Robert Crumb, affectionately known as “R Crumb” in the annals of cartooning history—or perhaps it’s just the world’s longest and least catchy pen name—stands as a towering figure in modern comics and an eccentric enigma. Dan Nadel’s meticulously crafted biography spills all the beans you never wanted to know about this uniquely odd man.
For way too long, Crumb’s claim to fame in mainstream culture was his infamous cover art for the Big Brother and the Holding Company/Janis Joplin album Cheap Thrills. You know, those curiously elongated stoned figures that graced everything from dorm-room posters to the mudflaps of eighteen-wheelers, imploring everyone to “Keep on Truckin’.” Surprise! He was also the master of underground comics in the ’60s and ’70s, not just a mere footnote in the countercultural handbook.
From the depths of his psychedelic imagination, Crumb gifted us an entire pantheon of absurdist and often scandalous characters, each brought to life with his iconic hatching style. Enter Mr. Natural, the Snoid, Angelfood McSpade, Fritz the Cat, and the perpetually nervous figure of R Crumb—glasses thicker than his emotional armor—who stands as a metaphor for all his neuroses and anxieties.
He learned the ropes from comic gods like Harvey Kurtzman and Carl Barks (the mysterious “good duck artist”). If you thought the new wave of cartoonists had a chance without passing through Crumb’s gauntlet, think again! As Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus, so poetically puts it: “Every cartoonist must pass through Crumb.” In other words, encountering Crumb is akin to the accelerated evolution scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. You must go through him to discover your own voice—lucky us!
Despite being an icon of the ’60s counterculture, Crumb’s interests lean more toward the nostalgic than the revolutionary. His love for collecting old 78rpm shellac records could be seen as a temporal rebellion against anything remotely modern. While he harbors broadly anti-corporate sentiments, his real focus seems to be his unflinching examination of himself—because who doesn’t want to gaze into their own psychological abyss on a Friday night?
Born into a tumultuous lower-middle-class home in Philadelphia back in 1943, Crumb emerged from a familial whirlwind of dysfunction—think anger, violence, madness, and even incest. His beloved older brother, who introduced him to the world of comics, tragically succumbed to the same chaos, leaving a poignant void. That Robert survived into adulthood is remarkably less baffling than the fact that he turned his neuroses into art, which seems to be the universal creative hotline these days.
Now let’s address the elephant, or should I say the “problematic” aspect, in the room. Crumb’s work features uninhibited characters, like Angelfood McSpade, that could brighten the happiest of social justice warriors’ day with grim laughter. His early comics oftentimes pushed the envelope—finding humor in themes that today we’d read over a collective gasp. His argument? He just reflects the culture—they did it first! It’s like saying your mom’s cooking doesn’t give you indigestion.
Between provocative panels and sidestepping any serious jail time during the #MeToo movement, Crumb found sexual success quite astonishing, though not without its share of personal wreckage, including the disintegration of his first marriage and son. Fast forward through years spent dodging societal shifts—he took a shot at redemption through realist illustrations in Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. Although punk rockers might have called him a washed-up has-been (which crushed him, of course), his reputation somehow spun back into vogue as the cash registers began to sing.
And here we find Crumb today—widowed, lounging in rural France, embodying the irony of a childlike mind grappling with adult finances. One could say he has about as much business sense as a goldfish in a bathtub. Yet, this peculiar character still manages to chuckle at the absurdity of it all, knowing deep down that money was never his driving force—after all, who needs financial advice when you’ve transformed sexual neuroses into a veritable comic empire?
