Today is cartoonist R. Crumb’s 70th birthday.  To consider this man an influence on my work would be a total understatement.

I won’t get into a long-winded analysis of his work… which spans the better part of five decades.  But, I will say that his the subjectivity of his work  can be crude, racist, sexist and a few other -isms and -ists.  He has his viewpoint, he has a means to get it across.  He is also extremely honest with all the pimples, boils and bruises on himself.  It’s that willingness to bear it all without the slightest hesitation that first drew me to his work.

And his line.  What I wouldn’t give to have his line.  Wow.

As a beginning cartoonist, I had no idea who Crumb was…not until someone suggested I see the Terry Zwigoff documentary Crumb . If you haven’t seen it, you need to.  After seeing that movie I had to go buy it (to date myself, I first bought it on VHS) and everything I could find printed about him.  This was in late 1994/early ’95.  Nearly two decades later and I’m still buying everything I can find on him.

In the coming weeks, I’ll post a bit more about Crumb.  I’ve been analyzing his work since my senior year of undergrad… so yeah, I have a few things to say.