The first biography of Robert Crumb—one of the most influential comics artists of the 20th century—whose cartoons and comics inspired generations of readers and cartoonists, from Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel.
Nadel’s gripping and essential book makes good on this claim; his biography is the story of how one highly flawed and preternaturally gifted man augured a revolution in comic book storytelling with his discomfiting, sexually frank, intensely personal oeuvre ... Moving.
A definitive and ideal biography — pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I’ve ever read. He’s latched onto a fascinating and complicated figure, which helps ... Nadel...is an instinctive storyteller, one with a command of the facts and a relaxed tone that also happens to be grainy, penetrating, interested in everything, alive ... There are a lot of road trips in this biography ... Nadel is a canny visual reader of comics, and he traces Crumb’s influence on a long line of cartoonists.
Comprehensive and lucid ... Nadel is at his best when he is laying out the cultural, personal and artistic forces that led to the qualities and work that Crumb would come to be best known for ... [Nadel] never seems to fully grapple with the pushback Crumb has so regularly received for his work ... Though the biography may not be outright hagiography, it often hews too closely to the story of Crumb’s life as told by Crumb, which leaves little room for the ways that his behavior and work may have affected others — especially but not only those in his own industry — for the worse ... Fans of Crumb and those invested in learning more about the history of underground comics will find much to embrace.
