R. Crumb created Zap Comix and such characters as Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat. His comics were a staple of the 1960s counterculture, and came out of his nightmares, fantasies and fetishes. There was a time when he wanted to censor that part of himself — but then he took LSD. He told Terry Gross about that experience in a 2005 interview. We'll also hear from his wife Aline Kominsky Crumb, who is also a cartoonist. Film critic Justin Chang reviews the new Marvel film, Thunderbolts*.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Who is R. Crumb and why is he significant?
I wanted to ask you about that. Did you want your more sexually oriented comic to function as turn-ons, to be like pornography in the lives of its readers? No, I didn't.
It was only for myself. I had no motive to turn other people on to my sexual fantasies or my sexual preferences at all. It was just expressing what was inside myself in some way that...
that revealed, hopefully, the metaphor that it was, you know, in many variations of that, you know, the Angel Food McSpade, the Vulture Demonesses, or the Bigfoot Sasquatch character that I did, the big hairy female, or the Devil Girl character. These are all... And when feminists complain, say, these aren't real women, these are Crumb's fantasies, they're absolutely right. Right.
I got no argument with that. Yeah, that's what it is. It all comes out of my mind.
Well, in your new book, you describe yourself as sexually in a state of arrested development. You say, all my natural compulsions are perverted and twisted.
Right, right. I see myself as a very negative person, actually. I'm almost like a... negative of the normal well-adjusted guy you know I'm the everything that he is is I'm not and everything I am he's not you know it's almost how I see myself maybe not a hundred percent but you know I'm like the person of the night he's a guy of the day you know blah etc etc you know
Now, when you were young, you went for a while to Catholic school. For a while, you went regularly to church. You say you went through a period of being fervent and devout. Religious, yeah. What happened to all those fantasies that you had during this period when these fantasies would have just been horrifying to you?
Horrible guilt. Horrible guilt, of course. Praying desperately. Please, God, what is this about? Yeah.
Did you pray to get rid of these thoughts?
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