Early work (1962–1966) Crumb's father gave him $40 when he left home after high school. His first job, in 1962, was drawing novelty greeting cards for
American Greetings in
Cleveland, Ohio. He stayed with the company for four years, producing hundreds of cards for the company's Hi-Brow line; his superiors had him draw in a cuter style that was to leave a footprint on his work throughout his career. In Cleveland, he met a group of young
bohemians such as
Buzzy Linhart, Liz Johnston, and
Harvey Pekar. Dissatisfied with greeting card work, he tried to sell cartoons to comic book companies, who showed little interest in his work. In 1965, cartoonist
Harvey Kurtzman printed some of Crumb's work in the humor magazine he edited,
Help! Crumb moved to New York, intending to work with Kurtzman, but
Help! ceased publication shortly after. Crumb briefly illustrated bubblegum cards for
Topps before returning to Cleveland and American Greetings. Crumb married Dana Morgan in 1964. Nearly destitute, the couple traveled in Europe, during which Crumb continued to produce work for Kurtzman and American Greetings, and Dana stole food. The relationship was unstable as Crumb frequently went his own way, and he was not close to his son, Jesse (born in 1968). In 1965 and 1966 Crumb had a number of
Fritz the Cat strips published in the men's magazine
Cavalier. Fritz had appeared in Crumb's work as early as the late 1950s; he was to become a hipster, scam artist, and bohemian until Crumb abandoned the character in 1969. Crumb was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with his job and marriage when in June 1965 he began taking
LSD, a
psychedelic drug that was then still legal. He had both good and
bad trips. One bad trip left him in a muddled state for half a year, during which for a time he left Dana; the state ended when the two took a strong dose of the drug together in April 1966. Crumb created a number of his best-known characters during his years of LSD use, including
Mr. Natural,
Angelfood McSpade, and the
Snoid. His work in the underground comics scene coincided with the rise of
Timothy Leary's acid tests and psychedelics generally which led to deals with psychedelic artists such as the Grateful Dead.
Zap and (1967–1979) In January 1967 Crumb came across two friends in a bar who were about to leave for San Francisco; During this period, he launched a series of solo titles, including
Despair,
Uneeda (published by Print Mint in 1969 and 1970 respectively),
Big Ass Comics, ''R. Crumb's Comics and Stories
, Motor City Comics
(all published by Rip Off Press in 1969), Home Grown Funnies
(Kitchen Sink Press, 1971) and Hytone Comix
(Apex Novelties, 1971), in addition to founding the pornographic anthologies Jiz
and Snatch'' (both Apex Novelties, 1969). Crumb's work also appeared in
Nasty Tales, a 1970s British underground comic. The publishers were acquitted in a celebrated 1972 obscenity trial at the
Old Bailey in London; the first such case involving a comic. Giving evidence at the trial, one of the defendants said of Crumb: "He is the most outstanding, certainly the most interesting, artist to appear from the underground, and this (Dirty Dog) is
Rabelaisian satire of a very high order. He is using coarseness quite deliberately to get across a view of social hypocrisy."
Weirdo (1980–1993) While meditating in 1980, Crumb conceived of a magazine with a
lowbrow aesthetic inspired by
punk zines,
Mad, and men's magazines of the 1940s and 1950s. From 1981 Crumb edited the first nine issues of the twenty-eight issue run of
Weirdo, published by
Last Gasp; his contributions and tastes determined the contents of the later issues as well, edited by
Peter Bagge until 17, and Aline for the remainder of the run. The magazine featured cartoonists new and old, and had a mixed response. Crumb's
fumetti was so unpopular that it has never appeared in Crumb collections.
Later life (1994–present) The Crumbs moved into a house in southern France in 1991, which is said to have been financed by the sale of six Crumb sketchbooks. The documentary
Crumb, directed by
Terry Zwigoff, appeared in 1994—a project on which Zwigoff had been working since 1985. The film won several major critical accolades. From 1987 to 2005
Fantagraphics Books published the seventeen-volume
Complete Crumb Comics and ten volumes of sketches. Crumb (as "R. Crumb") contributes regularly to
Mineshaft magazine, which, since 2009, has been serializing "Excerpts From R. Crumb's Dream Diary". In 2009 Crumb produced
The Book of Genesis, an unabridged illustrated
graphic novel version of the biblical
Book of Genesis. In 2016, the
Seattle Art Museum displayed the original drawings for
The Book of Genesis as part of an exhibit entitled "Graphic Masters: Dürer, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Goya, Picasso, R. Crumb". In January 2015, Crumb was asked to submit a cartoon to the left-wing newspaper
Libération as a tribute for the
Charlie Hebdo shooting. He sent a drawing titled
"A Cowardly Cartoonist", depicting an illustration of the backside of "Mohamid Bakhsh", a reference to
Muhammad, founder of Islam, and
Ralph Bakshi, who directed the film adaptation
Fritz the Cat (1972). Crumb has remained a vocal opponent of Trump and his administration, which he expressed in various interviews and comics.
Professional collaborations A friend of comic book writer
Harvey Pekar, Crumb illustrated over 30 stories of Pekar's in the comic book series
American Splendor, primarily in the first eight issues (1976–1983). As
The Complete Crumb Comics co-editor Robert Fiore wrote about their collaborations: Crumb collaborated with his wife,
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, on many strips and comics, including
Dirty Laundry Comics,
Self-Loathing Comics, and work published in
The New Yorker. In 1978, Crumb allowed his artwork to be used as pictorial rubber stamp designs by
Top Drawer Rubber Stamp Company, a collaboration between cartoonist
Art Spiegelman, publisher
Françoise Mouly, and people living at
Quarry Hill Creative Center in
Rochester, Vermont. R. Crumb's imagery proved to be some of the most popular designs produced by this avant-garde pictorial stamp company. In the 1980s and 1990s, Crumb illustrated a number of writer
Charles Bukowski's stories, including the collection
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship and the story "
Bring Me Your Love". In 1983, illustrations by Robert Crumb accompanied '
Texas Crude: The How-To on Talkin’ Texan', a compendium of regional slang compiled by
Ken Weaver, former drummer of
The Fugs. In 1984–1985 Crumb produced a series of illustrations for the tenth anniversary edition of
Edward Abbey's environmental-themed novel
The Monkey Wrench Gang, published in 1985 by Dream Garden Press of Salt Lake City. Many of these illustrations also appeared in a 1987 Monkey Wrench Gang calendar, and remain available on T-shirts.
R. Crumb Comix, a theatrical production based on his work and directed by Johnny Simons, was produced in
Fort Worth, Texas, in 1986. It was revived at
Duke University in 1990, and co-starred
Avner Eisenberg. The development of the play was supervised by Crumb, who also served as set designer, drawing larger-than-life representations of some of his most famous characters all over the floors and walls of the set. Crumb's collaboration with
David Zane Mairowitz, the illustrated, part-comic biography and bibliography
Introducing Kafka (1993), a.k.a.
Kafka for Beginners, is one of his less sexual- and satire-oriented, comparably highbrow works. It is well-known and favorably received, and due to its popularity was republished as ''R. Crumb's Kafka''.
Musical projects Crumb has frequently drawn comics about his musical interests in
blues,
country,
bluegrass,
cajun, French
Bal-musette,
jazz,
big band and
swing music from the 1920s and 1930s, and they also heavily influenced the soundtrack choices for his bandmate Zwigoff's 1995
Crumb documentary. In 2006, he prepared, compiled and illustrated the book ''R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country'', with accompanying CD, which derived from three series of
trading cards originally published in the 1980s. Crumb was the leader of the band
R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, for which he sang lead vocals, wrote several songs and played banjo and other instruments. Crumb often plays mandolin with
Eden and John's East River String Band and has drawn four covers for them: 2009's
Drunken Barrel House Blues, 2008's
Some Cold Rainy Day, 2011's ''Be Kind To A Man When He's Down
on which he plays mandolin, the latest (2022) "Goodbye Cruel World", on which he sings vocals, plays ukulele, mandolin and tiple. In 2013 he played on their album Take A Look at That Baby'' and also took part in the accompanying music video. With Dominique Cravic, in 1986 he founded "Les Primitifs du Futur"—a French band whose eclectic music has incorporated Bal-musette, folk, jazz, blues and world music—playing on their albums "Cocktail d'Amour" (1986), "Trop de Routes, Trop de Trains" (1995), "World Musette" (1999) and "Tribal Musette" (2008). He also provided the
cover art for these albums. Crumb has released CDs anthologizing old original performances gleaned from collectible
78-rpm phonograph records. His ''That's What I Call Sweet Music
was released in 1999 and Hot Women: Women Singers from the Torrid Regions
in 2009. Chimpin' the Blues,'' a collaboration with fellow record collector
Jerry Zolten that combines rare recordings with conversation about the music and the musicians, was released in 2013. Crumb drew the cover art for these CDs as well.
Album covers album
Cheap Thrills Crumb has illustrated many album covers, most prominently
Cheap Thrills by
Big Brother and the Holding Company and the
compilation album The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead. Between 1974 and 1984, Crumb drew at least 17 album covers for
Yazoo Records/
Blue Goose Records, including those of the Cheap Suit Serenaders. He also created the revised logo and record label designs of Blue Goose Records that were used from 1974 onward. In 1992 and 1993, Robert Crumb was involved in a project by Dutch formation
the Beau Hunks and provided the cover art for both their albums
The Beau Hunks play the original Laurel & Hardy music 1 and 2. He also illustrated the albums' booklets. In 2009, Crumb drew the artwork for a 10-CD anthology of French traditional music compiled by
Guillaume Veillet for . The following year, he created three artworks for Christopher King's
Aimer Et Perdre: To Love And To Lose: Songs, 1917–1934. == Style ==