Robert Crumb: The Weirdo

The 1960s. A time of change. A time when concepts like counter-culture and the underground were starting to come into their own.

At the forefront of this change was an artist. A weirdo. Robert Crumb had never been mundane. Never normal. But he embraced that; embraced his eccentricities, his skill, and his work, and in doing so, he made the realm of comics anew.

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Robert Crumb was on born on August 30th, 1943, in Philadelphia. Home life was difficult for the young cartoonist; his parent’s marriage was unhappy and filled with arguments, his mother abused pharmaceutical drugs, and his brothers suffered from mental illness.

Outside of the home, things weren’t much better. Oh, yes. I knew I was weird by the time I was four. I knew I wasn’t like other boys. I knew I was more fearful,” he said. “I felt so painfully isolated that I vowed I would get revenge on the world by becoming a famous cartoonist.”

Indeed, it was creating stories and drawings that delighted Crumb and his brothers most. Inspired by the likes of Walt Kelly and Harvey Kurtzman, they honed their art, with oldest brother Charles ensuring Crumb was keep motivated through constant critical feedback.

When Crumb turned 15, he and his brothers created three issues of a satirical comic called Foo. They sold it door-to-door, but with little success. Disappointed, Crumb turned his attention to music, particularly jazz and blues. The music would remain an interest and professional hobby of sorts in the years to come, but it wasn’t long before he was pulled back into the realm of illustration.

In 1962, Crumb left home with $40 in his pocket and went searching for work. He found it in Cleveland, where he drew novelty greeting cards for American Greetings. He adopted a unique style, one that could only be described as cute, though his sketches were often dismissed as “too grotesque” by his boss.

Over the next three years, everything changed. Crumb married, and began spending time with a group of young bohemians who helped him realised how dissatisfied he was with creating greeting cards. He attempted to sell his comics to publication houses to little success, until his childhood hero Kurtzman printed some of Crumb’s work in satire magazine Help!. Crumb moved to New York to work for the publication, but it shut down soon after.

Crumb and wife Dana Morgan traveled to Europe soon after, floating around in destitution. Crumb continued to produce work for American Greetings, and occasionally for Kurtzman, but they were still forced to steal food in order to survive.

It all culminated in 1965, when to escape his situation, Crumb began to experiment with LSD, which was a legal drug at the time. One particularly bad trip late in the year left him in a haze that lasted for six months. Crumb left his family, and in this drug-induced state began working on some of his most popular characters: the pseudo-prophetic Mr. Natural, the debaucherous Snoid and, of course, the egotistical scam artist Fritz the Cat.

From these, the underground comic scene was born. “When people say ‘What are underground comics?’ I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved… we didn’t have anyone standing over us.”

By 1967, Crumb was highly in-demand, and was free to create as he liked. So it was that Don Donahue invited him to create a new comic. Zap Comix first came out in 1968, but few retailers would stock it. As a result, Crumb sold the first run of the book himself, carrying them around in a baby carriage.

The next year, cartoonist S. Clay Wilson inspired Crumb to use his work as a medium for uncensored self-expression. His work would become increasingly psychadelic and sexually explicit from thereon, whilst maintaining a sense of identity and strength that readers adored.

This would continue through the decades, with Crumb experimenting in different fields throughout. Since the 1970s, he’s headlined the band R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, performing old-time tunes across the United States. He also founded French-style band Les Primitifs du Futur, and recorded original performances for two albums, That’s What I Call Sweet Music, and Hot Women: Women Singers from the Torrid Regions.

The adaptation of Fritz the Cat to film in 1972 was the first ever X rated animation in the US. It grossed $90 million worldwide on an $850,000 budget, highlighting just how effectively Crumb’s work had created a community of outsiders just like him.

Robert Crumb’s work has been called offensive, ignorant, and crude…and these are some of the nicer terms thrown around by his critics. However, there’s no denying the impact he’s made on the independent comic scene, and the many authors, illustrators, and distributors that have benefited as a result. Quite the accomplishment, for a weirdo.