![]() The documentation is there for all to see.Ĭrumb had a miserable childhood. There have been a couple of documentaries about Crumb, so I’m not speculating here. Remember “Keep on Truckin’!”?–yep, Crumb. But Crumb has been influential in his own way. It was just too disturbing and subversive. Frazetta gave us the popular image of Conan the Barbarian and Moebius gave us an aesthetic that informed everything from Blade Runner to The Empire Strikes Back.Ĭrumb’s stuff you just couldn’t put on the shelves next to Superman, or even Creepy or Heavy Metal. (Again, if you are tempted to google, prepare for mature themes.) These artists have been incredibly influential. (Heavy Metal was yet another layer down, but still not underground.) The artists I enjoyed were Al Williamson, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, and Moebius. What I enjoyed was the next layer down, the stuff you found in Creepy and Eerie magazines, Mad and Cracked, and even Heavy Metal. The top layer, the one most people know about, is the superhero stuff–Marvel and DC–Spiderman and Batman–that stuff. It struck me as perverse, but strangely powerful. Back in the 70s, when I was really into the comics scene and I was only a teen, I had heard of him and had seen some of his stuff. Underground was never that far underground. (I think he’s surprised by that.)īeginning with his work, Crumb is one of the fathers of underground comics. He was definitely an outsider back when he began his career, but things have moved and he’s on the inside now. Crumb is on the edge of things, maybe beyond the edge. Now, we’re not all as bad as Robert Crumb. If you did the same, you might be accused of being a pornographer. He can’t help giving us, unwilling as we may be, the full and uncensored contents of his mind at any given moment. What Robert Crumb is is a “confessionalist”–something in the spirit of Augustine or Rousseau. Some people have accused him of being a pornographer. If you do, prepare yourself for a cascade of disturbing images. Warning: Robert Crumb is a dangerous object of study. What I’m looking for when I read your book is whether or not you’ve seen something in the story that I’ve missed. I even have a working knowledge of Hebrew. I knew the story already, I’ve read it many times. So, Bob Crumb, there’s no getting away from the fact that this book has a lot of you in it. Cross hatching and stippling owe something to Crumb. (Some things get added, even unintentionally.) That’s why these works come with marginal notes. As they say, things gets lost in the process. You must render the words of an ancient tongue into a modern one.Words are subtle things, with shades of meaning. Even a literary translation striving for accuracy is in some sense an interpretation. In many respects the book is more faithful to the biblical book than other illustrated versions produced by evangelical publishers.īut it is an interpretation. Yes, Crumb does exercise a great deal of self-control, and I appreciate the effort. He insists that he has given us Genesis straight up, no snide or cynical treatment, he’s just illustrating the text. (I prefer Tolkien’s.) And even when the subject is the book of Genesis, when we pick up his treatment, we enter into Crumb’s mind in some sense.Ĭrumb does contest this point right in his introduction. When you read Metamorphosis, or Smith of Wooton Major, you enter the mind of either Kafka or Tolkien respectively. ![]() There is no escape for the artist, wherever he turns, he turns up. Even realism requires a subject, and of all the things you could write about or draw, you must choose something that interests you, that speaks to you for some reason. All art, I am convinced, is autobiographical. Retailing | The closing of venerable Chicago comics shop Variety Comics is attracting a lot of ink: This article, by Kristen Thometz, is a real in-depth look at the history of the store, including interviews with co-owner Victor Olivarez and longtime customers.Now let’s go big and forget about Crumb and me for a moment. Adding more to that just doesn’t make sense." My store has plenty of customers who enjoy a good cover and variants move moderately, but the flood of Marvel #1s, DC themed covers and Image A, B, C, D options already has me doing bizarre math in my head to figure out the pricing. I understand the appeal of connecting LCSD to Small Business Saturday but after placing my orders for November I’m already freaked out about all the variants I’ve got coming. And then there's this: "Continuing in that vein, I cannot think of worse timing for an event that’s main 'grabber' is variants. Retailing | Menachem Luchins, who interviewed Joe Field last week about Local Comic Shop Day, is back with a column explaining why he won't be participating: The limited runs are too limited, and the variant covers aren't different enough.
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