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- [00:01]
R. Crumb
This message comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep.
- [00:05]
David Bianculli
More money in your wallet with no.
- [00:06]
R. Crumb
Fees or minimums on checking accounts. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.combank for details.
- [00:13]
Terry Gross
Capital One NA Member FDIC A quick note before we start today's show. You may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to npr. This is one in a series of threats to media organizations across the country. The executive order is an affront to the First Amendment rights of public media organizations. NPR remains committed to serving the public, covering news and popular culture without a paywall. This is a pivotal moment. It's more important than ever that everyone who can contribute comes together to pitch in as much as they are able. Please visit, Donate to Give Now. And if you already support us via NPR or other means, thank you. Your support means so much to us. Now more than ever, you help make NPR shows freely available to everyone. We're proud to do this work for you and with you. Okay. Let's start the show.
- [01:14]
David Bianculli
This is FRESH air. I'm David Biancooli. R. Crum is the most renowned of the underground cartoonists who emerged in the 1960s. He created Zap comics featuring an entire menagerie of his characters, such as Fritz the cat, Mr. Natural the snoid and Devil Girl. His comics were eccentric, and so was he, as a 1994 documentary by Terry Zwigoff makes clear. Crum wrote a memoir in 2005 titled the R. Crumb Handbook. Reviewing the book then in Newsweek, Malcolm Jones wrote, quote, 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, Crumb has never been afraid to draw and write about his own foibles and fantasies. His work is like an ID unleashed with no thought for propriety. R. Crumb's work has been controversial, considered racist and misogynistic. Now there's a new biography of Crumb by fellow cartoonist and founder of the Picturebox Comics, Dan Nadell. Crumb is now 81 years old and lives in France, where he's resided for decades. We're going to listen Back to Terry's 2005 interview with R. Crum.
- [02:32]
Terry Gross
R. Crum, welcome to FRESH AIR. Do you think your early comics, some of the ones anthologized in your new book, do you think they look different out of the time period than they did to you in their time?
- [02:45]
R. Crumb
Different from this perspective of nowadays?
- [02:47]
Terry Gross
Yeah.
- [02:49]
R. Crumb
Well, they're kind of timeless, you know, because they looked out of time then when I did them in the beginning, in 66, 67, 68, people looked at them and said, hey, these look like old comics from the 30s, you know. And some people when they met me were surprised that I was a young man at the time. They thought I'd be some old guy. So they already looked out of time then. And so they just kind of still look like their own thing. And I think a lot of young people that pick them up when they first see them don't realize how old they are. They just don't seem to be part of the 60s as it's known stylistically to such stuff as Peter Max or the psychedelic posters. And all that stuff doesn't fit in with that. It's kind of its own thing.
- [03:35]
Terry Gross
In your new book, the Arkham Handbook, you describe how you started some aspects of your style after a bad LSD trip. What were the images that you saw when you were tripping that made their way into your cartoons?
- [03:47]
R. Crumb
Whoa, that's a tough question. What were the images on lsd? What did they look like? Ooh, well, I don't know. For some reason, I don't know why or how it happened. I just, on this one really strange LSD trip that I took, that there was something wrong with the drug. I got trapped in some level of the mental collective consciousness that was very tawdry and carnival, like in a kind of a cheap, gaudy way. It just stuck there. I was stuck there for months until I actually. What cleared it up was taking another dose of lsd, made it go away.
- [04:24]
Terry Gross
How do you think your drawing style was actually changed by this hallucinogenic imagery?
- [04:31]
R. Crumb
Changed vastly. Well, before that I was trying to be, in order to get work as an artist and a cartoonist. I was trying to be contemporary and with it. And I looked at the work of people like Jules Feifer and the LSD just blew all that away completely. And I was always drawing in my sketchbooks all the time. And I was just drawing these images that were coming from my brain all the time in that two months, uncontrollably just completely changed my whole approach to what I was doing to the cartooning and took on this older 30s, 40s kind of. And I started looking more closely at these kind of brand X third rate comics from the 40s that had, that were drawn in that style by these artists that never achieved renown even among comics people. They were a third rate artist, but they had this working class proletarian Funky, crude, vulgar. These comics were very vulgar, violent.
- [05:33]
Terry Gross
So what are some of the characters that you started drawing in this period after taking the lsd?
- [05:40]
R. Crumb
In that two month period when my ego was completely like fragmented by that bad LSD, I drew Mr. Natural, Flaky Funtime, Angel Food McSpade, the Snoids, the Vulture goddesses, Vulture demonesses, whatever you want to call them. I know lots of characters. The old poo pooparoo.
- [06:01]
Terry Gross
Mr. Natural is this kind of like guru kind of figure, really long beard. Was he based on anybody who you knew or a type that you knew?
- [06:13]
R. Crumb
It was actually more or less a combination of the mysticism of LSD experiences combined with his old cartoon stereotype of the little old man with the long beard. There's several of these kind of like standard cartoon figure in old comic strips going back to the 20s, even earlier. Probably that little old funny little old man with the long beard. I didn't vent anything out of whole cloth. It all has antecedents in the clothes, popular culture, all of it.
- [06:46]
Terry Gross
And angel food McSpade. I mean, this is an African American woman who is drawn like some of the black people in your early comics look like the African cannibals in the Betty Boop cartoon where they have her in a big pot.
- [06:59]
R. Crumb
Right, Exactly.
- [07:00]
Terry Gross
Yeah, precisely. Why did you draw them that way?
- [07:05]
R. Crumb
Because they were there and they were part of the whole experience of. Of all that tawdry low class imagery that was boiling in my brain. That was part of it is that jungle bunny image that was there. It was part of it. It wasn't there before, but it boiled up. So it was obviously in the collective subconscious and I just didn't have any control. I just had to draw what was there. And I don't think Angel Fluid McSpade can really legitimately be called an African American woman. It's a cartoon stereotype. Crazy image of something that like in the imaginations of people. It's not, you know, it's not actually a representation of an African American woman.
- [07:49]
Terry Gross
Did you worry that people would misconstrue it? Because certainly a lot of people didn't see it that way. They just saw it as a crude stereotype.
- [07:56]
R. Crumb
Yes, they did. A lot of people just took it at face value and, you know, I can't let that stop me. Like it has to come out. What's in there had to come out, had it. I really couldn't stop it. And if I worried about how it was going to be construed too much, obviously I had some concern of that, but I don't want to be too hurtful. But at the same time, I had to put on the paper, I had this direct line from the brain stem to the paper. There was no superego, the socialized. You know, all that was just swept away.
- [08:36]
Terry Gross
And it was swept away in your sexual imagery too.
- [08:40]
R. Crumb
You betcha. Yeah. So, you know, I have no secrets. I'm probably one of the few human beings on the planet that I have no secrets. Everybody who looks at my comics knows exactly what I'm about. It's all there.
- [08:52]
Terry Gross
Everybody knows what your sexual fetishes are and everything.
- [08:55]
R. Crumb
The darkest side of me, it's all on paper. So that allows me to be a pretty nice guy in real life, you know, it's all out there on paper, foisted on the public.
- [09:04]
Terry Gross
Was there ever a part of you that wanted to censor that part of your mind? Or at least keep it private and hidden, which is what most people do with those, of course.
- [09:13]
R. Crumb
Yeah, sure. I'm a normal person in that way. Before those LSD experiences and I just decided to let that all out. I used to make those drawings and tear them up and flush them down the toilet. Oh, this is terrible. What's wrong with you? Why? You know, and also the. As I started doing it for publication, then the floodgates opened. The crack just got wider and wider until I just let it all out. Let it all out there. All the dark side of myself. It's all out there. I have less of that impulse now. I think I got it out of my system. A lot of it.
- [09:49]
Terry Gross
What was it like for you to go from loner, eccentric weirdo to in demand, popular person who everybody wants to publish and buy and.
- [10:00]
R. Crumb
No, right. Mr. Cool Guy. It was very disorienting because I was quite young. I was only like 25, 26 when all that happened originally. And it was both thrilling to my ego. I had big ego, but also very confusing and scary even. Cause suddenly this whole element of people that I'd never ever had any dealings with before were suddenly there, interested in me, wanting to hustle, me wanting this and that. Everything signed me to a five year exclus exclusive contract. Da, da, da da. You know, these people are trying to cash in on the hippie culture and the youth movement and make money off it, you know. And I was so young, I didn't know how to deal with all that. But at the same time, it made me more attractive to women. So that part of it was nice. Before that, I was like this, you know, Nerd that at a party, no woman even noticed. I was just part of the shrubbery or something. But after that, oh, there's our crumb. You know, suddenly they were interested, and that was nice.
- [10:58]
Terry Gross
Well, you were also, like. Suddenly you were an important part of, like, the hippie counterculture. Did you identify with that culture? Did you feel like a part of it?
- [11:08]
R. Crumb
Well, I guess the elements of that culture, like the music and the stylistic stuff. No, I didn't identify with that at all. I identify with some of the values, like the political values, some of, like, the Eastern religious stuff that people were into. I like. I was attracted to that. And, you know, the drug thing, the psychedelic drugs, I was into that part of it. And I also got caught up in the general optimism and hopefulness and idealism of that time, the late 60s, you know. But stylistically, I was always alienated from it. I hated the music.
- [11:42]
Terry Gross
You write that puppet and marionette kid shows made a deep impression on you. You say the adult assumption was that these puppets were cute and lovable, but they were actually grotesque. And the shows tried to tell kids that life could be fun and exciting, but the unconscious message was that adult world is strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister. What was it about, like, Howdy Doody or the other Kufran and Ollie that you found, like, grotesque and sinister?
- [12:08]
R. Crumb
Oh, especially Howdy Doody. Howdy Doody was really grotesque. Hi, kids. And Clarabelle the Clown and all. It was all very, very sinister and scary. And Buffalo Bob Smith, did you ever see that stuff?
- [12:24]
Terry Gross
You bet. I sure did.
- [12:26]
R. Crumb
My wife Aileen, actually, she grew up in New York. She actually got to be in the Peanut Gallery when she was a kid on the Buffalo Bob show and the Howdy Doody Show. And she said it was a defining moment in her life. She was like eight years old or something. Seven years old. And she saw the adult world behind the scenes of the Howdy Doody show and how these people are all kind of cranky and stressed. And she said the seat of the. Of the pants of Bob Smith's outfit was kind of frayed. And, you know, he was, like, real mean to the kids when it was off camera.
- [13:02]
Terry Gross
Cuckoo.
- [13:03]
R. Crumb
Farinale was cuter, though. Cucl Farinelli. That was a little bit. That was better than Howdy Doody that way. It was more lovable. You know, Kukla was kind of a cute little lovable guy, little hand puppet. And Fran, the woman, she was, like, talking to the puppets. So it was a little more reassuring. It was cuter.
- [13:20]
Terry Gross
Did the frozen Smile on Howdy Doody's face strike you as deranged?
- [13:23]
R. Crumb
It was just creepy and weird. You just, what the heck? What does that have to do with anything? He didn't look like a kid. He was supposed to be like a kid in a cowboy suit. But he didn't come off, though. He just came off as a creature, like from Mars. There's some underlying thing you can't quite define that was just disturbing and sinister and scary about it all, all that stuff. Okay.
- [13:45]
Terry Gross
The things that you say about these puppet shows, that they show that the adult world is strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister. That's a kind of description of what your cartoons became like. Strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister. It's like that's what you set out to do.
- [13:59]
R. Crumb
Well, yeah, but I guess not for children, of course.
- [14:02]
Terry Gross
I mean, it wasn't for children.
- [14:03]
R. Crumb
Yeah. What I was trying to do was to uncover that sinister quality, the dark, sinister, strange, disturbing part of things, and not hide it, not keep it hidden. I started doing that in 68, 69, putting it out there. The snoids, they were these little creepy gnome creatures that at lsd I would catch out of the corner of my eye, sneaking around and giggling in the background of my life. I had to show that I wanted to show that sinister aspect, noir or dark side of things, and how it's. I guess it's almost like making fun of the veneer of cuteness or whatever it is that they think covers that. You know, it's just all a veneer. It's not real cuteness. It's a completely fake attempt to cover up what life is really about. The whole mass media thing. We all grow up in America. You're a child of the mass media of the pop culture. Unless your parents, like, guard you and protect you from that very conscientiously. Other. My parents didn't. They shoved us in front of the tv. And it's products of pop culture. So, you know, that's what you have to work with.
- [15:18]
Terry Gross
We've talked a little bit about how your visual imagery was changed by lsd. What about your sexual fantasies? I mean, so much of the comics that you've done have had to do with sexual fantasy. And I wonder, hi, girls. Were those fantasies as dark before LSD as they were after?
- [15:42]
R. Crumb
Yeah, unfortunately, the LSD didn't really change much in my sexual fantasies, but I found a way to express them that made them metaphorical to me. I saw them more metaphorically in lsd. You see that life, everything in our world is a Metaphor, or as Allen Ginsberg said, things are symbols of themselves. And so I saw my own sexual fantasies that way and tried to understand what they meant metaphorically. Otherwise we just feel helpless in the face that things don't mean anything. We feel helpless. What does it mean? What do these fantasies mean? Where do they come from? Why do I have them? Trying to understand or express that somehow in some way I got off drawing those things. I got off drawing them, I admit, I confess.
- [16:36]
Terry Gross
But I wanted to ask you about that. Did you want your more sexually oriented comic to function as turn ons to be like pornography?
- [16:45]
R. Crumb
No.
- [16:45]
Terry Gross
Pornography in the lives of its readers, or did you want it?
- [16:48]
R. Crumb
No, I didn't. No. It was only for myself. I had no motive to turn other people onto my sexual fantasies or my sexual preferences at all. It was just expressing what was inside myself in some way that, that revealed hopefully the metaphor that it was, you know, and many variations of that. You know, the Angel Food McSpade, the Vulture Demonesses or the Bigfoot Sasquatch character that I did, the big hairy female or the devil girl character. These are all. And when feminists complain, say, these aren't real women, these are crumbs fantasies. They're absolutely right. I can't, you know, I got no argument with that. Yeah, that's what it is. All comes out of my mind.
- [17:39]
Terry Gross
Well, in your new book, you describe yourself as sexually in a state of arrested development. You say all my natural compulsions are perverted and twisted.
- [17:48]
R. Crumb
Right, right. I see myself as a very negative person. Actually, I'm almost like a negative of the normal, well adjusted guy. You know, everything that he is, is I'm not, and everything I am, he's not. You know, it's almost how I see myself. Maybe not 100%, but, you know, I'm like the person of the night, he's a guy of the day, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
- [18:16]
Terry Gross
You know, when you were young, you went for a while to Catholic school, for a while, you went regularly to church. You say you went through a period of being fervent and devout religious.
- [18:26]
R. Crumb
Yeah.
- [18:27]
Terry Gross
What were you. What happened to all those fantasies that you had during this period when these fantasies would have just been horrifying to you?
- [18:39]
R. Crumb
Horribly. Horrible guilt. Horrible guilt. Of course. Praying desperately. Please, God, what is this about?
- [18:45]
Terry Gross
Did you pray to get rid of these thoughts?
- [18:48]
R. Crumb
I, you know, it's a funny thing. At the same time the thoughts were, those fantasies were attractive and gave me pleasure. And at the same time I was deeply disturbed by their sinfulness. So something had to go. And what went was the church and the whole sin thing. That had to go.
- [19:08]
Terry Gross
Now, you quote one woman in your book as accusing you of ruining underground comics by encouraging all the younger boy artists to be bad and do comics about their own horrible sex fantasies.
- [19:19]
R. Crumb
Right.
- [19:20]
Terry Gross
Do you feel like your comics inspired a lot of other comics of. Yeah. Of kind of, you know, bad, sexual.
- [19:31]
R. Crumb
Yeah, it did.
- [19:32]
Terry Gross
Misogynist. Yeah.
- [19:33]
R. Crumb
Well, just, you know, opened the gates for other young boys who had these. Who probably were also comic nerds when they grew up. And that's why they're drawing comics. And so they also had the same kind of frustrations and resentment towards women. Or the same kind of. Not precisely. I never saw anybody else draw precisely the same kind of stuff that I drew about sex. But, you know, similar things or just. It allowed them. It permitted them. When they saw my Crumbs, he's cool, and he's doing it. So, you know, I guess I can draw stuff that puts women in this position, too, but, you know, of having violent acts committed against women. But I don't think. I can't think of any artist offhand who was, like, totally obsessed with just drawing brutal violence against women. I think this is, you know. But, you know, feminists and other people that are involved in any kind of, you know, political obsession like that, and you can't blame them for it. There's no. They're looking for that. So they're looking. Oh, here's one right here. Look. Here's an example of, you know, somebody being violent to a woman. Or here's somebody abusing a woman, you know, so they're looking for that. And, yeah, sure, you can find it. It's there. Yeah. But one of my defenses is that I don't think I ever drew it in such a way as it could be taken as propaganda for behavior like that. I don't make that sort of behavior towards women look heroic or commendable. The characters that are doing those things are always, you know, creepy little twisted guys. They're not, you know, heroic, virtuous images of that. Someone would want to emulate R. Crumb.
- [21:14]
David Bianculli
Speaking with Terry Gross in 2005. We'll continue their conversation after a break. And we'll also listen to a later interview in which the cartoonist is joined by another cartoonist, his wife, Aileen Kaminsky. Crumb and film critic Justin Chang reviews Thunderbolts, the newest superhero movie from Marvel. I'm David Biancooli, and this is Fresh Air.
- [21:36]
Terry Gross
Does the idea of listening to political news Freak you out. Well, don't sweat it. The NPR Politics podcast makes politics a breeze. Every episode will break down the day's headlines into totally normal language and make sure that you walk away understanding what the day's news might mean for you. Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. Before you started doing underground comics, you work for American Greetings now. Were you doing greeting cards or.
- [22:10]
R. Crumb
Yes, Yes. I drew hundreds and hundreds of greeting cards.
- [22:14]
Terry Gross
Gosh, I'd like to see those. Have they been exhibited?
- [22:17]
R. Crumb
No.
- [22:18]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
What were?
- [22:18]
R. Crumb
They're bland. I didn't write them, I just did the drawings. They had a staff of writers and you went to work with a 9 to 5 job. You punched a time clock. It was in Cleveland. I got up at six o' clock in the morning and took the rapid transit to work every day and went to the bar after work and drank with the guys and then went home and asked myself, is this my life? Is this what my life is going to be from now on?
- [22:45]
Terry Gross
So what are some of the things that you drew for the greeting cards? This is what birthday cards get. Well, soon cards, stuff like that.
- [22:52]
R. Crumb
They had this department that in the late 50s, they started making these kind of more hip looking greeting cards. They were tall and thin, you know.
- [23:01]
Terry Gross
Yes, I sure do.
- [23:03]
R. Crumb
I was in that department.
- [23:04]
Terry Gross
And they were funny or funny in quotes.
- [23:06]
R. Crumb
They were funny, yeah, they were funny. And some of them actually were funny. They had a couple of writers who actually were gifted comedy writers who just got stuck in Cleveland because they were alcoholics or whatever, but they wrote very funny cards. Often their best cards were censored and never used because everything had to pass by the approval of the wife of the guy who owned the Walgreen drug chain. And if she didn't like the cards, then they couldn't be distributed. So some of the best stuff never actually got distributed.
- [23:38]
Terry Gross
No, no. We've talked a little bit about how influenced you feel you were by early comics and, you know, music musically. So much of the music you love is from the 20s and 30s. How were you first exposed to, like, graphics of that period and music of that period?
- [23:55]
R. Crumb
Right, right. Well, as a kid in the 50s, the comics were in decline, the TV wasn't that great, you know. So I start looking for older stuff and the first older stuff that I, you know, that piqued my interest was older comic books that you could find in Salvation army stores and also old stuff on the kiddie shows, on television, on tv, on these Kiddie shows. They showed old cartoons from the 30s. You know, old Betty Boop and Popeye and all that stuff. And the music was great. The drawing style was great. They were very, very appealing to me as a kid. This is like 53, 54, 55 in there. And the music was, I don't know, just grabbed me somehow. And then also, you could see these really old Hal Roach comedies, Laurel and Hardy, our Gang, Little Rascals stuff. I loved that stuff when I was a kid. And as I got into my later teens, I always looked for really early movies that were on TV on the late show movies from 1930, 31, 32. I just loved the whole style of the period. Somehow it attracted me deeply, the music and everything. And then I. I started looking for some other way to find the music of that period. Because I loved hearing it in those TV runs of those old films. And then I discovered old 78 records. I discovered that this old music was actually on these records that were sitting around these same places that the old comic books were and other old stuff. And so I started buying old 78s and still collecting them today.
- [25:30]
Terry Gross
And how did you start playing banjo?
- [25:33]
R. Crumb
I had musical inclinations from childhood. And at first I tried to make myself a cigar box ukulele, but that didn't play so well. I couldn't really make it play efficiently and effectively. So then my mother, for Christmas when I was 12 years old, gave me a plastic ukulele which was playable. I could actually tune it and play it. So I learned to play that. And then I graduated to the banjo later. I, like, attracted to old music, you know, kind of out of it. Nerd. I didn't, you know, wasn't really much into rock and roll or things with my contemporaries. I don't know. I just, like I said, I'm not gonna go negative. I'm kind of an oddball character.
- [26:15]
David Bianculli
R. Crumb speaking to Terry Gross in 2005. Let's listen to the 1929 song Singing in the Bathtub Covered by R. Crum and His Cheap Suit Serenaders from the album of the same name.
- [26:54]
Terry Gross
Sam.
- [27:20]
R. Crumb
Singing in the bathtub sitting alone.
- [27:26]
Terry Gross
Tearing out a tonsil just like a baritone.
- [27:32]
David Bianculli
When we return, we'll listen to another of their conversations from 2007, in which the cartoonist is joined by his wife, Aileen Kaminsky Crumb, who was a cartoonist also. This is Fresh Air. Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like npr, a show that focuses not on the important, but the stupid, which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants, incompetent criminals and ridiculous science studies and call it.
- [27:58]
R. Crumb
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me because the.
- [28:00]
David Bianculli
Good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called.
- [28:05]
R. Crumb
Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [28:09]
David Bianculli
Unlike headlines.
- [28:10]
Terry Gross
Or social media posts, books can give you the long view on the news, which is where NPR's Book of the.
- [28:16]
Justin Chang
Day can help to think big picture.
- [28:18]
Terry Gross
About stories like the death of Pope Francis.
- [28:21]
R. Crumb
What's missing from the picture, he says, is the merciful face of Christ.
- [28:26]
Terry Gross
You can find this interview and others just like it on NPR's Book of the Day podcast. Tune out the noise and listen every weekday.
- [28:34]
David Bianculli
This is FRESH AIR. In 2007, Terry spoke with R. Crumb and his wife, Aileen Kaminsky Crumb. She was one of the first women to create autobiographical comics back in the 1960s. They married in 1978 and moved to the south of France in the early 90s. R. Crumb created Zap Comics in the 1960s. Aileen first became known for her contributions to women's comics and Twisted Sisters. She died in 2022. The crumbs sometimes worked together on joint autobiographical cartoons for the New Yorker. When Terry spoke with them, she asked if their Personas in those New Yorker cartoons were were much different from who they really were.
- [29:16]
R. Crumb
It's kind of exaggeration of who we really are, but not that far. It doesn't deviate that far from who we really are.
- [29:22]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
I think I get into my we get into our George and Gracie bit when we're doing that. I mean, I feel like I'm, you know, playing my role somewhat, and you kind of feed me lines and I react in a way that, you know, I don't necessarily do in our real life.
- [29:37]
Terry Gross
So what are your Personas like in the cartoons?
- [29:41]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
He's the straight man. He's George. He feeds the lines. And I, like take him up and run with him. And I'm like the fool, you know.
- [29:48]
R. Crumb
But also you're flamboyant, you're gaudy, you're crass, you know, Jewish, Long island thing that you have. And you're bold and you're and I'm more kind of gray and goyish and.
- [30:01]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
The Jew and the goy.
- [30:02]
R. Crumb
Right?
- [30:02]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
He's like from a Minnesota farm family. And I'm from like a long line of shmata sales people, you know.
- [30:08]
Terry Gross
So would you tell the story of how you both met?
- [30:14]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Who tells it, me or you? Robert?
- [30:15]
R. Crumb
You tell your version, I'll tell my Version.
- [30:17]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Okay, well, I was like being a Jewish cowgirl in Arizona at the time. And I thought I was completely unique.
- [30:23]
R. Crumb
What year is this?
- [30:24]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
This was like in the late 60s or maybe around 69, 70. And I thought I was the only Jewish girl being a cowgirl at the time. I thought I was really being a wild adventuress. And then I saw a comic book called Dale the Jewish Cowgirl done by an artist named Arkham. And I thought, this guy's like, stolen my life here. How can this be? You know? And at the same time, I also saw a character called Honey Bunch Kaminsky, and my last name was Kaminsky. And I thought, now wait a minute, this is really weird. And then I met a bunch of other cartoonists who met me and said, you look just like an R. Crumb character. We have to introduce you to him. So after I finished art school in Arizona, I moved to San Francisco. And then two weeks later, I met Robert. And I had a strange sinking feeling that my destiny was sort of going to be forever entwined with his. And he looked at me and said, you have cute knees. And all he felt was lust and didn't think anything more. That's my version.
- [31:20]
R. Crumb
Well, that's pretty much how it was, yeah.
- [31:26]
Terry Gross
Robert, when you met Aileen, did you think that she looked like one of your comic characters?
- [31:32]
R. Crumb
I was drawn to her strongly. Yeah. She had all the requirements and, you know. But, yeah, my initial interest in her was strictly, you know, oh, here's a cute hippie Jewish slut. She'd probably. Easy.
- [31:45]
Terry Gross
When did. When did. Robert, when did you foresee her work and what did you think of it?
- [31:50]
R. Crumb
Shortly after I met her, she. Because she had just started drawing comics at that time, and she showed me this stuff that she had done. And this first comics, they were so crazy and expressionistic. I immediately found them very interesting and compelling and so deeply personal. And I'd never seen any comics like that drawn by a woman before. Deeply personal. There was a few women at that time, Trina Robbins and others, who were drawing kind of feminist comics. But to me, there was two kinds. There was Trina stuff, which was like feminist fighting hero types, you know, girl detectives and things. And then there was the hippie flowery stuff that someone like Willie Mendez was doing that's very sweet with unicorns and stuff like that. And here's Aileen. It's like ugly. It's self deprecating. It was just very confessional. That was the first time I ever saw a woman do that, ever. And it probably was the first time women ever did that in comics. She's like the Jean Reese of comics there.
- [32:50]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Donna Rickles.
- [32:51]
R. Crumb
Donna Rickles, right.
- [32:54]
Terry Gross
You know, and as we talked about Robert, the last time you were on Fresh Air, you know, when you were doing your comics in the 60s, they were kind of very controversial among women. I mean, some women thought they were great, but a lot of women thought that they were really, you know, kind of sexy.
- [33:09]
R. Crumb
Very few women thought they were great. Very few women thought they were great.
- [33:15]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
I got a hard time from the other feminist cartoonists for going out with.
- [33:19]
Terry Gross
Robert that was like, yeah, tell us what that was. Like, what kind of comments did you get about that? And what. What did you think of the way he drew women? Were you ever, you know, offended by his emphasis on large breasts and behinds and the kind of, you know, sexual obsessions that were, you know, described in the comics?
- [33:40]
R. Crumb
Tell the truth, Aileen.
- [33:41]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Well, I was really happy that somebody liked my physical type finally. I was really flattered that he. That was his.
- [33:47]
R. Crumb
Like, what about all the six sadism and all that stuff?
- [33:50]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Well, it corresponded with my own masochism. But aside from that, you know, I thought that feminists had. Cartoonists, had no right to tell me who to go out with and how to conduct my personal life. And in real life, Roberts, like, was my best fan, the most supportive person I could have ever been with in terms of my work. And even though being with him may have affected the public's perception of my work, it didn't affect my desire to work at all because he was such a supportive person to live with always. Like, he laughs. He laughs at my stories more than anybody, and harder. He falls on the ground laughing so hard.
- [34:27]
R. Crumb
I do. It's true. She makes me fall on the ground.
- [34:29]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
But the feminist cartoonist, she'll say, I'll.
- [34:31]
R. Crumb
Be falling on the ground. She'll say, well, what's wrong with you? Get up. Get off the ground. What are you doing down there?
- [34:35]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
But in the early women comics, there were some very angry women, and they really hated and resented Robert's work. When I started going out with him, they started to ice me out. And then they started to reject my comics from their books, saying that they weren't, like, feminist enough. My feminist consciousness was not evolved enough. And Diane Newman was also in that group. I brought her into that early group also. We met, and I really liked her, and I liked her work. And then she started going out with Bill Griffith, so she was also iced out. And they called us camp followers. As a matter of fact, in an article in the Berkeley Barb. So Diana and I then broke off from the group and started Twisted Sisters. And we saw ourselves as feminists, but we were more like bad girl feminists that wanted to, like, have sex with men and women, dress in sexy clothes and play it for all we could get out of it and still be totally in control of ourselves. We thought of ourselves more as sexy Amazons, which also went along with the way Robert saw women. So, you know, when he'd do things like vulture, demoness, I said, yeah, I could go with that. I kind of feel like that. Or, you know, devil girl. Yeah, yeah, I'm devil girl. You know, there's a part of me that really likes that. I'm really strong. I like to show my strength. I was always like that. I never felt victimized. I never felt afraid of anything, you know, so I'm much more fearful and.
- [35:55]
R. Crumb
Feel more victimized than Aileen does.
- [35:57]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Absolutely. You know, so there was something that really appealed to me in his depiction of women. He was kind of the wimpy guy that was, like, you know, idolized and was tortured by and fearful of women. All those things wrapped up into one, you know, And I could relate to it.
- [36:17]
Terry Gross
Well, Aileen, you write about how when you met Robert, he was, like, really famous. And that at that time I was.
- [36:24]
R. Crumb
Only really known in the hippie subculture.
- [36:26]
Terry Gross
Well, that eventually, maybe eventually he became famous. But you say he didn't handle it well. And you saw what fame did to him. What did it do?
- [36:35]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Well, you know, since he was a reject all through high school, and when he was younger, he was missing his front teeth and he was kind of funny looking and no woman would ever look at him. And then all of a sudden, when he got famous, like all these women wanted to have. He was, like, completely overwhelmed, and he just wanted it all, and he couldn't handle any of it. And he said yes to everybody. So there would be, like, tons of people around who had, you know, didn't know what they were supposed to be doing and were just sort of, like, hanging around him. And it was created a terrible kind of chaos. And some of those people were, like, actually mentally unbalanced, you know, and it was the 60s and everybody was taking drugs, too. So it was just a complete chaotic scene. And plus, there was a certain amount of money coming in. And then rock stars were hanging around him.
- [37:18]
R. Crumb
The money was completely mismanaged.
- [37:20]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
It was a very decadent, very chaotic, disgusting, unclear. You know, for me, it was an uncomfortable scene. I actually fled from that you know, at one point. And then Robert came and sought me out afterwards because I think that, you know, he realized he had to get out of that. It was like some kind of survival thing. But I felt that he was sinking in that, and I felt that he was going to. I felt that he was going to destroy him.
- [37:47]
Terry Gross
Robert, is that an accurate picture?
- [37:49]
R. Crumb
Afraid so, yeah. When Aileen fled From it in 74, I went after her because I realized that she's like the life raft. And, I mean, I said it in interviews and stuff before that. Sometimes I think if I hadn't grabbed onto Aileen, I might be dead now because I was involved with all these crazy women. They were all crazy, you know, And Aileen seemed to have her feet on the ground somehow. I needed someone like that. She was the only one that was cared enough about me or was willing to, you know, take me on. And I. I needed someone like that.
- [38:28]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Aw. So cute.
- [38:30]
Terry Gross
Aileen, is that ever, like. You have all these, like, kind of like demons and crazinesses of your own, but it sounds like in the relationship you have to, like, be the sane one.
- [38:42]
R. Crumb
No, no, no, it's not like that. Not like she's the sane one, but that she is better at handling, you know, people she's better at. She can think on her feet quicker. Like, you know, if a journalist comes to the door unannounced and wants to talk to me, I'll throw him out. Throw them out. I just. Well, okay, yeah. And like this last week in France, some journalists came there to talk to me. And I let him in, and I'm sitting at the kitchen table. Aileen comes downstairs. He looks around. What is this? Who are these people? How'd you get in here? Robert told me he didn't want to talk to any more journalists. I said, robert, what are you doing? So I was so embarrassed, I got up and fled the room. And Aline just told those people, degage should kick them out. And I couldn't do that. I can't do it. I'm weak.
- [39:31]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
But going back to the beginning, I have to say that I think that, you know, I was 23 when I met Robert. He was in his late 20s. And I think. I think that we both came from very dysfunctional, hate to use that word, families, and that I think we parented each other. I think that we both completed each other's childhoods in a positive way, so that then we functioned much better as adults as time went on. And I think that we did that for each other.
- [39:56]
R. Crumb
We did. Yeah, we parented each other.
- [39:57]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
You were my life Raf, too. You were that kind father that I never had. And you were my best fan. And you really supported me as an artist, too. So I feel it's completely mutual. Thank you, dear.
- [40:09]
Terry Gross
Well, I want to thank you both so much for talking with us. Thank you.
- [40:13]
R. Crumb
Loads of laughs.
- [40:14]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Thanks, Terry. It was fun.
- [40:16]
David Bianculli
Cartoonists R. Crumb and his wife, Aileen Kaminsky Crumb speaking to Terry Gross in 2007. A new biography of R. Crumb is out by Dan Nadell called A Cartoonist's Life, and many of Crumb's original comics, drawings and scrapbooks have been published by Taschen. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews the latest Marvel superhero movie, Thunderbolts. This is FRESH air.
- [40:43]
Justin Chang
This message comes from Instacart. Instacart is on a mission to have you not leave the couch this basketball season. Between the pregame rituals and the post.
- [40:51]
R. Crumb
Game interviews, it can be difficult to.
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Justin Chang
Find time for everything else. Let Instacart take care of your game.
- [40:57]
R. Crumb
Day snacks or weekly restocks and get.
- [41:00]
Justin Chang
Delivery in as fast as 30 minutes because they hear it's bad luck to be hungry on game day. Download the Instacart app today and enjoy. $0 delivery fees on your first 3 orders. Service fees apply for 3 orders in 14 days. Excludes restaurants.
- [41:18]
Terry Gross
Are you like me?
- [41:19]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Do you love picking the best and worst looks on the red carpet? Well, for the first time ever, the Met is dedicating their annual gala to the history of black fashion. So from where I'm sitting, the looks.
- [41:31]
David Bianculli
Could be really good.
- [41:32]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Or not. I mean, will someone wear a durag when they shouldn't? Let's get into the backstory of black.
- [41:38]
R. Crumb
Fashion and rate the best and worst.
- [41:40]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Looks together this week on the It's Been a Minute podcast from npr.
- [41:45]
R. Crumb
This message comes from dsw.
- [41:48]
Terry Gross
Where'd you get those shoes?
- [41:49]
R. Crumb
Easy. They're from dsw because DSW has the exact right shoes for whatever you're into right now. You know, like the sneakers that make office hours feel like happy hour, the boots that turn grocery aisles into runways, and all the styles that show off the many sides of you, from daydreamer to multitasker and everything in between, because.
- [42:09]
Terry Gross
You do it all in really great shoes.
- [42:12]
R. Crumb
Find a shoe for every you at your dsw store or dsw.com Our film.
- [42:18]
David Bianculli
Critic Justin Chang says that Thunderbolts, which topped the box office last weekend, is the first Marvel superhero movie in some time that's actually worth seeing. Florence Pugh reprises her role from Black Widow as the CIA operative Yelena Belova. And there also are return appearances by some Marvel franchise veterans, including Sebastian Stan and Julia Louis Dreyfus. Here is Justin's review Trauma has become.
- [42:46]
Justin Chang
So overused as a plot device that I'm grateful I went into Thunderbolts, not knowing that it would plunge so deeply into its character's mental health issues. The movie, directed by Jake Schreier from a script by Eric Pearson and Joanna Kahlo, may not be the most original treatment of those issues, but it's sincere and heartfelt in the way it approaches them. It also happens to be the most enjoyable Marvel adventure in some time. It isn't a self satisfied joke like Deadpool and Wolverine, or a forgettable slog like this year's Captain Brave New World. Thunderbolts is an unwieldy jumble, to be sure, and it's been designed, like all Marvel films, to help extend the brand unto infinity. But for an impressive stretch, it actually looks and feels like a real movie, with solid action, vivid emotional stakes, and characters memorable enough that you won't mind seeing them again in the inevitable sequel. The star is the terrific Florence Pugh, who was introduced several movies back as Yelena Belova, the younger sister of Scarlett Johansson's now deceased Natasha Romanov. Like Natasha, Yelena is the product of a top secret Russian program that turned innocent children into spies and assassins. Years later, Yelena still can't shake off the grim memories of her indoctrination or her grief over Natasha's death.
- [44:18]
Terry Gross
There's something wrong with me, an emptiness. I thought it started when my sister died, but now it feels like something bigger, just.
- [44:43]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Void.
- [44:46]
Justin Chang
Yelena now works as undercover muscle for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who's played by a breezily menacing Julia Louis Dreyfus with a touch of Veep style incompetence. Valentina is bad news, and before long Yelena is betrayed and trapped in a deadly lair in the middle of nowhere. To get out alive, she must join forces with a few other similarly betrayed and trapped operatives, some of whom have special powers. Hannah John Common plays Ghost who can pass through walls. Wyatt Russell is enhanced super soldier John Walker, who's kind of like a surlier Captain America. And then there's a random nice guy named Bob, played by Lewis Pullman, who has no idea why he's there and appears to have no powers of any kind. But both he and and the movie have a few surprises in store. In time, Yelena, Ghost, Walker and Bob escape Valentina's clutches But the danger never lets up and they must work together to take her down. Fortunately for them, their ranks soon expand to include the Marvel mainstay Bucky Barnes, a formidable fighter with his own physical and psychological scars, well played as always by recent Oscar nominee Sebastian Stanley. And then there's Yelena's boisterous adoptive father, a Russian expat limo driver who goes by the superhero moniker of Red Guardian. He's played by a bumbling scene stealing David Harbour. In time, this ragtag crew begin calling themselves the Thunderbolts, a name inspired by a youth soccer team that Yelena was a part of years ago. Like that team, Yelena and her unlikely comrades are a scrappy bunch of underperformers, basically a third rate Avengers. The story is unapologetically formulaic. Valentina's scheme, which involves turning the Thunderbolts into a public enemy, smacks a bit of Pixar's the Incredibles and every other Marvel movie that has featured a cataclysmic assault on a major city. But even amid such familiar mayhem, Shrier finds fresh, vivid angles. The action is clear and coherent, the character dynamics strike the right balance of earnest sincerity and glib humor. And it's oddly moving to see the characters put their bickering ways aside and team up to protect as many innocent bystanders as they can. For a brief moment, I was reminded of what made superhero movies fun in the first place, before they became Hollywood's dominant export. But Thunderbolts does have more than fun on its mind, and here's where that trauma element comes in. Yelena is continually haunted by reminders of her past when she was forced as a child to become a ruthless killing machine. But she isn't the only character here confronting emotional pain and a profound sense of emptiness. The movie builds to a surreal sequence, an almost being John Malkovich style romp through the subconscious that floats some fascinating questions. What if loneliness were the single most destructive force in existence? And what if human connection really was powerful enough to save the world? That may sound like a trite sentiment, but it's nonetheless worth repeating. And for two hours or so, Thunderbolts just about makes you believe it.
- [48:29]
David Bianculli
Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed the new Marvel movie thunderbolts on Monday's show. Actor Danny McBride talks about the final season of HBO's the Righteous Gemstones and his journey from Hollywood to South Carolina, where he co founded Roughhouse Pictures. He'll tell us about how he's built a unique comic empire, blending sharp satire with Southern charm. Hope you can join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram prfresh. Air Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shura. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld and Charlie Kyer. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey Nesper For Terry Gross and Tanya Moseley, I'm David Biancooli.
- [49:45]
R. Crumb
On the Indicator from Planet Money podcast, we're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump's tariffs. It's called in game theory a trigger.
- [49:54]
Justin Chang
Strategy, or sometimes called grim trigger, which sort of has a cowboy esque ring.
- [49:59]
R. Crumb
To it to what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. For insight every weekday, listen to NPR's the Indicator from Planet Money. Know that fizzy feeling you get when.
- [50:11]
Terry Gross
You read something really good?
- [50:12]
Aileen Kaminsky Crumb
Watch the movie everyone's been talking about.
- [50:14]
R. Crumb
Or catch the show that the Internet can't get over. At the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, we chase that feeling four times a week. We'll serve you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, tv, music and more, from low brow to highbrow to the stuff in between. Catch the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.