Best Known As: Creator of Mr. Natural and "Keep on Truckin'"
Name at birth: Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb is a leading figure in the history of American underground comics. As a child he spent hours creating elaborate storybooks with his brothers (a group effort reminiscent of the childhood creations of Emily Brontë and her sisters). In 1968 he began publishing Zap Comics, the series often credited with spurring the underground comics movement in America. Crumb's cartoon "Keep on Truckin'" -- an image of big-footed hipsters in a cheerful strut -- became a popular counterculture symbol, popping up on posters and T-shirts (most produced without Crumb's consent). He also drew a famous album cover for the band Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin). Other Crumb characters include Flakey Foont, Angelfood McSpade, Devil Girl, and the irascible, bearded Mr. Natural. Fritz the Cat, Crumb's comically randy feline, was the star of an X-rated 1972 movie by animator Ralph Bakshi. Crumb, a 1995 documentary by Crumb's friend Terry Zwigoff, brought the cartoonist renewed notoriety and made him a mainstream figure.
Crumb's second wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, is also a cartoonist... Like Woody Allen, Crumb is a musician on the side: he performs old-time jazz in a band called the Cheap Suit Serenaders... Among cartoonists inspired by Crumb is the popular artist Dan Clowes.
Representative Albums: "Singin' in the Bathtub," "That's What I Call Sweet Music," "Presents Hot Women Singers"
Biography
A zany sense of humor fused by a psychedelicized vision made Robert Crumb one of the most influential comic artists of the 1960s. His characters, including Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Flakey Froont, and the Vulture Demoness, and his underground comic books, such as Zap Comix, combined elements of social commentary and the British tradition of caricature. His illustrations often graced the covers of record albums, including one for Big Brother & the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills. Comics, however, represented only one side of Crumb's eccentric persona. A clawhammer-style banjo player and vocalist, Crumb led his band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders, through three albums of tongue-in-jowl, early 20th century string band and jazz ditties.
The third of five children born to career Marine Charles Crumb, Sr. and his wife, Crumb started drawing comics at the age of three. As a child, he spent hours drawing comics and was heavily inspired by Mad magazine. In 1962, Crumb accepted a job drawing greeting cards for American Greetings Corporation in Cleveland. Two years later, he married Dana Morgan and drew the earliest version of Fritz the Cat for Cavalier magazine. A turning point came in 1965 when Crumb experienced his first trip on LSD. Inspired by the experience, he shifted his artwork to reflect the growing hippie culture. After living temporarily in New York and Chicago, he moved to San Francisco in 1967 and launched Zap Comix. With its pro-drug, pro-free love emphasis, the illustrated magazine was highly provocative. A strip in Zap #4, "Joe Blow," caused several comic stores to be busted on obscenity charges in 1969. The following year, movie producer Ralph Bakshi acquired the rights to Fritz the Cat and produced the first X-rated feature-length film.
Together with accordion player Robert E. Armstrong and mandolinist Allan Dodge, Crumb formed the first version of the Cheap Suit Serenaders in 1972. Over the next six years, the band recorded three albums: The Cheap Suit Serenaders!, Number 2 (reissued as Chasin' Rainbows in 1993), and Number 3 (reissued as Singin' in the Bathtub the same year). The band's third album featured folklorist and guitarist Bob Brozeman. In 1977, Crumb and the Cheap Suit Serenaders toured the United States with Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, and Iris Dement.
Although he continued to be active as a comic illustrator, Crumb suffered several setbacks in the late '70s. His lowest point came in 1977; in addition to having a judge rule that he had no right to the copyright for the slogan "Keep on Truckin'," Crumb was hit with an IRS bill for 30,000 dollars in back taxes and his marriage ended in divorce.
Crumb's bad luck began to reverse the next year when he married a cartoonist, Alice Kominsky, and moved temporarily to Winters, CA, a suburb outside of Sacramento. In 1990, Crumb's artwork was honored with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Three years later, he traded six notebooks for a house in the south of France, where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Crumb, a 1995 documentary about Robert Crumb, his work, and his family, received a Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was one of the most acclaimed films of that year. ~ Craig Harris, All Music Guide
(born Aug. 20, 1943, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.) U.S. cartoonist. He had no formal art training but was obsessed with drawing as a child. In 1960 he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, to work for a greeting-card company. In 1967 he moved to San Francisco and became a prominent member of the hippie counterculture and a founder of the genre of underground "comix," satirical magazines that poked fun at U.S. culture. His often obscene strips with their various obsessive themes, starring such characters as Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, had great influence and are still regarded as classics of the genre.
Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943), often credited simply as R. Crumb, is an American artist and illustrator recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream. He currently lives in Southern France with his wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb.
Robert Crumb was born on August 30, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the mid 1960's, Crumb lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he designed greeting cards for the American Greetings corporation, and met a group of young bohemians including Buzzy Linhart, Liz Johnston, and others. Liz introduced him to the woman who would become his first wife, Dana Morgan. He befriended another Cleveland resident, Harvey Pekar, and eventually contributed artwork to early issues of American Splendor. 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.
At the end of Terry Zwigoff's 1994 documentary Crumb, Crumb complains about just having been called once again about the movie adaption rights to Mr. Natural.
Influences and critical response
A peer in the underground comics field, Victor Moscoso, commented about his first impression of Crumb's work, in the mid-1960s, before meeting Crumb in person: "I couldn't tell if it was an old man drawing young, or a young man drawing old."[1]
Crumb has also cited his extensive LSD use as the factor that led him to develop his unique style. [2][3]
Crumb's comic artwork has elicited sharply divided commentary from readers and critics.
In the early 1980s, Crumb collaborated with writer Charles Bukowski on a series of comic books, featuing Crumb's art and Bukowski's writing.
Among his less sexuality- and satire-oriented, comparably highbrow works since the 1990s, especially Crumb's collaboration with David Zane Mairowitz, the illustrated, part-comic biography and bibliography Introducing Kafka, aka Kafka for beginners, is well-known and favorably received, which, due to its popularity, was republished as R. Crumb's Kafka.
Musical tastes
Crumb has frequently drawn comics about his musical interests in blues, country, bluegrass, cajun, jazz, big band and swing music from the 1920's and 30's, and they also heavily influenced the soundtrack choices for his band mate Zwigoff's 1994 Crumb documentary.
Additional information
At least three TV or theatrical documentaries are dedicated to Crumb, not counting numerous reports running 10 minutes and below:
Prior to the 1972 release of Fritz the Cat, Austrian journalist Georg Stefan Troller (see German Wikipedia) interviewed Crumb for a 30-min documentary entitled Comics und Katerideen (roughly, "A Cool Cat's Calamity Comix") on Crumb's life and art, as an episode of Troller's Personenbeschreibung ("Personality account") documentary format broadcast on German ZDF. The documentary also included a making-of the upcoming Fritz movie with production background interviews of Ralph Bakshi. In this documentary, Troller called Crumb's work "the epitome of contemporary white North America's popular art". As part of Troller's Personenbeschreibung series, it can still be seen on rotation on ZDF-owned digital specialty channelZDFdokukanal dedicated to highclass documentaries.
In 2006, Crumb brought legal action against Amazon.com after the website used a version of his widely recognizable "Keep On Truckin'" character. The case is expected to be settled out of court.
Also 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 in France. However, it was not Robert Crumb who contacted the Howard Stern Show. Crumb is not a listener to the show and claims that he has never even heard it. The actual caller was his brother-in-law Alex, who moved to France from New York and deals in R. Crumb prints.
An ongoing work which Crumb intends to publish as Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis is an adaptation of the Bible's first chapter.[5][6]R. Crumb's Sex Obsessions, a collection of his most personally revealing sexually-oriented drawings and comic strips, was released from TASCHEN publishing in November 2007.
In 2008 Crumb did a new LP/CD cover for Eden and John's East River String Band, a New York based duo that play country blues from the 1920s & '30's, titled "Some Cold Rainy Day."
"Devil Girl Choco-Bars"
In 1994, Kitchen Sink Konfections, a branch of comic book publisher Kitchen Sink Enterprises, used his character Devil Girl to promote chocolate candy bars named "Devil Girl Choco-Bar." Promotion for the candy bar was most unusual, and exhibited a rare form of candor in advertising.
The candy bar's slogan was "It's BAD For You!".
The wrapper's artwork was printed onto a promotional lapel button: Devil Girl giving a knowing wink and a voluptuous smile to the reader while saying "Eat me!".
The back of the wrapper read "7 Evils in One! 1-Delicious Taste; 2-Quick, cheap buzz; 3-Bad for your health; 4-Leads to hard drugs; 5-Waste of money; 6-Made by sleazy businessmen; 7-Exploits women".
The bottom of the display box featured the following text written by Crumb himself:
“
A word to wholesalers and retailers of the Devil Girl Choco-Bar. It may seem to you the depths of marketing ignorance to state in bold letters on the package 'IT'S BAD FOR YOU', but think about it... this is a brilliant strategy in consideration of kids today; a stupid, know-nothing generation of brain-dead morons who want nothing more than to be 'BAD'. We're certain this morally bankrupt horde of 'slackers' will eat up this low-grade product as fast as you can place it on your candy counter. The sharp, up-to-date business operator will not fail to perceive the beauty - and reap the profits - in the hook 'IT'S BAD FOR YOU!'[7]
”
Kitchen Sink folded in 1998 and the candy bars, of which nearly a half-million were reportedly sold, are no longer in production, but the wrappers, display boxes and advertising signs are now sought-after collectibles. A second product, "Devil Girl Hot Kisses," a hot cinnamon flavored candy, was also produced. It is back in production by Cheesy Products. [8][9][10]
Awards and honors
Crumb has received several accolades for his work, including a nomination for the Harvey Special Award for Humor in 1990.
