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Robert Dennis Crumb, often credited simply as R. 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.

Life and career

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! (the latter alongside other budding talents including Terry Gilliam and Gloria Steinem). 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.

Crumb employed detailed early 20th century cartoon styles in satirical stories that were sexually and politically outrageous, particularly in the context of comic books, which, thanks to the enforcement of the Comics Code, were 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, 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, although 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 contorted, sexualized, anatomically dubious pose that has her sitting on her own head.

Influences and critical response

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 illustrated Disney's "Donald Duck" comic books, 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. [1]

Crumb'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," namely a repressive voice that needs to be overcome. Crumb's racial imagery, often harking 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.

Legacy

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.

Additional information

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's adaptation of the Book of Genesis is 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 art prints in exchange for a subscription to Sirius that he could listen to in France.

In the 2000s, Crumb became increasingly ambivalent about continuing to contribute to new issues of Zap. By issue #14 he announced to the other artists 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.

Awards and honors

Crumb has received several accolades for his work, including a nomination for the Harvey Special Award for Humor in 1990.

With Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Gary Panter and Chris Ware, Crumb was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from Sept. 16, 2006 to Jan. 28, 2007.

In 1999, Crumb was the second American comics author to receive the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, the most important European comics award. The first was Will Eisner in 1975.

Further reading

• The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book. (ISBN 0-316-16306-6, 1997).
• The R. Crumb Handbook, Published by MQ Publications, London, 2005, ISBN 1-84072-716-0
• The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998) written by Charles Bukowski and illustrated by Robert Crumb.
• Busted! Drug War Survival Skills (2005) written by [M. Chris Fabricant] and illustrated by Robert Crumb.

External links

• The Crumb Family Website Official site, maintained by Jesse Crumb
• Robert Crumb profile at Salon.com
• "The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick" by R. Crumb, Weirdo #17, Summer 1986.
• Les Primitifs du Futur (review)
• The R. Crumb handbook
• Blues Trading Cards from Robert Crumb
• Robert & Maxon Crumb info gateway
• Robert Crumb profile at The New York Review of Books
• G2 In Crumbland at The Guardian
• R. Crumb: Dangling from the Wings of Madness

Fan sites

• Naturally... fansite
• looking for crumb? fansite

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