Crumb : Vida de historietista

Robert Crumb is often credited with transforming American comics into an adult medium, cementing it as a spearhead of the counterculture, laying the foundations for the underground comix industry, and establishing an aesthetic as recognizable, popular, iconic, and imitated as that of Walt Disney or Charles Schulz. Dan Nadel portrays in depth how this complex artist survived the abuse of his childhood, sudden fame in his youth, and a constant struggle with his destructive obsessions, ultimately emerging unscathed. But more than just a biography of an iconic cartoonist, Crumb is a chronicle of an intense and complex life at the forefront of the counterculture, addressing, among other things, the oppressive atmosphere of 1950s America and the extremely dysfunctional family life that marked the artist's childhood; the history of comics and graphic satire; the world of the counterculture and the birth of underground comics in 1960s San Francisco thanks to the launch of Zap Comix; The economic challenges posed by independence, the dissolution of the hippie dream and its assimilation and exploitation by mainstream industry; 20th-century popular music; the sexual and racial violence that Robert's generation sought to leave behind… Robert Crumb navigated all of this, searing his comics into the minds of an international audience. If his urgent message hadn't resonated at the time, it would be impossible to imagine a graphic novel market like the one we have today; without his work, committed to breaking down taboos, beautifully drawn, and formally inventive, we wouldn't have a Maus, a Persepolis, a Fun Home. The result is a fascinating and thrilling biography that follows six decades of an unrepeatable body of work (from the sprawling Fritz the Cat to the everyday life of his last works in collaboration with his wife Aline Kominsky and his disconcerting adaptation of Genesis, passing through his decisive period during the eighties at the helm of Weirdo magazine, in which he completely renewed the autobiographical genre and created some of his most memorable comics) capturing in the process the essence of an extraordinary artist.