Volume 53, Number 6 · April 6, 2006

Mr. Natural

By Ian Buruma
The R. Crumb Handbook
by R. Crumb and Peter Poplaski

MQ Publications, 438 pp., $25.00

Great claims have been made for the art of Robert Crumb, creator of Mr. Natural, Angelfood McSpade, Devil Girl, Fritz the Cat, and the Snoid, among other comic masterpieces. Crumb's Zap Comix is a cultural landmark of the 1960s, as much as the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 'Keep on Truckin',' the title of a series of drawings of strutting men in oversized shoes, like stoned dancers in a great nationwide cakewalk, became a catchphrase of the hippy era, immortalized in a song by the Grateful Dead. It was so overused that Crumb himself grew heartily sick of it.



Review, 3711 words

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