Crumb - by Dan Nadel (Paperback)

About the Book

"'Crumb' by Dan Nadel explores the life of Robert Crumb, a pioneering artist who transformed the comics medium into a space for adult expression and helped shape 20th-century American culture. Known for creating the underground comic book industry and iconic works like Fritz the Cat and Zap Comix, Crumb's life story is marked by childhood abuse, early fame, and his unique role in both underground and mainstream cultures. The book delves into Crumb's complex family life, the rise of underground comics in the 1960s, the counterculture, and the challenges of the hippie dream. With forty-five black-and-white images and a sixteen-page color insert, the biography traces seven decades of Crumb's work, revealing the essence of his extraordinary artistic journey"--

Book Synopsis

"A definitive and ideal biography--pound for pound, one of the sleekest and most judicious I've ever read." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

A critical darling, Crumb is the first biography of Robert Crumb--one of the most profound and influential artists of the 20th century--whose frank, and meticulously rendered cartoons and comics inspired generations of readers and cartoonists, from Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel.

Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, delivers a "gripping and essential account" (The Boston Globe) of how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact.

Braiding biography with "cultural history and criticism...that honors the complexity of [its] subject, even, perhaps particularly, when it gets ugly" (Los Angeles Times), Crumb is the story of a richly complex life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of post-war America. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure, Crumb spans the pressures of 1950s suburban America and Crumb's highly dysfunctional early family life; the history of comics and graphic satire; 20th-century popular music; the world of the counterculture; the birth of underground comic books in 1960s San Francisco with Crumb's Zap Comix; the economic challenges and dissolution of the hippie dream; and the path Robert Crumb blazed through it all.

Written with Crumb's cooperation, this fascinating, rollicking book takes in seven decades of Crumb's iconic works, including Fritz the Cat, Weirdo, and his adaptation of the Book of Genesis and "floats Crumb on the rapids of his times" (Harper's Magazine), capturing, in the process, the essence of an extraordinary artist.

Review Quotes

A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2025

"This new biography from expert Dan Nadel traces Crumb's turbulent life and far-reaching impact, explaining not only his unique talent, but also how he clawed out the space and money to create comics that were weird, satirical, and adult against the resistance of a conservative and stolid culture."
--LitHub

"Dan Nadel brings his singularly tilted perspective to the most monolithic visual prankster of the last century, walking us deep into the epicenter of R. Crumb's complex world. With empathy, wisdom, and a profound ability to situate the artist within the political and social realities that formed him, this book will stand tall next to the great biographies as a window into the counterculture at the moment we need it most. A witty, wise and unusual writer, Nadel upcycles the rags of American history to craft something boldly new, about a man who is both omnipresent and utterly unknown." --Lena Dunham

"Crumb is fabulous, an engrossing biography, both intimate about the man but insightful about the times. Dan Nadel has written a revealing 'portrait of the artist as a young man'--but also about the mature curmudgeon we all know as 'R. Crumb, ' the signature Sixties artist of underground comics. Hilarious at times, poignant and always empathetic, Crumb is a marvelous trip crafted by a brilliant biographer."
--Kai Bird, co-author of Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

"There's no better guide through the rough, raw underworld of R. Crumb than Dan Nadel. A definitive account that reads like an intimate memoir, Crumb's scenic history of counterculture cartooning in America contains the same propulsive energy and vivid details as its subject."
--Prudence Peiffer, author of The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever

"The intimacy of Robert Crumb's work has fascinated me for more than half my life. Every artist should read this book!"
--KAWS

"This is a great biography that explores the complexity of one of the world's greatest cartoonists ever."
--Art Spiegelman, author of Maus

"Before you know it, Dan has nimbly and enjoyably laid out the entire guts of five decades of the life and work of Crumb. Crumb's work is realer than real and Dan lets it live as it was and is."
--Bill Callahan, author of Letters to Emma Bowlcut

About the Author

Dan Nadel is a writer and curator. His previous books include, It's Life as I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940-1980; Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945-1976; and Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900-1969. Nadel has curated exhibitions for galleries and museums internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the founder of PictureBox, a publishing and packaging company that produced over one hundred books, objects, and zines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award-winning design for Wilco's 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. Dan is the curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.