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Winnipeg Free Press
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Bay Area cartoonist's biography a real trip
If you're acquainted with Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat or the Keep on Truckin' crew, you'll need no introduction to the subject of this lengthy, detailed, sometimes revelatory, sometimes welcomingly familiar and intimate biography. R. Crumb (Robert Dennis Crumb, to be precise) is the far-out cartoonist/chronicler of the 1960s and '70s counterculture whose drugs, sexual freedom and music (to a lesser extent) he embraced on the streets and in the parks of San Francisco. Crumb, born into a highly dysfunctional family rife with mental illness and abuse, and by nature a skeptical outsider, wasn't a natural candidate to capture the spirit of the hippie movement in its Haight-Ashbury home in 1968 when the 25-year-old arrived from the American northeast. Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life Yet, he captured the look and feel of the LSD trips as he as enthusiastically chronicled the racial and sexual violence his generation was trying to overcome. Crumb 'satirized the hippies, well-meaning liberals, and most of all himself,'' Nadel writes. If that urgent message hadn't found its moment, the modern bestselling graphic novels would be impossible, Nadel adds. Crumb had long wanted to be a successful cartoonist — he and his brother Charles were relentless comic book makers as kids — and the discovery of Mad magazine in the mid-'50s altered his brain chemistry as surely as the LSD would a decade later. The magazine's subversion freed Crumb from the need for social acceptance, as Mad cover boy Alfred. E. Neuman intoned his catchphrase 'What, me worry?'' Even though Crumb lived in San Francisco during the birth of psychedelic music, he had a lifetime love of 1920s-era dance music, collected countless 78s and performed in a couple of bands with like-minded syncopators. He met Janis Joplin in San Francisco, and while he liked her well enough, her music not so much, although he illustrated the Cheap Thrills album cover for her and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Nadel recounts the first Crumb-Joplin meeting, where she told him he should grow his hair longer and stop dressing like a character from the depression novel The Grapes of Wrath. Crumb was on the leading edge of underground comics with his Zap Comix and many other titles such as Weirdo, Introducing Kafka and The Book of Genesis and others, and his work was rife with sexual themes, often shading into the scatological and pornographic. He was often short of cash and moved about the country often, and was prone to taking off to visit friends without notice, even when married. He was hitched twice, and in each case he and his partner had regular affairs, sometimes lasting for years. He didn't have much of a relationship with his two children. In later years, he became a vaccine skeptic. In other words, like many a genius, he at times countered his artistic success with a less salubrious general lifestyle. Crumb agreed to work with Nadel on this book, but it is a warts-and-all biography. The cartoonist imposed just one condition, Nadel says: 'That I be honest about his faults, look closely at his compulsions, and examine the racially and sexually charged aspects of his work. He would rather risk honesty and see if anyone could understand than co-operate with a hagiography.' Nadel, the curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and author of other books including Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900-1969, weaves Crumb's present-day remembrances throughout the biography in a way that helps explain the madcap early life that made his name, shaped the underground comic oeuvre and helped develop many other cartoonists along the way. Nadel says Crumb is fond of saying 'No one understands… But of course, how could they.' It is a statement with many undercurrents, but in this biography Nadel helps readers understand Crumb himself and the effect his life and work had on North American society and a generation that was going to change the world. At 81, Crumb has slowed down, of course, but at whatever pace he can he still keeps on truckin'. Chris Smith is a Winnipeg writer.
Press and Journal
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Press and Journal
Gordon Reid: Tributes paid to Dons artist and cartoonist loved by Gothenburg Greats
Sometimes, it was two old Dons supporters standing in a bar, chewing the fat like Jack and Victor from Still Game. On other occasions, it was a striking artwork of a sheep on fire or a postcard full of praise for the Aberdeen players who took Europe by storm in the 1980s. Thanks to his many different drawings and cartoons, Gordon Reid, who died on Monday at the age of 76, was part of the cultural link between the Pittodrie club and its legions of fans. One of the Gothenburg Greats, Neil Simpson, has paid tribute to Gordon, describing him as being both 'ahead of his time' and a 'wonderful human being'. And club representatives have spoken about how he could make people laugh, even in tough times, and turn his hand to almost anything around the city he loved. Chris Gavin, of Aberdeen FC Heritage Trust, was constantly amazed at his colleague's prodigious output and the effort he devoted to a unique Pittodrie project. He said: 'Gordon was an early contributor to Aberdeen's first football fanzine The Northern Light and his cartoons went down well with supporters. 'He had a special liking for drawing [the former Dons chairman] Dick Donald. 'When The Northern Light folded, he moved on to found The Red Final and participated in the short-lived Granite Kipper. 'His output was prolific and there was far more material than could ever be used. 'He was a great admirer of the American underground artist Robert Crumb (who produced Keep on Truckin') from whom he took inspiration. 'Famously, when he got access to Pittodrie, he undertook a massive project to add cartoons to a stairwell in the Richard Donald Stand. 'The surface he had to work on was pretty coarse, but he persisted patiently, one stairstep at a time, and it probably did some damage to his knees in the process. 'Much of that work can still be seen today. 'There is no doubting his talent, but it wasn't recognised by the Aberdeen art establishment – something that mattered not a jot to thousands of Dons fans.' Neil Simpson, who was among the players who made history when Aberdeen beat Real Madrid in Gothenburg in 1983, was a long-time aficionado of Gordon's creativity. And he wasn't alone in the Pittodrie dressing room during that halcyon period. He said: 'Gordon was well known in the 80s for the Red Final, which was way ahead of its time, and many laughs were had by the players when we looked at his work. 'He was also devoted to the club and the Dons meant so much to him. 'I met Gordon numerous times and I always enjoyed his company. 'He was a lovely man and he will be sadly missed.' Chris Crighton, the editor of the Red Final and a regular contributor to the P&J, knew that the 'legendary' Gordon had been in poor health for several years. Yet that didn't lessen his sadness at learning about the death of somebody he cherished. He said: 'Gordon's catalogue was extraordinary in its volume, ingenuity and skill. 'And his work was as instantly recognisable as he was himself. 'He was known by many, loved by most, bettered by none.' His long-time friend, David Cheyne, kept in touch with Gordon – and revealed how the pair managed to bring a cherished production to fruition shortly before his death. He said: 'Gordon gave up his work with a clerical post at North East Farmers and spent a lot of time with his caricatures and drawings. 'We also very recently managed to get one of his projects on cinema – Adventures of a Film Buff – put into printed form for him. 'He said it was the last thing that he wanted to get done with regards to his work as it had been sitting waiting to get printed for about 20 years.' There has been talk of a celebration of Gordon's life at some future stage. And already, some people have argued that an exhibition featuring his work would prove very popular among Aberdeen fans. He deserved that while he was still alive. But better late than never.
Boston Globe
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
R. Crumb helped invent modern comics, but we haven't known much about his life … until now
Robert found sanctuary from this raging domestic mess in comic books, though he rejected superheroes. Who was Superman, really, if not another brawny bully like Crumb's alcoholic uncles? Instead, he was drawn to the animal adventures of Walt Disney's animation empire, especially Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics penned by a former Disney 'story man' named Carl Banks, whose richly detailed work, '[imbued] with psychological and emotional depth,' suited Crumb's desire for a meticulously rendered private universe. Young Robert began furiously drawing, inking, and writing his own comics with Charles. A few years later, Crumb hightailed it to Cleveland for a key apprenticeship making birthday cards for American Greetings. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Crumb felt the pull of the nascent counterculture well before he became a reluctant counter-cultural figure, taking his first acid trip with his first wife, Dana, in 1965, a mammoth 600-microgram dose that changed his life. 'When I took LSD I realized I was trying to be smart all the time,' he tells Nadel. 'And LSD made me realize that doesn't matter at all. If you trust your instincts … it's all right there.' Acid introduced Crumb's subconscious to the hermetic world of his art, a liminal space, writes Nadel, 'that ushered in ideas whose real meanings were a mystery even to him.' Crumb in 1966 would create his familiar gallery of comic book avatars — Eggs Ackley, Flakey Foont, and Mr. Natural, his first 'Keep on Truckin'' high-stepper. The comics were brazenly perverse and sharply satirical, stories of sexual fetishism and urban depravity next to gently savage attacks on religion and the nuclear family. The die was cast: Crumb was an outsider raging against the mindless conformity of postwar America, Salinger with a Rapidograph pencil. Advertisement Nadel pegs this as the moment when Crumb's id took charge, ushering in a new era of highly idiosyncratic personal and social exploration in comic art. In 1967 Crumb was settled in San Francisco, just in time for the Summer of Love and a psychedelic renaissance. Zap Comix, Crumb's first comic to get wide national distribution, was a watershed moment in adult comics. Grounding his work in what Nadel calls 'surreal happenstance … semipolitical essayistic comics, or visual poetry,' Crumb became the leading voice in an alternative comics movement that also included Gilbert Shelton, Victor Mososco, and S. Clay Wilson. Advertisement With Crumb's success came an ambivalent entry into the mainstream of American consumer culture, the very thing he had savaged in his comics. The perennially poor Crumb took on a few commissions, most notably the album art for Big Brother and the Holding Company's 'Cheap Thrills,' thus finding his work landing in the bedrooms of suburban teenagers everywhere. Mr. Natural became the first meme of its time, appearing without his consent on posters, T-shirts, and lunchboxes. Crumb sued every one of Mr. Natural's bootleggers. The idea of selling out was anathema, especially if it meant compromising a worldview that was taking on a darker, more disturbing cast. 'Snatch,' a 1968 comic book collaboration with Wilson, was an opportunity for Crumb to work through his complicated feelings toward women, a preoccupation which became a leitmotif for Crumb's career. Yet even as he insisted that stories like 'Don't Touch Me!' and 'The Adventures of Dick Nose' were pornographic satires, it's hard to find the humor in them. Understandably, this is the place where many Crumb fans get off the bus, as it becomes difficult to square the lacerating satirist with the coarse misogynist. Nadel, to his credit, doesn't make excuses for Crumb, calling this work 'the ugliest vision of white male heterosexuality' while allowing that Crumb's sexual frankness was a form of self-laceration: 'He was ruining the wet dream with grotesque nightmares.' Crumb is a complex guy, in short, and Nadel understands that genius and virtue are often incompatible, especially with an individual as tortured as his subject. There is a lot of ugliness from Crumb here, including parental neglect and serial philandering, but there is also his abiding love and deep respect for his second wife, comic book artist Aline Kominsky, which held for nearly 50 years until her death in 2022. Nadel tells their story movingly, with empathy and affection. Advertisement Having hounded the reclusive Crumb for years to get his approval and cooperation, Nadel, a curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, was amply rewarded with unlimited access to Crumb's personal archive: thousands of pages of diaries, letters, and sketchbooks, as well as a timeline of Crumb's life from 1943 to 2005. This material, as well as Nadel's interviews with Crumb, gives his biography the kind of granular texture and thematic heft that Crumb's life and work deserves. CRUMB: A CARTOONIST'S LIFE By Dan Nadel Scribner, 480 pages, $35 Marc Weingarten is the author of ' .'
