Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb (born
August 30,
1943 in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an artist and illustrator recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.
Crumb was a founder of the
underground comics movement and is regarded as its most prominent figure. Though one of the most celebrated of
comic book artists, Crumb's entire career has unfolded outside the mainstream comic book publishing industry. One of his most recognized works is the
Keep on Truckin' drawing, which became a widely distributed fixture of pop-culture in the 1970's.
Robert Crumb grew up in an unhappy family (famously chronicled in the
Terry Zwigoff documentary
Crumb), surrounded by artistic brothers and sisters. His older brother,
Charles Crumb, was an avid comic book fan, and pushed Robert to draw endless comic books from childhood into their teenage years. Together they created a comic called FOO; they attempted to sell it at their school and even door to door in their neighborhood, although Robert Crumb has said that they had little success. Eventually Charles gave up drawing, but Robert kept at it.
In the early 1960's Crumb moved to
Cleveland, Ohio to live with a writer friend, Marty Pahls. There he designed greeting cards for the
American Greetings corporation (some of them are still in circulation today) and met a group of young bohemians including Buzzy Linhart, Liz Johnston and others. Liz introduced him to his first wife, Dana Morgan Crumb. Crumb became a friend and protege of his idol,
Mad Magazine creator
Harvey Kurtzman, contributing early
Fritz the Cat strips and other work to Kurtzman's short-lived magazine
Help. Encouraged by the reaction to some drawings he had published in
underground newspapers, including
Philadelphia's
Yarrowstalks, Crumb moved in 1967 to
San Francisco, California, the center of the
counterculture movement. Crumb published the first issue of his
Zap Comix in early
1968. It would become an amazing success, establishing Crumb as the best-known artist of the
underground comix movement.
 |
Zap - Cover Art by R. Crumb |
Crumb employed detailed early 20th century cartoon styles in satirical stories that were sexually and politically outrageous, particularly in the context of comic book, which, thanks to the enforcement of the
Comics Code, where generally wholesome children's fare. He soon attracted a number of other artists who were excited by the possibilities of publishing countercultural comic books. Crumb shared the pages of later issues of
Zap with such artists as
Spain Rodriguez,
Rick Griffin,
S. Clay Wilson,
Victor Moscoso,
Robert Williams,
Harvey Kurtzman and
Gilbert Shelton.
In the pages of
Zap, the
East Village Other,
OZ magazine, Gothic Blimp Works, Motor City, Yellow Dog, and scores of other
comix and
counterculture publications, Crumb created characters that became counterculture icons; the best-known are "
Mr. Natural" and "
Fritz the Cat". Crumb's work was suddenly in great demand, and Crumb himself became an anti-establishment icon, a figure who genuinely resisted "selling out". His friend
Janis Joplin hired him to draw the artwork for the cover of her band's album
Cheap Thrills, but Crumb rejected an offer to illustrate an album cover for the
Rolling Stones because he hated the band's music. Animation director
Ralph Bakshi made a feature-length animated film of
Fritz the Cat (the first animated film to garner an "X" rating), and the film was a box-office hit. Crumb was highly ambivalent during the film's pre-production and has claimed that his wife signed the rights to
Fritz over to Bakshi when Crumb was away. Crumb disliked the finished film so much that he killed the fictional cat in his comics (an ostrich-woman stabbed the pompous movie-star Fritz in the head with an ice pick), and has since refused other lucrative offers to base films on his work. At one point, he and Zwigoff collaborated on a script based on Crumb's story
Whiteman Meets Bigfoot, although it was never filmed.
The '70s were a difficult decade for Crumb, as he lost the legal rights to his ubiquitous
Keep on Truckin' cartoon and endured protracted legal battles with the
Internal Revenue Service. His work became more bitter and satirical, and was outright misanthropic by the time he began
Weirdo, the influential comics anthology that ran through the '80s. Crumb was the first editor, but even after he stepped down from that position he had a story in every issue and usually contributed the covers. The
Crumb documentary became a surprise hit in 1994, introducing Crumb to a whole new generation. Since then he has become a somewhat regular contributor to
The New Yorker and in recent years has also dabbled in fine art paintings and sculpture, creating a lifesize statue of one of his "Vulture Demoness" characters and another of his character
Devil Girl in a cortorted, sexualized, anatomically dubious pose that has her sitting on her own head.
Robert Crumb's cartooning style draws on the work of cartoon artists from earlier generations, including
Billy De Beck (
Barney Google),
C.E. Brock (an old story book illustrator),
Gene Ahern's comic strips,
George Baker (
Sad Sack), the
Merrie Melodies animated characters of the 1930s,
Sidney Smith (
The Gumps),
Rube Goldberg work,
E.C. Segar (
Popeye), and
Bud Fisher (
Mutt and Jeff). Crumb has cited
Carl Barks, who drew early
Disney "Duck" cartoons, and
John Stanley (
Little Lulu) as formative influences on his narrative approach, as well as
Harvey Kurtzman, the comics artist who was also the founding editor of
Mad. In 2005, in an appearance in New York City with Hughes, Crumb also credited "Little Orphan Annie" creator Harold Gray as one of his influences.
http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2005/04/r_crumb_the_ny_public_library.htmlCrumb's comic artwork has elicited sharply divided commentary from readers and critics. He has been hailed as one of the century's greatest artists, and compared to literary
satirists Rabelais,
Jonathan Swift, and
Mark Twain. Art critic
Robert Hughes has likened Crumb to
Dürer,
Breughel and
Goya. Others, including comics historian
Trina Robbins and
feminist Deirdre English denounce Crumb's work as socially degrading and emotionally immature
misogynistic pornography. Crumb has been ambivalent about this criticism. He has admitted he has a strong "fear of
women" and has apologized many times for the more extreme elements of his work, calling them "masturbatory," but he has also dismissed critics like Robbins as "uptight" and told
The Comics Journal that "we all have a little Trina in our brains," a repressive voice that needs to be overcome. Crumb's racial imagery, often harkening back to the extreme racial caricatures of the early 20th century, has also caused much controversy. Crumb typically defends this work by saying he is expressing the racism endemic to American culture, and that he does not endorse racism himself. In the '90s a racist group reprinted his satirical story "When the Niggers Take Over America", much to Crumb's horror.
Crumb created and edited the
Weirdo alternative comics anthology in the early 1980s, and he remains a prominent figure, as both artist and influence, within the
alternative comics milieu. While Crumb's career has unfolded outside the mainstream comic book publishing industry, he has done both covers and multi-page comics (mostly about his current life in France) for
The New Yorker.
Harvey Pekar was a friend who shared Crumb's love of 78 RPM records. Pekar solicited Crumb's help to illustrate an autobiographical series of comics about Pekar's own life called
American Splendor and later made into a
movie of the same name. The role of Crumb himself in that film was portrayed by
James Urbaniak.
A theatrical production based on his work was produced at
Duke University in the early 1990s. Directed by Johnny Simons, the development of the play was supervised by Crumb, who also served as set designer, drawing larger-than-life representations of some of his most famous characters all over the floors and walls of the set.
The
1994 documentary film Crumb, focusing on Crumb and his work in relation to his family life and two troubled brothers, introduced Crumb and his work to a younger audience. The film was directed by Crumb's long-time friend
Terry Zwigoff.
In the mid-1990s Crumb traded six of his sketchbooks for a house in the small town of
Sauve, in the
Languedoc-Roussillon region in the South of
France where he moved with his wife,
Aline Kominsky-Crumb (also a well-known "underground" cartoonist) and their daughter,
Sophie (herself a comic artist). He also has a son,
Jessie Crumb, by his first wife Dana. Jessie is an accomplished artist in his own right, and their relationship is briefly explored in
Crumb, with R. giving Jessie some drawing tips.
Crumb is an avid collector of
78 rpm phonograph records; he has over 5000 records
as of 2004. In
2003, the collection was the source for
Hot Women: Women Singers From The Torrid Regions Of The World, his compilation of
world music from
Mexico,
Cuba,
Turkey,
Burma, and
Tahiti. All but two of the 24 tracks were recorded between
1927 and
1934. Crumb also hosted a BBC radio series featuring his favorite records. In the 1970s he produced three albums with his own band
R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, playing old blues,
white jazz and novelty tunes. Zwigoff was also in the band. The band achieved some success in the '70s and early '80s, even turning down the chance to perform on
Saturday Night Live. In the '90s, they reunited to perform on
A Prairie Home Companion. He now plays banjo in the French band
Les Primitifs du Futur.
Crumb is an enormously influential figure in American
alternative comics, hailed as a genius by such talents as
Jaime Hernandez,
Daniel Clowes and
Chris Ware.
In its list of the 100 Greatest English Comics of the 20th Century, the
Comics Journal filled four slots with Crumb work: #10 for his
Weirdo stories, #19 for his sketchbooks, #61 for "American Splendor" (to which Crumb is a regular contributor), and #80 for
Zap Comics.
In 2006, Crumb brought legal action against Amazon.com for the latter's making use of a version of his widely recognizable "Keep On Truckin'" character. Apparently, this will be settled out of court.
Crumb is currently working on an adaptation of the
Book of Genesis, scheduled to see print in the fall of
2007.
In 2006,
Sirius Radio host
Howard Stern revealed that Crumb had contacted his show, offering to swap some of his original artwork in exchange for a subscription to Sirius that he could listen to in France.
He has received several awards for his work, including a nomination for the Harvey Special Award for Humor in 1990.
In recent years Crumb has become increasingly ambivalent about continuing to contribute to new issues of
Zap. By issue #14 he announced to the other artists that he wasn't interested in continuing; this resulted in a brief physical altercation with Victor Moscoso, in which Moscoso slapped Crumb and called him "Mr. Fucking Moviestar!" The incident was recounted several times in issue #14 by the artists involved (including Crumb), and artist
Paul Mavrides contributed a strip in which Moscoso kills Crumb with an ice pick in a parody of Fritz the Cat's death scene.
*
The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book. (ISBN 0316163066, 1997).
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The R. Crumb Handbook, Published by MQ Publications, London, 2005, ISBN 1840727160
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The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998) written by
Charles Bukowski and illustrated by Robert Crumb.
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Official Crumb family website (maintained be Jesse Crumb)
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R. Crumb's MySpace (may not have any connection to R Crumb or Crumb family)
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Naturally... fansite
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looking for crumb? (fansite)
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The R. Crumb handbook*
Robert & Maxon Crumb info gateway*
Lambiek Comiclopedia*
Toonopedia entry*
"R. Crumb", Steve Burgess,
Salon.com, May 2, 2000.
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Mr. Natural, Ian Buruma,
The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 6, April 6, 2006.
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Les Primitifs du Futur (review)
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The Guardian with a one-week Special Report March, 2005*
Comic Book Awards Almanac*
"The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick" by R. Crumb,
Weirdo #17, Summer 1986.
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R. Crumb fansite (Spanish)
