CRUMB A CARTOONIST'S LIFE

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. 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. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure. 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. 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. 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. "Nadel’s book floats Crumb on the rapids of his times...Crumb gives us the reprobate who drew 'Life Among the Constipated' and 'The Family That Lays Together Stays Together,' as well as the domestic who enjoyed a long, fulfilling marriage to Aline Kominsky-Crumb, his wife and frequent collaborator, who died in 2022." — Harper's Magazine "This is a great biography that explores the complexity of one of the world’s greatest cartoonists ever." —Art Spiegelman, author of Maus “[An] alternately rollicking and perceptive biography…. Frank and incisive, [Crumb is] a revealing portrait of a little understood American artist.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)