God's Bosom and Other Stories: The Historical Strips of Jack Jackson: written and illustrated by Jack Jackson (1967-1992; collected 1995): The late and much lamented Jack Jackson was a Texas cartoonist of terrific ability with an unusual-for-comics interest in history. Much of his best work from the 1960's onwards, including several novel-length comics works, examines the history of Texas and some of its most famous and infamous characters.
God's Bosom collects the eponymous piece and more than a dozen other pieces devoted to history. These include cartoon op-eds on then-current Texas problems, comic strips about why Texans hate Yankees, and brief histories of Zap Comix and Apex Novelty Press. The bulk of the volume comprises lengthier historical pieces that range from G-rated histories of famous Texas highways and the Colt revolver to graphic treatments of both fictional and factual horrors of the past.
The two masterpieces of the collection are "God's Bosom" and "Nits Make Lice." The first is a partially fictionalized retelling of a Spanish shipwreck in the New World in the early 16th century. The survivors undergo a harrowing quest for safety that goes almost as badly as such a quest can go. It's a graphic, stomach-turning tale of survival and death. "Nits Make Lice" is, if anything, even more graphic and disturbing. It tells of the massacre of a band of Cheyenne in pre-statehood Colorado by the U.S. military in the late 19th century. It's as tragic and awful as it sounds in its indictment of America's genocidal foundation. The other pieces don't come up to these levels, but very few short works in comics do.
Throughout the collection, Jackson's art -- mostly realistic, but with a clever gift for caricature and 'cartoonyness' when appropriate -- shines. It's beautiful stuff even when it depicts the horrible, with a sure command of line and an attention to telling detail. Jackson was a master with an unflinching eye. One can't unsee some of the things he depicts here. Highly recommended.
Complete Crumb Comics Volume 5: written and illustrated by Robert Crumb (1968/Collected 1990): It took four volumes for Fantagraphics to get to the public beginning of Robert Crumb's career in cartooning. Volume 5 of the Complete Crumb Comics offers a grab-bag of Crumb's late 1960's "Hippy Comix," with such familiar characters as Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat making early appearances. And the infamous Angelfood McSpade. Can't forget her. And the cover to that Big Brother and the Holding Company album.
This is a series for completists, after all. It's all fascinating stuff, and while much of it really is for completists only, Crumb is such a towering talent in the history of cartooning that even his throwaway material is worth pondering. Some of the material here is graphic and disturbing, and Crumb's problematic 1960's and early 1970's use of violence (sexual and non-sexual) towards women is on full display. Never has one cartoonist so unapologetically, exhaustively and fearlessly exposed the contents of his own Id, to such great and disturbing artistic effect. Highly recommended.
Crumb: directed by Terry Zwigoff; starring Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky, Charles Crumb, and Max Crumb (1994): Zwigoff's labour-of-love documentary, filmed over the course of nearly a decade, lays bare some of the tortured family and personal history of the great American writer-artist Robert Crumb. It also dwells too much upon the psychosexual aspects of Crumb's artistic output, leaving about 90% of his body of work underexplored.
I can see why this happens -- the psychosexual stuff is definitely the most provocative work for an audience that may not know Crumb or his output. Though they might have sat still for half-an-hour of Crumb's in-depth musings on music, 'authentic' culture, pop culture, or psychoanalysis. I guess we'll never know.
Crumb's interactions with his two brothers form the core of the movie's (unspoken) thesis -- that Crumb's ability to write and draw, and more importantly his ability to get that artistic output into the public eye, saved him from a life of psychological horror and isolated squalor. His two brothers are tragic wrecks -- highly intelligent, idiosyncratic artists themselves, and utterly damned by some combination of nature and nurture to lead secluded lives of quiet desperation. They are, quite simply, Robert Crumb as through a glass darkly.
Meanwhile, Crumb bops along, sometimes tortured himself but perpetually in motion, perpetually drawing (some of the most riveting scenes in the documentary simply show Crumb drawing -- and boy, is he fast and precise when he wants to be! His dialogue with his son comes across as a quick explanation of how an experienced cartoonist 'cheats' in order to create a specific effect, and should probably be required viewing for anyone with serious designs on being an artist).
Present and former girlfriends and wives show up to interact with Crumb and to delve into their relationships with him. Critics praise his work, or condemn it as being hateful of women and thus potentially dangerous (this was the height of McKinnon/Dworkin group-think about how pornography was in and of itself rape, as indeed were all heterosexual sex acts regardless of consent, because all male/female sex is rape...good times!).
Crumb himself comes across as seemingly disingenuous about the content of some of his work until one realizes that he simply can't afford the luxury of self-editing because people may get offended -- as he says at one point, if he doesn't draw and write out his thoughts, he starts to go crazy. In some cases, what's on the page seems to be spewed forth directly from his Id. Is it offensive? Oh, yeah, sometimes.
Is it Art? Oh, yeah -- the greatest body of work of any American writer-artist, ever. I'm not even sure if anyone is even close to Crumb's body of work and the now-fifty-year-long level of achievement therein. The gap between him and everyone else in his field in the United States is as great as the gap between Shakespeare and everyone else in English literature. Maybe greater. And all of it done singing out of darkness. Highly recommended.
