In his new biography of Robert Crumb, Dan Nadel writes that his subject agreed to participate in the project under one condition: “that I be honest about his faults, look closely at his compulsions, and examine the racially and sexually charged aspects of his work.” Crumb, graphically honest in his work as a surrealistic, libidinous underground comix pioneer, expected the same from his chronicler. And Nadel complied.
Which doesn’t mean “Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life,” is a hatchet job. Far from it: Nadel, a museum curator and comics expert, expresses palpable admiration for Crumb, and sympathy for a peripatetic upbringing that could quietly be as macabre as anything he drew. He diligently tracks Crumb’s artistic progress, from collaborating with his brother, Charles, on adolescent comics in the spirit of childhood heroes such as Disney’s Carl Barks and “Little Lulu” creator John Stanley; to cranking out greeting cards for the Cleveland-based American Greetings; and to following the LSD muse into an unfettered purging of subconscious chaos. Nadel draws a vivid portrait of not just Crumb but the Bay Area-based underground comix explosion of the late ’60s and early ’70s. “Crumb” is rich in cultural context, the kind of biography that opens up an entire scene and movement.