Robert Crumb - Life and Career

Life and Career

Robert Crumb was born on August 30, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is of English and Scottish ancestry, and is related to former U.S. president Andrew Jackson on his mother's side. His father, Charles, was a career officer in the United States Marine Corps; his mother, Beatrice, a housewife who reportedly abused diet pills and amphetamines. Their marriage was unhappy and the children — Robert, Charles, Maxon, Sandra and Carol — were frequent witnesses to their parents' loud arguments.

Crumb's first job as an artist was for the Topps company. He was hired by Woody Gelman and drew illustrations for an internal publication that offered premiums to gum salesmen such as toasters and blenders. Crumb's first major production was a hardcover graphic novel entitled The Yum Yum Book which he drew in 1963. It is a "fractured fairy tale" concerning a frog named Oggie. Oggie climbs a magic beanstalk to escape the fools of earth and there in the clouds falls in love with a giant, silly, sexy girl named Guntra who wants only to devour the frog. This story also introduces the character of Fritz the Cat. As of 2011, the book is in print as a paperback retitled Big Yum Yum Book: the Story of Oggie and the Beanstalk.

In the mid 1960s, Crumb left home and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he designed greeting cards for the American Greetings corporation, and met a group of young bohemians including Buzzy Linhart, Liz Johnston, and others. Johnston introduced him to his future wife, Dana Morgan. In 1967, encouraged by the reaction to some drawings he had published in underground newspapers, including Philadelphia's Yarrowstalks, Crumb moved to San Francisco, California, the center of the counterculture movement. Crumb, with the backing of Don Donahue, published the first issue of his Zap Comix on January 18, 1968, printed by Beat poet Charles Plymell. After years in California, and a second marriage to Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Crumb and family moved to a small village near Sauve in southern France in 1993, where he now resides.