Happy Birthday To Yooouuu

Mr. R. Crumb was born today. Well not today, but on the same date a buncha years ago.


Crumb is famous for his "Truckin'" picture, his exaggerated, "balloony" style and self-mockery.


He is also particularly known for drawing women with what must be (lovingly) referred to as haunches. One wonders whence he draws his influences:


Much of his work was wonderfully scurrilous, and a massive amount of it was devoted to his own masturbatory fantasies. His comic creations have included Devil Girl and "That Madcap Ol' Mystic: Mr. Natural".

But he's also famous for his twisted cute-fuzzy-animal comic Fritz the Cat. It's been made into two different films, the first of which was the first ever "X"-rated cartoon. Crumb hated the film so much that he later wrote Fritz a story in which he sells out for fame and fortune, and is stabbed to death with an icepick.


A couple of other items:

Crumb had two brothers, both of whom were artistically gifted. All three were reckoned unstable, and Charles Crumb eventually took his own life.

Crumb has been the subject of a documentary.

He was instrumental in bringing Harvey Pekar to public notice, and thus launching American Splendor, which was filmed with Paul Giamatti, lately of Lady in the Water and more famously Sideways.

Wikipedia bio here.

It is an exaggeration, but not too much of one, to say that by printing the first fifteen hundred issues of Zap comics, Crumb helped launch the underground comix genre.