Sketchbook Reports & Help!

Robert Crumb. 2002. Sketchbook Reports. Cornélius.

The Sketchbook Reports reproduce two pieces Crumb did for Help! magazine in 1965 on Harlem and Bulgaria. These are likely the first examples of Crumb's published work.

Crumb, Robert. 1965a. Harlem. A Sketchbook Report. Help!, January.

---. 1965b. Bulgaria. A Sketchbook Report. Help!, July.

CRUMB-ology & Checklist

Richter, Carl. 1995. CRUMB-ology: The Works of R. Crumb 1981-1994. Water Row Press.
---. 1998. Crumb-ology Supplement Summer 1994 to August 1998. Water Row Books.
Don Fiene. 1981. R. Crumb Checklist. Boatner Norton Press.

These three books are indispensable for any Crumb collector. They painstakinly document his huge output and are organized in a logical way. They also interrelate where the same piece is used in different media. The latest two were compiled by Carl Richter (covering works done between 1981-1994) and build upon the original groundbreaking work by Don Fiene (covering the period through 1981). A fairly comprehensive selection of work done since 1998 is compiled on Uncle Carl's What's New.

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.

The World According to Crumb

Book published for a Crumb exhibition in Angoulême (France) and several other locations in 1992. The drawing has been used elsewhere (cover of Czech comics revue, cover of BBC DVD "The Confessions of Robert Crumb").

Academy Awards

Robert Crumb. "R. Crumb, 'The Old Outsider,' Goes to the...Academy Awards." Premiere. April 1991. p. 88.
A four page documentary comic for a film industry magazine chronicling Crumb's visit to the Oscars.


Robert Crumb & Aline Kominsky Crumb. "Me and Harvey." In The New Yorker. 7 June 2004. © 2004 by A. & R. Crumb.

A three page comic strip later chronicles Mr. & Mrs. Crumb's visit to the 57th annual Cannes Film Festival.