Libération

Cover for Libération. 28 January 2010.

A Crumb drawing used for the cover of an issue of the French newspaper Libération. The entire issue uses cartoons instead of photos, in honor of the annual Angoulême comics festival. This is the second Crumb drawing for a Libération cover.

Komiks Fest! revue

A Czech comics journal I picked up when I was in Prague. This issue has a feature on R. Crumb. It includes the Czech version of Crumb's "My Trouble with Women", a Gilbert Shelton piece, the front and back cover by Crumb and an ad for the upcoming Prague Writer Festival where both Crumb and Shelton will appear. Mr. Crumb kindly signed it for me.



Crumb, R. 2009. "My Troubles with Women (1980). " Trans. Richard Podany. Komiks Fest! revue, April.

Heeb - The L♥ve Issue

Robert and Aline Kominsky Crumb. 2007. The L♥ve "Issue" [Cover]. Heeb, Spring.

Aline and R. Crumb collaborative cover for Heeb magazine. There is also an article about Aline K. Crumb ("Drawn Together-R. Crumb's Beloved Aline Kominsky") on page 48 with an assortment of her work and photos.

Thanksgiving Special

Robert Crumb. 2004. "Thanksgiving Special" [Cover]. The New Yorker, November 29.

The origins of Thanksgiving date back to the early 1600s when the Pilgrims, assisted by the local Indians, celebrated their bountiful harvest. Crumb's stinging cover harks back to this with the portraits of Pilgrims and Indians on the left border. But then it is updated to present day New York, urban, densely packed. In the middle of the cover is a down-and-out Indian looking like he is about to cry wearing a signboard advertising a restaurant's "Thanksgiving Special". The menu is an ode to hip yuppie tastes with range-fed turkey, couscous and even a vegetarian alternative. America seems to have forgotten the origins of the holiday with the poor Indian looking miserable. Crumb draws himself on the right walking towards the left (a political statement?) and looking quite astounded at the scene. The evocation of busy urban New York is sizzling, the details impressive (a discarded cigarette butt on the sidewalk, a large bead of sweat on a man's forehead) and the coloring and overall feel quite different than Crumb's more typical cartoon-like covers. There is also something curious about the people with glasses: you cannot see their eyes.

ARTnews

In addition to the cover (Self-Portrait with Third Eye, 2001) also has an article: Holmes, Pernilla. 2004. "A Funny Thing Happened to Robert Crumb." ARTnews, September.

Mineshaft

Robert Crumb. 2003? "Billy the Kid" cover for Mineshaft. January 2003. # 10. First printing. 56 pages. Printed on Strathmore Bordeaux purple cover paper.

A lovely drawing of Billy the Kid typical of Crumb's pictures of folkloric figures. The cover stock is untypical: a kind of silver etching on beautiful hard purple paper. Produced for a small journal for which Crumb has contributed several other covers and articles over the years.

Bigfoot is Everywhere

Robert Crumb. 2000. Bigfoot is Everywhere! Poster. 18 x 12 inches (image size 14 3/4 x 11 inches).

This poster is from the cover of an issue for the science fiction magazine FATE. It has its roots in Crumb's Bigfoot drawings of the 1970s (for example see the Berkley art show flyer). A variation shows up as a poster for a Crumb exhibit in Austria. Crumb has done two other covers for FATE.

Atom Mind

The cover of this Winter 1995 edition of Atom Mind is a reproduction of piece drawn in 1992 of an event from 1968. It shows Crumb peddling comics from a baby stroller along with his first wife at hippie ground zero: the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco. The caption refers to a "legend was born", presumably the launch of Zap Comix with Crumb sporting a saintly halo. The drawing appeared earlier in the 25th Anniversary Issue of the Whole Earth Review (No. 79, Summer 1993).

Robert Crumb. 1992. "Haight-Ashbury, early '68...and so a legend was born." Cover. Atom Mind. Vol. 4 No 15 (Winter 1995).

Elvis Tilley

Robert Crumb. 1994. Elvis Tilley [Cover]. The New Yorker, February 21.

R. Crumb re-imagines Rea Irvin's Eustace Tilley on the magazine's sixty-ninth anniversary. Tilley is the iconic figure that often appears on New Yorker covers. This is Crumb's spin on it: a not very attractive young man with acne, beard stubble, earring reading a flyer for a porno place. Logo on T-shirt and the group of other men all have hats (with advertising) on backwards and earrings—kind of like a youth national costume of today. Eustace Tilley updated to today—even the name is no longer the old-fashioned "Eustace" but the more hip "Elvis". Conveys a sense of aimlessness—not a very happy picture. Necks are long like a giraffe and like the buildings behind—a new species of introverted, self-absorbed youth.

Whole Earth Review 25th Anniversary

Robert Crumb. 1993. "Unthinkable Futures" cover for Whole Earth Review. Summer 1993. No. 79. 25th Anniversary Edition.

Crumb's depressing future vision where he takes the earth, typically used for the covers of Whole Earth Catalogs and converts it into a sick-looking, puss-oozing, scarred globe. Crumb's third and final cover for CoEvolution Quarterly/Whole Earth Review family (fourth if you include the cover done for the Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog). The issue features four pages of Crumb drawings including the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury Street corner scene reproduced on the cover of an Atom Mind issue.

Factory

Robert Crumb. 1979. "Factory." Cover for CoEvolution Quarterly, #24, Winter 1979/80.

A controversial cover. The next issue reported 91 letters about the cover-41 against, 31 for and 19 mixed.

WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE!!

Robert Crumb. "Woodman, Spare That Tree!!" Cover for Fox River Patriot. No. 19 (August 24- September 13, 1977). Format: 32 pages, 11.5 x 17 inch tabloid style newspaper, folded to 8 3/4 x 11.5 inch cover size.

Fox River Patriot was an alternative paper from central Wisconsin co-founded by Crumb colleague Denis Kitchen. According to Crumb, it was one of his favorite papers:

“...a great little local newspaper of exceptional vision is the Fox River Patriot...reading the Fox River Patriot makes me want to move to Wisconsin ...The best local rural-type of paper I know of...”—R. Crumb, The CoEvolutionary Quarterly, Spring 1979, p. 80

This is a colored variation of the original black and white version on the cover of the February 1973 issue of The Mendocino Grapevine which was later made into a 50 edition print in 2007.

Voluntary Simplicity

Crumb, R. 1977. "Voluntary Simplicity" [Front & back cover]. CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer 1977 No. 14.

The first of two covers done for the Whole Earth spin-off publication The CoEvolution Quarterly. A bright happy homage to women & simplicity (theme of the issue). The orange yellow background adds to the brightness; stylistically the background has three horizontal bands (one third orange, one third yellow and the bottom third brown solid) typical of some other Crumb covers (e.g., The Last Supplement). The front cover features typical big limb Crumb women planting seeds, looking up towards the sun, smiling. The exuberance is contagious and the fertility symbolism on the front cover heavy with females, seeds, planting.
The back cover is men, stereo-typed farmers with baseball hats dancing & entranced by the women on the front. Crumb is being carried off on the back of one of the men heading towards the left, his back to us.
Crumb creates a fine sense of motion through the seeds being thrown through the air, the women slightly off-balance or skipping and the men in their funky dance position. The color, the motion, the cartoon quality and the theme combine to reinforce the happy feeling. Quite unlike many of Crumb's other covers which tend to be somber, questioning, critical and dark.

The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog

Robert Crumb. 1971. [Cover]. The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog, March. Also published as an edition of The Realist.

Crumb takes this cover assignment for a "Last Supplement" and makes it a "Last Supper". The Whole Earth Catalog was a counterculture publication launched in the 1960s and this was ostensibly supposed to be its last supplement. Different period stereotypes are present in the colorful drawing, with a purple border at top, a yellow background in the middle and again purple at the bottom. Christ is identified by a yellow halo but the person offering wisdom is long time Crumb character Mr. Natural. There is an oversize African woman, dressed in a tribal skirt that offers a contrast to the other male figures. An orange furred animal is in front of a businessman in a blue suit with a long nose. At one end of the table sits a slick man with a yellow peace medallion around his neck but with a cloud thought containing a dollar sign. A hippie lies stoned on the floor, most likely a victim of the contents of the still smoking pipe in front of him. Another participant has just flown backwards in his chair in the left of the drawing. There is a political overtone with graffiti calling to "FREE BOBBY, ANGELA, JOHN, ALL OTHERS" scrawled on the right wall and "OFF OUR BACKS & the Pig" written on the back of the tee-shirt of the person with their back to the viewer in the center of the drawing. There is also a light-bulb headed caricature holding a rifle standing guard in the lower right. Crumb himself is in the drawing, seated with his head hunched down and back to his in the wooden chair on the right. The lyrics from a Beach Boys song round out the socio-cultural milieu of period. Crumb is acknowledged in the "Drawn by R. "Southpaw" Crumb text at the bottom left; in some versions, his last name was chopped off when the cover was printed.