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.

War News

Robert Crumb. 1991. [Logo]. War News, March 2.
Crumb designed the logo for an anti-war (first Gulf war) newspaper put out by Warren Hinckle.

Seed

Poster created for an R. Crumb exhibition at the Modernism Museum.

"Seed", 32 x 17"

The Future according to Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb. 1988. "A Short History of America...With Epilogue." Back cover for Whole Earth Review. Winter 1988. No. 61. 20th Anniversary Issue.

Sequel to "A Short History of America" first published in Whole Earth Review's predecessor publication, CoEvolution Quarterly (Fall 1979, #23) and the subject of numerous prints over the years (a print with this epilogue was published by Kitchen Sink Press). The three scenarios: a nightmarish wasteland, a Jetson's funky high-tech or a hippiesh, rural idyll. It looks like he was sort of right on all 3 counts as today's world looks like a mix of the three. Although an extension of Short History of America, the Epilogue also stands on its own. Five years later, Crumb's cover for the Whole Earth Review 25th Anniversary Edition, the pessimistic view seems to have set in. The original "Short History" and "Epilogue" are shown on pages 34-35.

HINCKLE. FREE AT LAST.

1985. Hinckle. Free At Last. Cardboard. 21 1/8" X 13 3/4". Signed "R. Crumb" lower right.

An unusual Crumb piece: a cardboard poster that slots into a
newspaper rack. Warren Hinckle was a San Francisco journalist who had a column in the Examiner. He had written a series of articles critical of the SF police and then mayor Dianne Feinstein. A few days after Hinckle penned an article about the arrest of porn star Marilyn Chambers during constant raids on the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Street Theater, he was arrested for walking his basset hound, Bentley, without a leash.

A humorous critique of excessive police force. Hinckle is dragged off by three big cops. He cuts an amusing character with his eye patch and long hair. The lines radiating from his head make a halo-like effect, creating a kind of St. Hinckle. His dog Bentley is also carried away. The drawing effectively expresses the ridiculousness of three beefy cops dragging away a harmless journalist and his dog, a microcosm of the widespread resentment felt by the counterculture against authority and the police.

For related information see the Wild Dog poster.