in Seattle), named Cwiklik, once
touched on this subject in an article, and that is, the
amount of labour involved in drawing comics.To do
a conscientious job takes so much time, dedication,
concentration, and the financial return is such that
you have to turn out a lot of comics in order to make
a living, that very few artists can keep it up for very
long. I maintain that it is a young man’s game (and
now, to some extent, a young woman’s game). Few
are the full-time professional comics artists who are
middle-aged. No one who hasn’t drawn comics
themselves can possibly know how much work is
involved if you do everything yourself – if you write
the story, lay out the pages, pencil, ink and letter
them yourself. It’s an occupation for young, ener-
getic, devoted, unbalanced nerds who have no other
life. If you’re trying to draw comics for a living, you
can’t do anything else much. The natural tendency,
after ten or twenty years of drawing comics, is to
slowly but surely slip into automatic, to turn into a
hack … the drawing becomes mechanical, lifeless …
It’s one of the occupational hazards … Most just fall
by the wayside … There’s so little glamour, so little
economic reward for all that work … you pass from
youth to middle age, you got a family, you got house
payments, you want to take a vacation once in a
while … you find some more realistic way to make
a living …
151
D. K . H O L M
People who don’t draw comics just don’t know

how much work it is … All the comics artists I know
who have tried making oil paintings or water
colours, including myself, will tell you the same
thing,‘This is so much more satisfying for the amount
of work involved. Being a painter is so much more
glamorous, the results of the labour are so much
more immediate.’
This is also the reason why there are not that
many really good comics. If you are into being an
artist as an attention-getting device, it’s much easier
to be a poet or a painter. And girls like poets and
painters. Girls don’t relate to comics. Comics are a
boy thing. And not a sexy boy thing like, say hot rod
cars or sports. Comics are a wimpy boy thing,
possibly, even a repulsive boy thing. When I was
young, before I was famous, the fact that I was into
comics and drew comics was a real hindrance to
winning the favour of the girls. Any fool with an
eight-foot canvas and some paint brushes had a
better chance with girls than I did, no matter what
sort of sloppy abstract smears he was making. Am I
bitter? Oh, just a tad!
152
Reference Materials
Selected Interviews With Robert Crumb

‘Robert Crumb: King Of The Underground Comics,’
Claude Chadwick [Marty Pahls], National Insider, Jan.
26, 1969
‘America’s Best Loved Underground Cartoonist,’Vicki
Hodgetts New York, June 22, 1970
‘Crumb’s Comics Experience Fits in Underground,’
Johann Kubo, UMW Post, July 28, 1971
‘The Reluctant Celebrity,’ Jerome Tarshis, San Francisco
Examiner and Chronicle, Feb. 27, 1972
‘Who is this Crumb?’Thomas Maremaa, New York Times
Magazine, Oct. 1, 1972
‘Truckin’ Along with R. Crumb, Or Something,’ Gary
Griffith, Cleveland Magazine, July, 1972
‘What I Think Of All the Foolish Nonsense I’ve Been
Involved In …’ Al Davoren, Promethean Enterprises,
1973–74
‘What’s A Nice Counter-Culture Visionary Like
Robert Crumb Doing On A Secluded Farm In
California,’ Keith Green, Inside Comics, Spring, 1974
‘Cartoonist R. Crumb’s Band Caught In A Time Warp,’
153
D. K . H O L M
Laura Daltry, Rolling Stone, April 21, 1977

‘Keep On Fuckin’: A Candid Conversation With R.
Crumb,’ Clark Peterson, Screw, April 25, 1977
‘R. Crumb,’ Peter Carlson, People, June 24th, 1984
‘R. Crumb’s Savage Vision,’ Steve Chapple, Mother Jones,
Nov./Dec., 1985
‘Two Generations Of Weirdos,’ Michael Macrone, The
Comics Journal, March, 1986
‘The Shape Of Art,’ Gary Groth, The Comics Journal,
Dec., 1986
‘The Straight Dope From R. Crumb,’ Gary Groth, The
Comics Journal, April, 1988
‘Creme De La Crumb,’ Al Goldstein, Screw, Oct 17, 24,
and Nov. 7, 1988
‘The Life And High Times Of R. Crumb, Cartoonist,’
Milo Miles, The Boston Sunday Globe, July 21, 1991
‘The Man Whose Muse Is Misery,’ Sharon Waxman,
The Washington Post, May 25, 1992
‘Monsieur Naturel: Crumb In France,’ Brendan
Bernhard, L. A. Weekly, April 31, 1998 http://
www.laweekly.com/ink/98/23/art-bernhard.php A
charming account by a writer who flew to France
and weasled his way into Crumb’s house.
‘People: R. Crumb,’ Steve Burgess, Salon.com, 2 May,
2000 <http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2000/05/
02/crumb/ index.html?CP=SAL&DN=110> A
short summary of the cartoonist’s career.
The World According To Crumb, Jean-Pierre Mercier,
National Center For Comics And Image, 1992,Trade
Paperback, 64 pages ISBN 2 907848 03 8. The
accompanying catalogue for an exhibit of Crumb’s
154
RO B E RT C RU M B
works, in several cities, including Oxford. Following

a brief biographical sketch, there is an extensive
interview with Crumb. Later reprinted with changes
as Que a peur de Robert Crumb? (Who’s Afraid of Robert
Crumb?), Musee de la Bande Dessinee, 2000, Trade
Paperback, 60 pages, 2 907848 22 4
Books About Crumb

The Life And Times Of R. Crumb, Monte Beauchamp, St.
Martin’s Griffin, 1998, Trade Paperback, 182 pages
ISBN 0 312 19571 0. Forty-five colleagues, admirers,
and an ex-wife (from Terry Gilliam to Jim Jarmusch)
contribute brief memories, testimonials, and appraisals
of Crumb, many by admirers who don’t actually know
him, originally published as an issue of Blab magazine.
It’s interesting to compare Crumb’s memoirs of his
early years in San Francisco in the introduction to Vol.
4 of The Complete Crumb Comics, with those of John
Thompson in this book.
Articles About Crumb

‘The Filming Of Fritz the Cat,’ Mike Barrier,
Funnyworld, Part One, issue Number 14, Spring 1972,
pages 4–7, and 46, and Part Two, Fall, 1973, pages
26–29, 32–36, and 47
155
D. K . H O L M
Crumb Checklists And Bibliographies

R. Crumb Checklist Of Work And Criticism, Don Fiene,
Boatner Norton, 1981, Trade Paperback, 172 pages
ISBN 0 9606654 1 2. Don Fiene’s essential, indis-
pensable, massive and masterly bibliography,
including lists of character names and appearances,
and secondary material, has a cut off date of
December, 1980.
‘The R. Crumb Checklist, II,’ Charles Boucher,
CounterMedia, Winter 1991–92 A continuation of
Don Fiene’s bibliography, including citations of
album covers, exhibitions, t-shirts and sweatshirts,
and writing pads, and key chains. Richly detailed but
sadly out of date.
Crumb-ology:The Works Of R. Crumb, 1981–1994, Carl
Richter,Water Row Press, 1995, Hardback, 81 pages
ISBN 0 93495 3244. This checklist covers Crumb’s
work from 1981 to 1994.
Movies About Crumb

Comic Book Confidential, Ron Mann, 1988, Home
Vision Entertainment, 2002, DVD, 85 minutes, ISBN
0 7800 2563 6. Crumb is one of 22 comic book
artists from the whole history of the medium inter-
viewed for this documentary by Canadian director
Ron Mann.
Crumb, Terry Zwigoff, 1994, Columbia Tristar Home
Video, 1998, DVD, 119 minutes, ISBN 0 7678 2150
5. The definitive, career-renewing film about the
156
RO B E RT C RU M B
cartoonist, made by a long time friend.

Ghost World, Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes, 2001,
MGM Home Entertainment, 2002, DVD, 111
minutes, ISBN 0 7928 5096 3. The character of
Seymour, played by Steve Buscemi, shares numerous
traits with Crumb, among them a generally
complaining attitude and an interest in old 78s.
Crumb On The Web

Crumb Products: The official Crumb merchandising
website, managed as of this writing by Jesse Crumb
and Leland Horneman. <http://www.crumbproducts.
com>
The Crumb Museum: An unofficial Crumb site that
also sells merchandise. <http://www.geocities.com/
SoHo/Cafe/7958/crumb1.html>
The Crumb And Bukowski Parlor: An unofficial site
with rare photos of Crumb with Bukowski.
<http://www.beatup.com/crumb_bukowski_crum
b.html>
Crumb Update Page:An unofficial but useful page that
announces new publications by and relating to
Crumb. <http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/5359/
page2.html>
An R. Crumb Site: An unofficial site collecting images
of R. Crumb’s extension album cover art, including
the rare R. Crumb: The Musical! http://www.geoci-
ties.com/SunsetStr ip/Lobby/5158/cr umb-
cover.html
R. Crumb Exhibition At Galerie Lambiek: A site with
157
D. K . H O L M
photographs of R. Crumb at a gallery opening in

1995. <http://www.lambiek.net/crumbexh.htm>
Another R. Crumb Page: Distinguished by a series of
free electronic post cards, and a forum in which visi-
tors ask obvious questions (‘Does Crumb have a foot
fetish?’) that go unanswered. <http://beam.to/
snoid>Uncle Carl’s R. Crumb Links: A fairly
comprehensive collection of links to other Crumb
sites, run by Crumb-ology compiler Carl Richter.
<http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/5359/>
Robert Crumb Articles And Interviews: A good, unof-
ficial links site. <http://w1.870.telia.com/
~u87008863/article.htm> Underground Comics: A
catalog of underground comics for collectors, with
cover illustrations and publication variants. <http://
www.ugcomix.info/guide/>
Comic FAQs: Extensive survey of comic book history
and art. <http://www.enteract.com/~katew/faqs/
miscfaq6.htm>
Other References
The World Of Bruegel,Timothy Foote,Time-Life Books,
1968, Hardback, 192 pages
The Inimitable George Cruikshank: An Exhibition Of
Illustrated Books, Prints, Drawings And Manuscripts
From The Collection Of David Borowitz, Richard
A. Vogler, University of Louisville Libraries, 1968,
Trade Paperback, 56 pages
George Cruikshank: Printmaker: Selections From T he
Richard Vogler Collection Richard Kubiak, The Santa
158
RO B E RT C RU M B
Barbara Museum of Art, 1978, Trade Paperback, 64

pages
James Gillray: The Art Of Caricature, Richard Godfrey,
Tate Publishing, 2001, Trade Paperback, 240 pages,
ISBN 1 85437 364 1
Punch: The Lively Youth Of A British Institution,
1841–1851, Richard D. Altick, Ohio State
University Press, 1997, Hardback, 776 pages, ISBN 0
8142 0710 3
High & Low: Modern Culture And Popular Art, Kirk
Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik, The Museum of
Modern Art, 1990,Trade Paperback, 460 pages ISBN
0 87070 354 4. The accompanying catalogue to an
important and controversial show at MOMA in
New York City.
Confessions Saint Augustine, translated by R. S. Pine-
Coffin, Penguin Classics, 1961 Paperback, 347 pages,
ISBN 0 14 044 114 X
A History Of Underground Comics, Mark James Estren,
Ronin (published in the UK by Airlift Book
Company), 1974, 1984, Trade Paperback, 320 pages,
ISBN 0 914171 11 9. Heavily illustrated and highly
detailed survey of the world of underground comics.
Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution,
1963–1975, Patrick Rosenkranz, Fantagraphics,
2003, Hardback, 292 pages, ISBN 1 56097 464 8.
Updating and expansion of the author’s earlier book,
Artsy Fartsy Funnies.
‘Understanding Classics Illustrated,’ Dan Malan, The
Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (23rd Edition),
Avon Books, 1993,Trade Paperback. A survey of the
159
D. K . H O L M
educational comic book publishing company.

Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry And Tales, edited by Patrick F.
Quinn, The Library of America, 1984, Hardback,
1408 pages, ISBN 0 940450 18 6. There are
surprising similarities between the emotions and
views of the American writer and the cartoonist.
160

D.K. Holm - Robert Crumb (Pocket Essential Series) - Pocket Essentials (2005) PDF

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

D.K. Holm - Robert Crumb (Pocket Essential Series) - Pocket Essentials (2005) PDF

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Robert Crumb 14/2/05 11:38 am Page 2

Other books by this author

First published in Great Britain 2003

This edition published in 2005 by

Distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing,

Copyright © D.K. Holm 2005

The right of D.K. Holm to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or

Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks

I should like to recognize the unwavering and cheerful

tered Multnomah County Library, Portland State

1. Introduction: Who Reads R. Crumb? 9

2. The Genesis Of A Future Genius

3. The Bitter Years Of Early Struggle

4. Life On The Farm: Brutal Years Of

5. Retreat To Realism (1980–1993) 81

6. Post-Crumb, The Later Years Of

7. The Latest Confessions:

8. Reference Materials 153

Introduction:Who Reads R. Crumb?

Yes, who actually reads R. Crumb?

– helps to keep his imagery and worldview in the

kids may own the comics, but it is simply merchandise

putting down on paper exactly what he feels inside.

reasons. First, I find most of it funny. Even when offen-

and the access to portray Crumb as he really is.

much simpler … Life is much too complex and vague

Out of the Past: Influences On Crumb

interest, respect, and a degree of influence for are Pieter

Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525–1569)

of ‘burning phantasmagorias,’ sweeping, crowded colo-

James Gillray (1756–1815)

motivated by rage. Most of his caricatures were barbs

George Cruikshank (1792–1878)

illustrate books, of which he did over 850, including

Harper’s Weekly … very strong stuff.’ Crumb calls Nast

The Lure Of Comic Books

Carl Barks (1901–2000)

panels was an influence on Crumb. The panels show

E. C. (Elzie Crisler) Segar (1894–1938)

Eventually the strip was taken over completely by one

Marge Henderson Buell (1904–1993)

ited with developing the more ‘cartoony’ style for Little

Walt Kelly (1913–1973)

was followed by I Go Pogo, and the books continued to

Harvey Kurtzman (1924–1993)

Kurtzman is, of course, best remembered for the

have been unimaginable without the prior partial

Crumb: The Consummate Cartoonist

hollow modernity and instead honours popular culture

favoured American jazz from the pre-war era and wrote

between Crumb and these artists. Suffice it to say that

The Genesis Of A Future Genius

The prime elder of the Crumb family, Charles V.

in 1956 and entered the world of business. He later

In his teen years, Robert Crumb began collecting

Crumb Family Comics

and those are rare qualities to find in any art form.’

abstract painter whose squiggly lines and colour

Your Vigor For Life Appalls Me:

In his letters (and we only get his side of the corre-

to evince a restlessness that put in him the same league

at times not particularly pleasant. Bearing in mind that