Check out some good stuff on R. Crumb and his new R. Crumb Handbook at Newsweek online.
Here’s an excerpt:
For the past four decades, since his first successes in the countercultural underground “comix” of the 1960s, Crumb 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, mad for music recorded before World War II, Crumb has never been afraid to draw and write about his own foibles and fantasies. What’s noteworthy about his efforts is that he manages to draw his viewers in, he makes us keep turning pages. He shocks us, but he makes us laugh. He repels us, but he makes us realize that we’re just as much a part of this sleazy, baggy-pants world he’s drawing as he is. And if he reads this, he’ll probably throw up.
I’m gonna be honest here, I don’t know a lot about Crumb and his work. I’m also reading a lot of Comic Art lately and I’m finding myself overwhelmed with how much I don’t know about a lot of artists.
Cartoons have such a wide range of content and form that I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever have the time to know as much as I’d like/need.
(BTW… Beware today…)