9780930193799
The Complete Crumb Comics Volume 4: "Mr Sixties!" share button
R Crumb
Format Paperback
Dimensions 8.40 (w) x 10.90 (h) x 0.50 (d)
Pages 144
Publisher Fantagraphics Books
Publication Date December 1988
ISBN 9780930193799
Book ISBN 10 0930193792
About Book

A classic volume of the definitive Complete Crumb library, back in print after years of unavailability!

The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 4: Mr. Sixties! continues the multi-volume series comprising the complete works of the legendary cartoonist R. Crumb, one of America's most original, trenchant, and uncompromising satirists. The series includes the earliest, heretofore unpublished comic strips, as well as his sketchbooks, underground comix, dramatic and autobiographical strips, and his classic cartoon creations Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural. In this volume: Zap #0 & #1 ("Keep On Truckin'!"), Crumb's work from the East Village Other and Yarrowstalks, plus much rare art, some of Crumb's long-lost American Greetings cards from the '60s, and more.

"I figured it out somehow — the way to put the stoned experience into a series of cartoon panels. I began to submit LSD-inspired strips to underground papers... not for pay... never gave it a thought... but they loved them. These 1967 strips of mine contained the hopeful spirit of the times, drawn in a more lovable 'bigfoot' style. The stuff caught on. They wanted more. Suddenly I was able to churn it out... late that summer one of the underground paper publishers asked me to do an entire issue of his paper Yarrowstalks (corny hippy spiritual stuff — 'yarrowstalks' are what they used to throw the 'I Ching'). This went over so well that he suggested I draw comic books and he would publish them. This was a thrilling idea to me — a dream come true..."—R. Crumb, from his introduction to this volume

Reviews

U Press

“One of the most significant, controversial, and technically gifted cartoonists of the second half of the twentieth century.”

San Francisco Gate

“His influence shines brightly through the works of fans, such as in Art Spiegelman's Maus as well as in that of contemporaries such as Harvey Pekar's American Splendor.”

The New York Times

“Adraftsman of transcendent skill, inventiveness and versatility, a fearlessly irreverent, excruciatingly funny satirist of all things modern and progressively high-minded, and an intrepid explorer of his own twisted psyche.”

Publishers Weekly

This important addition to the ongoing project to publish the complete works of America's best-known ``underground'' cartoonist collects comics from the early 1970s. It includes classic Crumb characters like Flakey Foont, Mr. Natural, ProJunior, the Snoid and Angel McFood. Crumb's work is characterized by all-out sex, and his various obsessions are on graphic display. The women are solidly built, their shoes lovingly rendered and his designs on them outrageously explicit. In one cartoon, a suburban father on vacation gives up civilization after he's captured by a hairy female mountain monster. In another, Crumb's sexual fantasies dominate a dreamily eroticized, torpid afternoon. One of the best stories presents the notorious cat Fritz as a burned-out sleazeball exploiting his movie-star fame. Fed up with his insults, Andrea Ostrich stabs him in the back of the head with an ice pick, ending his sordid little cartoon life. Many of the pieces included here set the stage for the later, very funny autobiographical works influenced by his wife, cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb. (June)