Interesting Facts About Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb is an excellent cartoonist known for his distinct work and for creating popular characters such as Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural. Robert Crumb was born on August 30, 1943, in Pennsylvania. Because his family moved around a lot, he stayed in Minnesota, Iowa, California, and Delaware during his early years. Robert Crumb was raised in a strict Catholic family by a strict father and a mother who was addicted to diet pills. Crumb’s style is said to have been influenced by popular cartoonists such as Carl Banks and Harvey Kurtzman.

Robert Crump’s childhood was filled with comic books, something his father despised about him. He worked summer jobs to pay for his comic collection habits, and soon after graduation from high school in 1961, he chose to skip college for a job at the American Greetings Corporation. Although his drawing skills enabled him to find work, his 9 to 5 was rather short-lived. After just four years of working at the American Greetings Corporations to produce greeting cards, he joined the staff of Harvey Kurtzman’s magazine ‘Help!.’ It was during this time that Crumb’s golden era began. He introduced one of the most popular and first ever successful characters ‘Fritz the Cat.’ Fritz the Cat was a sex-obsessed character that was later made into a hit movie due to its popularity. However, Crumb didn’t like the movie adaptation and killed off his character in a later comic.

Robert Crumb wrestled with religious ideologies and questioned subjects such as free will and authenticity. His issues with religious ideology and the influence of Catholic childhood are visible throughout his work. After his short-lived career at the ‘Help!’ magazine, Robert Crumb moved to San Francisco in 1967, where he published his first underground comic book ‘Zap Comics.’ He released subsequent publications such as Despair, Head Comix, etc., where he introduced some other popular characters such as Angelfood McSpade, Shuman the Human, Whiteman, etc. Robert Crumb never shied away from talking about taboo topics such as sex and drugs. His work during this time was influenced by a lengthy drug trip on LSD, which led him to the psychedelic cartoon style that he is popular for. His work was well-known for incorporating strange erotic elements and practices such as Necrophilia and Incest.

Robert Crumb lived in seclusion during the period of 1976 to 1980 following disputes with the Internal Revenue Service, during which he produced no work. He resurfaced in 1981 with Weirdo, an illustrated anthology. During the early 1990s, Robert Crumb moved to France, where he spent his time contributing illustrations to mainstream magazines such as The New Yorker. Crumb also has worked with many musical artists to illustrate their album covers, the most prominent ones being Cheap Thrills and The Music Never Stopped. One of the recent works of the cartoonist was in 2009 when he published an illustrated version of the book of Genesis from the Bible.