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Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life
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79/99
Critics' Rating Index
82/99
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96/99
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70/99
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About This Book
The first biography of Robert Crumb—one of the most profound and influential artists of the 20th century—whose iconic, radically frank and meticulously rendered cartoons and comics inspired generations of readers and cartoonists, from Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel.Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic, as iconic as Walt Disney or Charles Schulz. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, a curator and writer specializing in comics and art, shares how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact. More than just a biography of an iconic cartoonist, Crumb is the story of a richly complex life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of post-war America. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure, Crumb spans the pressures of 1950s suburban America and Crumb's highly dysfunctional early family life; the history of comics and graphic satire; 20th century popular music; the world of the counterculture; the birth of underground comic books in 1960s San Francisco with Crumb's Zap Comix; the economic challenges and dissolution of the hippie dream; and the path Robert Crumb blazed through it all. Written with Crumb's cooperation, this fascinating, rollicking book takes in seven decades of Crumb's iconic works, including Fritz the Cat, Weirdo, and his final book-length comic of The Book of Genesis; capturing, in the process, the essence of an extraordinary artist and his times.
Reviews
"A definitive and ideal biography — pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I've ever read."
"Nadel capably lays it all out for us to see, creating a nuanced picture of an influential figure, whose work shaped the landscape of comics to come."
"Nadel deftly contextualizes the artist's salacious output within a finely rendered record of the artist's private life and within an electric chronicle of the underground comics wave."
"A loving biography ..."
"Nadel's gripping and essential book makes good on this claim; his biography is the story of how one highly flawed and preternaturally gifted man augured a revolution in comic book storytelling with his discomfiting, sexually frank, intensely personal oeuvre ..."
"You may want to dismiss Crumb as a morsel of some strange loaf, fallen to the ground to be swept away."
"A supremely well-told story and, though an authorized bio, not entirely uncritical of the man."
"Nadel's book doubles as an incisive history of the business of underground comics."
"The author's response to the unhinged quality of Mr."
"It's a revealing portrait of a little understood American artist."
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