Aline Kominsky Crumb
Appearances
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
We get into our George and Gracie bit when we're doing that. I mean, I feel like I'm playing my role somewhat. And you kind of feed me lines, and I react in a way that I don't necessarily do in our real life. So what are your personas like in the cartoons? He's the straight man. He's George. He feeds the lines, and I take him up and run with him, and I'm like the fool.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
He's like from a Minnesota farm family and I'm from like a long line of schmata sales people. Would you tell the story of how you both met? Who tells it, me or you, Robert?
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
Okay, well, I was like being a Jewish cowgirl in Arizona at the time, and I thought I was completely unique.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
This is like in the late 60s, maybe around 69, 70. And I thought I was the only Jewish girl being a cowgirl at the time. I thought I was really being a wild adventurist. And then I saw a comic book called... Dale Steinberger, the Jewish cowgirl, done by an artist named R. Crumb. And I thought, this guy's like stolen my life here. How can this be?
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
And at the same time, I also saw a character called Honey Bunch Kaminsky, and my last name is Kaminsky. And I thought, no, wait a minute, this is really weird. And then I met a bunch of other cartoonists who met me and said, you look just like an R. Crumb character. we have to introduce you to him.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
So after I finished art school in Arizona, I moved to San Francisco, and then two weeks later I met Robert, and I had a strange sinking feeling that my destiny was sort of going to be forever entwined with his, and he looked at me and said, you have cute knees, and all he felt was lust and didn't think anything more. That's my version. Well, that's pretty much how it was, yeah.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
I got a hard time from the other feminist cartoonists for going out with Robert. That was like a disaster.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
Well, I was really happy that somebody liked my physical type, finally. I was really flattered that that was his ideal woman.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
Well, it corresponded with my own sick masochism. But aside from that, I thought that a cartoonist had no right to tell me who to go out with and how to conduct my personal life. And in real life, Robert was my best fan, the most supportive person ever.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
I could have ever been with in terms of my work and even though being with him may have affected the public's perception of my work it didn't affect my desire to work at all because he was such a supportive person to live with always like he laughs at my stories more than anybody and harder he falls on the ground laughing so hard I do it's true she makes me fall on the ground but the feminist cartoonist she'll say I'll be falling on the ground she'll say what's wrong you get up get off the ground what are you doing down there
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
But in the early women comics, there were some very angry women, and they really hated and resented Robert's work. When I started going out with him, they started to ice me out, and then they started to reject my comics from their books, saying that they weren't feminist enough. My feminist consciousness was not evolved enough. and Diane Newman was also in that group.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
I brought her into that early group also. We met, and I really liked her, and I liked her work, and then she started going out with Bill Griffith, so she was also iced out, and they called us camp followers, as a matter of fact, in an article in the Berkeley Barb.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
So Diane and I then broke off from the group and started Twisted Sisters, and we saw ourselves as feminists, but we were more like bad girl feminists that wanted to have sex with men and dress in sexy clothes and play it for all we could get out of it and still be totally in control of ourselves. We thought of ourselves more as sexy Amazons, which also went along with the way Robert saw women.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
So when he'd do things like vulture demonesses, I said, yeah, I could go with that. I kind of feel like that. Or devil girl, yeah, I'm devil girl. There's a part of me that really likes that. I'm really strong. I like to show my strength. I was always like that. I never felt victimized. I never felt afraid of anything.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
Absolutely. So there was something that really appealed to me in his depiction of women. He was kind of the wimpy guy that was like, you know, idolized and was tortured by and fearful of women. All of those things wrapped up into one, you know, and I could relate to it.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
Well, you know, since he was a reject all through high school when he was younger, he was missing his front teeth and he was kind of funny looking and no woman would ever look at him. And then all of a sudden when he got famous, like all these women wanted to have sex with him, he was like completely overwhelmed and he just wanted it all. And he couldn't handle any of it.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
And he said yes to everybody. So there would be like tons of people around who didn't know what they were supposed to be doing and were just sort of like hanging around him. And it was... created a terrible kind of chaos. And some of those people were actually mentally unbalanced. And it was the 60s, and everybody was taking drugs, too, so it was just a complete chaotic scene.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
And plus, there was a certain amount of money coming in, and then rock stars were hanging around him.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
It was a very decadent, very chaotic, disgusting, unclear... For me, it was an uncomfortable scene. I actually fled from that at one point, and then Robert came and sought me out afterwards because I think that he realized he had to get out of that. It was like some kind of survival thing. But I felt that he was sinking in that, and I felt that it was going to destroy him.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
But going back to the beginning, I have to say that I think that, you know, I was 23 when I met Robert. He was in his late 20s. And I think that we both came from very dysfunctional—I hate to use that word—families and that— I think we parented each other. I think that we both completed each other's childhoods in a positive way so that then we functioned much better as adults as time went on.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
You were my life ref, too. You were the kind father that I never had. And you were my best fan. Oh, I'm going to cry. And you really supported me as an artist, too. So I feel it's completely mutual. Thank you, dear.
Fresh Air
R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics
Thank you. Love the laughs. Thanks, Terry. It was fun.