Through such grotesque caricatures as Angelfood McSpade, Shuman the Human, Whiteman, and Flakey Foont, Crumb skewered the values of contemporary American society in stories that dealt explicitly with such taboo subjects as sex and drug use. Drawn in a broad, deliberately slapdash style reminiscent of the Fleischer brothers’ Popeye cartoons and George Herriman’s Krazy Kat newspaper strip, Zap and its successors ( Despair, Uneeda, Head Comix, and many others) were perfectly attuned to the counterculture movement of the late 1960s. There in 1968 he published his first underground comic book, the widely distributed and highly influential Zap Comix. In 1972 the animation producer Ralph Bakshi released an X-rated feature-length cartoon adaptation of Crumb’s Fritz the Cat, a film that Crumb hated (he responded to it by killing the character in the pages of The People’s Comics).Ĭrumb began to contribute artwork to several “alternative” publications, and in 1967 he moved to San Francisco, settling in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood. Three years later he joined the staff of Kurtzman’s short-lived satirical magazine Help! While at Help! Crumb introduced his best-known character, the iconoclastic and sex-obsessed Fritz the Cat. He graduated from high school in 1961 and the following year moved to Cleveland, where his drawing skills enabled him to find work as an illustrator for the American Greeting Card company. With his elder brother Charles, he produced several comics. The product of a highly unusual family, Crumb insulated himself early by becoming a voracious reader of comic books. Crumb’s drawing style was influenced by many earlier cartoonists-notably the Disney cartoonist Carl Banks-and his satire likewise was inspired by the irreverence of Harvey Kurtzman, a mentor of sorts whose periodicals included Mad (1954–56) and Help! (1960–65). Crumb, in full Robert Crumb, (born August 30, 1943, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American counterculture comic book artist and social satirist, known for his distinctive artwork and excellent marriage of drawing and narrative and for creating such well-known characters as Fritz the Cat and Mr.
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