(I’m sure I spotted a Keep on Truckin’ mudflap or two during any of the interminable family car rides of my youth, but we won’t count that.) Crumb has the distinction - along with Schindler’s List - of being a film from which I quite literally could not tear myself away. Like many people not of the counter-culture generation, or who grew up in the sticks and wouldn’t know an underground comic if it bit them on the ass, my first sampling of his world came in the unspeakably compelling 1994 documentary Crumb. There’s a vicious yin and yang to the work. As you sit in awe of a deft hand that could turn cross-hatching, because of the fetishistic intensity with which it was wrought, into something more than just the illusion of shadow, you stifle the gag reflex when confronted with sexual perversion that looks like what would happen if Escher were a sex fiend and had a thing for the funny pages. To know his work is to at once marvel at the all-encompassing expression of his talent, while at the same time lamenting his art’s degradation of women and minorities - hell, anything with a pulse. Crumb. There has never been an artist in the comic book industry - under or above ground - who has had such a capacity to simultaneously inspire and repulse. buy some asparagus.' True reputation, the stories are sometimes sexually graphic (especially in the scenes with Devil Girl) and a bit on the violent side. then you should call somebody up (not me).

He is not particularly wise or old geezer who gives advice such as 'When you arise in the morning, you should do last a simple melody (of your own choice). 'Calling him a 'mystic madcap' gives the crass, less-than-compassionate charlatan the benefit of the doubt. The collection constitutes a sheer delight for those who have followed the completely accessible to nonaficionados-at least those undaunted by the raunchiness that is' An ever-serene-but-horny philosopher-for-hire, dispensing enlightenment to an undeserving world-is he a wise, grizzled mystic or a cynical charlatan? A teller of timeless truths or a sixties anachronism? Wherever he appears, so do his most loyal acolyte, Flakey Foont, and his obsession, the lusty Devil Girl. The bearded, robed, curmudgeonly 1967 debut. Libraries wanting some representative Crumb in the wake of the movie may be better served by this single volume featuring one of his most famous creations than by the multivolume reprinting of all of his work that Fantagraphics has about half-completed.

'Seminal underground comics artist Crumb has lately gained wider recognition, thanks to an acclaimed documentary about him.

The Book of Mr. Natural by Robert Crumb