Robert Crumb: Cartooning’s Eccentric Titan
Robert Crumb, or “R Crumb” to those who inadvertently find themselves entangled in the web of modern cartooning, stands tall as a veritable giant. Dan Nadel’s meticulously crafted biography is your one-stop shop for everything you’ve ever needed to know about this paradoxical figure—a towering cartoonist and an undeniably odd individual, all wrapped up in one curious package.
For a while, Crumb was the go-to artist for outlandish album covers, famously breaking into the mainstream with that iconic illustration for the Big Brother and the Holding Company/Janis Joplin album, Cheap Thrills. You know the one—the psychedelic art that graced dorm-room walls and mudflaps alike, featuring elongated, stoned figures uttering the ever-inspiring mantra, “Keep on Truckin’.” Oh, but that’s merely the surface—beneath lies a treasure trove of underground comics from the Sixties and Seventies, where he reigned supreme as the driving force of Zap Comix.
With a mind dipped in LSD (no, really), Crumb introduced us to a bizarre pantheon of absurdist characters that could make even a philosopher question his life choices. From Mr. Natural to Fritz the Cat, and that cryptic creation, R Crumb himself—tall, bespectacled, and bubbling over with existential dread—he has gifted us a world teeming with social commentary, wrapped in his signature hatching style that practically screams, “I’ve got issues!”
But how did this quirk-filled ride start? Crumb learned from luminaries like Harvey Kurtzman of Mad fame and Carl Barks, the anonymous “good duck artist.” And yet, in a twist of irony worthy of a Crumb comic, no Crumb means no Art Spiegelman, no Chris Ware, no Joe Sacco—none of those current masters of the cartooning universe. Spiegelman puts it succinctly: “Every cartoonist must pass through Crumb. It’s like the evolutionary leap in 2001: A Space Odyssey; you need him to find your voice.” If only evolution came with a user manual.
To say Crumb is “problematic” may be an understatement. His character Angelfood McSpade is a caricature that would have any current social media manager gasping for air. Racial and sexual politics in Crumb’s work are murky, to put it kindly. His earlier comics sport references to topics like rape, often as punchlines. Yes, as his biographer argues, he merely reflects the culture of his time—because nothing says “I’m a product of my upbringing” like a poorly thought-out comic panel.
Born in 1943 to a family that could win an award for “Dysfunctional Family of the Year” in Philadelphia, Crumb’s upbringing was anything but dull. His parents’ chaotic marriage was packed with drama: think addiction, violence, and any other ingredient you can throw in a family-sized melting pot of dysfunction. Despite this, Crumb managed to escape into the world of art. We can only assume cartooning was his therapy—complete with no copay!
Now in his ninth decade of life, Crumb leads an oddly monastic existence in rural France. When Nadel made the trek to propose this warts-and-all biography, Crumb, maybe from sheer bewilderment, simply shrugged. And there you have it: the enigma of a man who turned down $20,000 for a Mr. Natural cuddly toy. Who says integrity doesn’t pay? In the increasingly bizarre tapestry of life, Crumb stitches himself (literally and figuratively) in a way that asks the question—what even is “success”? The answer remains as complex as one of his comics.
