Crumb, A Cartoonist's Life
By Dan Nadel

This is a very recently published book I found in my local library: a biography of the American cartoonist Robert Crumb. He's someone I have had mixed feelings about for a long time but, irrespective of that, I also always recognised him as excellent cartoonist. A natural talent, but also the fruit of many years drawing in his younger days, as this book shows.

I first came across Crumb in a book called "Masters of Comic Book Art", a "coffee table" book published by Aurum Press in 1978. Not a great book looking at it today, but in 1978 it was a revelation to a 12 year old boy. But Crumb was not one of the artists I paid as much attention to. He was too "cartoony" for my taste and I was drawn to the Moebius, Druillet and, particularly, Richard Corben chapters.

But chasing the early work of Corben meant exposure to the world of American "underground" comics and I could not avoid the work of Robert Crumb. He was everywhere, very prolific and the core of Zap Comix, the first "real" underground comic book which debuted in 1968. Alongside fellow artists Rick Griffin, S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez and Victor Moscoso, his work defined the free-wheeling, wild and often quite "obscene" new counter-cultural comics. Crumb was the driving force of Zap and became famous over the next few years. Of course, "obscenity" is a matter of opinion really but there were serious legal and official attacks on some of the work produced and those who drew, published or distributed the work. First Amendment be damned.

Crumb is also well known for creating some very sexist and racist work on occasion and these pieces are hard to look at today. He's a product of a much more sexist and patriarchal society, and racism was something that was much more casually present than today. Crumb is frank about these works and his various sexual and psychological hang-ups, telling Dan Nadel right at the start that he wants no sugar-coating. Nadel details how badly he sometimes treated the women (particularly) in his life: he was quite the philanderer. It shouldn't come as a great surprise, but a lot of the "hippies" enjoying the drugs and "free love" were the same products of such a society and would happily leave the washing up to the women. Crumb interrogates himself painfully in his note books and letters over his multitude of failings, well aware of the hurt he causes. His very dysfunctional family background must have contributed to this.

For a look at him and, particularly, the relationship with his older brother Charles, see Terry Zwigoff's film Crumb. Charles Crumb, committed suicide in 1992.

Dan Nadel's book is well worth a read and not only for the Robert Crumb story but also a glimpse of all the other underground artists he inspired or worked with. In addition, it's a story of the unfolding of the 1960's "counter-culture", especially what was happening at its epicenter in San Francisco. But this was something that reverberated across the whole of the USA, and Europe as well. Music (Crumb meets Janis Joplin), drugs (lots of LSD taken and pot smoked) and general craziness. Like all these things, the scene dissipated quite quickly with many more undesirable sorts moving in and causing trouble. But the story is fascinating, as is this book.

Crumb is now 82 years old (as of December 2025). Is he still working? Has he mellowed at all? Well, he is still working although his published output has slowed significantly. As for mellowing, he has just had a new comic published by Fantagraphics called Tales of Paranoia and he still seems to be railing against much of the horrible reality of the modern world. Including things like surveillance, vaccine mandates and no doubt much else. He is still Robert Crumb, the famous curmudgeonly comic artist after all.