Several strips engage with the rising Black Power movement, like ‘Josephine the Cross-Eyed Quadroon in Shakin’ the Afri-Can’ whose title alone would have gotten some Liberals’ riled up back in 1976. He is always drawn to say the unsayable, and introduced Mr Snoid, a deeply unlikable and usurious little man, to do just that. There is some extremely good drawing, and the occasional laugh, but by this time Mr Natural’s schtick was starting to feel a little too extended.ĭuring this period Crumb was still finding plenty to poke fun at in the dregs of the counter-culture, and the volatile Feminist movement. However Crumb was never terribly satisfied with the strip and terminated it after a year, after which he retired the character for a long time. The first part of this book is occupied by a weekly Mr Natural strip Crumb produced for the Village Voice to help pay his tax bill, in which Mr Natural gets a sidekick, Billy Bob, who’s trying to record his wisdom for posterity – the joke being, of course, that he has none to offer. As always, it gets the job done some may think the lifework and proportion crude but it expresses and communicates what the author wants it to tell you, and that’s is really what good cartooning is all about. Kominsky’s cartooning is much more assured, but still retains its naive charm. Confessional and very open about their very particular relationship and sexual fantasies, their collaboration, ironically titled ‘Krumb & Kominsky in Their Cute Lil’ Life’ sees them grow up, move to a new area away from old friends and hippy communes, and face the fact that the days of drugs and happenings are behind them and the material world is knocking on their door (with a tax demand). Where their previous stories often had fanciful elements, these are much more down to earth.

Some of these troubles are touched on in Dirty Laundry 2, the second volume of his collaborations with his soon to be wife, Aline Kominsky, in which each draws themselves in each panel where they interact and the whole panel when they are apart. Volume 11 takes us from late 1975 to early 1977, a period when Crumb lost a key case to retain copyright of his Keep on Truckin’ concept and was then investigated by the IRS, which cost him his house and life savings.

It chronicles his rise to fame as a precocious Underground cartoonist, his disaffection with his counter-culture roots and move towards more autobiographical material. Robert Crumb is one of America’s finest cartoonists, and Fantagraphics’ seventeen volume collection of his life’s work, from his unpublished early sketchbooks onwards, is a real treat for students of the genre.

The Book of Mr. Natural by Robert Crumb