R. Crumb created Zap Comix and such characters as Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat. His comics were a staple of the 1960s counterculture, and came out of his nightmares, fantasies and fetishes. There was a time when he wanted to censor that part of himself — but then he took LSD. He told Terry Gross about that experience in a 2005 interview. We'll also hear from his wife Aline Kominsky Crumb, who is also a cartoonist. Film critic Justin Chang reviews the new Marvel film, Thunderbolts*.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bean Cooley. R. Crum is the most renowned of the underground cartoonists who emerged in the 1960s. He created Zap Comics, featuring an entire menagerie of his characters, such as Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, the Snoid, and Devil Girl. His comics were eccentric, and so was he, as a 1994 documentary by Terry Zweigoff makes clear.
Crum wrote a memoir in 2005 titled The R. Crum Handbook. Reviewing the book then in Newsweek, Malcolm Jones wrote, "...Crum has made strange and hilarious art out of his own neuroses. Insecure and paranoid, obsessed with sex in general and women with big behinds in particular, Crum has never been afraid to draw and write about his own foibles and fantasies.
His work is like an id unleashed with no thought for propriety." R. Crumb's work has been controversial, considered racist and misogynistic. Now there's a new biography of Crumb by fellow cartoonist and founder of the Pictureboxx comics, Dan Nadel. Crumb is now 81 years old and lives in France, where he's resided for decades. We're going to listen back to Terry's 2005 interview with R. Crumb.
Arkrum, welcome to Fresh Air. Do you think your early comics, some of the ones that anthologized in your new book, do you think they look different out of the time period than they did to you in their time?
Different from this perspective of nowadays?
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