Fresh Air - R. Crumb, King Of Underground Comics

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

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

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And if you already support us via NPR Plus or other means, thank you. Your support means so much to us, now more than ever. You help make NPR shows freely available to everyone. We're proud to do this work for you and with you. Okay, let's start the show. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. R. Crumb is the most renowned of the underground cartoonists who emerged in the 1960s.

He created Zap comics, featuring an entire menagerie of his characters, such as Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, the Snowyed, and Devil Girl. His comics were eccentric, and so was he, as a 1994 documentary by Terry Zweigoff makes clear. Crumb wrote a memoir in 2005 titled The R. Crumb Handbook. Reviewing the book then in Newsweek, Malcolm Jones wrote, quote, Crumb has made strange and hilarious art out of his own neuroses. Insecure and paranoid, obsessed with sex in general and women with big

behinds in particular, Crumb has never been afraid to draw and write about his own foibles and fantasies. His work is like an id unleashed with no thought for propriety." R. Crumb's work has been controversial, considered racist and misogynistic. Now there's a new biography of Crumb by fellow cartoonist and founder of the Picture Box comics Dan Nadel. Crumb is now 81 years old and lives in France where he's resided for decades. We're going to listen back to Terry's 2005 interview with R. Crumb. R. Crumb, welcome to Fresh Air.

Do you think your early comics, some of the ones that anthologized in your new book, do you think they look different out of the time period than they did to you in their time? Different from this perspective of nowadays? Yeah. Well, they're kind of timeless, you know, because they looked out of time then. When I did them in the beginning in 66, 67, 68, people looked at them and said,

hey, these look like old comics from the 30s. You know what? And some people, when they met me, were surprised that I was a young man at the time. They thought I would be some old guy. So they already looked out of time then, and so they just kind of still look like their own thing. They don't, and I think a lot of young people pick them up.

They don't, when they first see them, don't realize how old they are. They just don't, they don't seem to be part of the 60s as it's known stylistically to such stuff as Peter Max or the psychedelic posters and all that stuff. It doesn't fit in with that. It's kind of its own thing. In your new book, The Arkham Handbook, you describe how you started some aspects of your style after a bad LSD trip. What were the images that you saw when you were tripping that made their way into your cartoons?

Whoa. That's a tough question. What were the images on LSD? What did they look like? Ooh. Well, I don't know. For some reason, I don't know why or how it happened. I just, on this one really strange LSD trip that I took, but there was something wrong with the drug, I got trapped in some level of the mental collective consciousness that

was very tawdry and carnival-like in a kind of a cheap, gaudy way. It just stuck there. I was stuck there for months until I actually, what cleared it up was taking another dose of LSD, made it go away. Well, how do you think your drawing style was actually changed by this hallucinogenic imagery? It was changed vastly. Well, before that, I was trying to be, you be, in order to get work as an artist and a cartoonist, I was trying to be contemporary and with it. And I looked at the work of people like Jules Feiffer and the LSD just blew all that away completely. And I was always drawing in my sketchbooks all the time.

And I was just drawing these images that were coming from my brain all the time in that two months uncontrollably, just completely changed my whole approach to what I was doing, to the cartooning, and took on this older 30s, 40s, and I started looking more closely at these kind of brand X third rate comics from the 40s that were drawn in that style

by these Artists that never were achieved, you know renowned among even among comics people They were a third-rate artist, but they had this working-class proletarian funky crude vulgar these comics were very vulgar violent So what are some of the characters that you started drawing in this period after taking the LSD? That was my first in that two month period when my ego was completely fragmented by that

bad LSD. I drew Mr. Natural, Flaky Funt, Angel Food McSpade, the Snowids, the Vulture Goddesses, Vulture Demonesses, whatever you want to call them. I know lots of characters, the old Pooperoo. Okay, Mr. Natural is this kind of like guru kind of figure with a long, really long beard. Was he based on anybody who you knew or a type that you knew? It was actually more or less a combination of the mysticism of LSD experiences combined with his old

Cartoon stereotype of the little old man with a long beard There's several of these kind of like standard You know cartoon figure and old comic strips going back to the 20s even earlier Probably that little little old funny little old man with a long beard Nothing I invent anything out a whole cloth. It's all has antecedents in the popular culture all of it and Angel food McSpade I mean there's an African American woman who is drawn Like some of the black people in your early comics look like the African cannibals in the Betty Boop cartoon where they have her in a big pot. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Why? Precisely. Why did you draw them that way? Because they were there and they were part of the whole experience of all that tawdry, low class imagery that was boiling in my brain. That was part of it. It's that jungle bunny image that was there. That was part of it. It's that jungle bunny image that was there.

It was part of it. It wasn't there before, but it boiled up. So it's obviously in the collective subconscious and I just didn't have any control. I just had to draw what was there. And I don't think Angel Flumik Spade can really legitimately be called an African-American woman. called an African American woman. It's a cartoon stereotype, crazy image of something that's like in the imaginations of people. It's not actually a representation of an African American woman. Did you worry that people would misconstrue it?

Because certainly a lot of people didn't see it that way. They just saw it as a crude stereotype. Yes, they did. A lot of people didn't see it that way. They just saw it as a crude stereotype. Yes, they did. A lot of people just took it at face value. And I can't let that stop me. It has to come out. What's in there had to come out had it. I really couldn't stop it.

And if I worried about how it was going to be construed too much, obviously, I had some concern of that. But I don't want to be construed too much. I mean, obviously I had some concern of that, but I don't want to be too hurtful, but at the same time I had to put on the paper, I had this direct line from the brain stem to the paper. There was no super ego, the socialized self, all that was just swept away.

And it was swept away in your sexual imagery too. You betcha, yeah. So, you know, I have no secrets. I'm probably one of the few human beings on the planet that I have no secrets. Everybody who looks at my comics knows exactly what I'm about. It's all there. Everybody knows what your sexual fetishes are and everything. The darkest side of me, it's all on paper. So that allows me to be a pretty nice guy in real life. It's all out there on paper, foisted on the public. Was there ever a part of you that wanted to censor that part of your mind or at least

kind of keep it private and hidden, which is what most people do with those? Of course. Yeah, sure. I'm a normal person that way. Before those LSD experiences and I just decided to let that all out, I used to make those drawings and tear them up and flush them down the toilet. I'd think, oh, this is terrible. What's wrong with you? Or is it white? You know. But, and also, as I started doing it for publication, then the floodgates opened. The crack just got wider and wider until I just let it all out. Let it all out there.

All the dark side of myself. It's all out there. I have less of that impulse now. I think I got out of my system a lot of it. What was it like for you to go from like loner eccentric weirdo to like in-demand popular person. Everybody wants to publish and buy and no. Right, Mr. Cool Guy.

It was very disorienting because I was quite young. I was only like 25, 26 when all that happened originally. It was both thrilling to my ego and big ego, but also very confusing and scary even because suddenly this whole element of people that I'd never ever had any dealings with before were suddenly there interested in me, wanting to hustle me, wanting this and that, everything, you know, get, sign me to a five-year exclusive contract, dah, dah, dah, you know, these people are trying to cash in on the hippie culture and the youth movement and make money off it, you know, and I was so young I didn't know how to deal with all that.

But at the same time, it made me more attractive to women, so that part of it was nice. So, before that, I was like this, you know, nerd that at a party, no woman even noticed. I was just part of the shrubbery or something. But after that, oh, here's our girl. Oh, you know, suddenly they were interested and that was nice. Well, you were also, like suddenly you were an important part of like the hippie counterculture. Did you identify with that culture? Did you feel like a part of it? Well, I guess, you know, the elements of that culture, like the music and the stylistic stuff,

no, I didn't identify with that at all. Iify with some of the values, like the political values, some of the, like, the Eastern religious stuff that people were into. I, like, I was attracted to that and, you know, the drug thing, the psychedelic drugs, I was into that part of it. And I also got caught up in the general optimism and hopefulness and idealism of that time, late 60s, you know. But stylistically, I was always alienated from it. I hated the music. You're right that puppet and marionette kids shows made a deep impression on you. You say the adult assumption was that

these puppets were cute and lovable, but they were actually grotesque. And the shows tried to tell kids that life could be fun and exciting, but the unconscious message was that the adult world is strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister. What was it about like Howdy Doody or the other Kukla friend and Ollie that you found like grotesque and sinister? Oh especially Howdy Doody. It was really grotesque. Hi kids! And Clarabelle the clown and all, it was all very, very sinister and

scary. And Buffalo Bob Smith, did you ever see that stuff? You bet, I sure did. My wife, Aileen, actually, she grew up in New York, she actually got to be in the Peanut Gallery when she was a kid on the Buffalo Bob show and the Howdy Doody show. She said it was a defining moment in her life. She was like eight years old or something, seven years old. And she saw the adult world behind the scenes of the Howdy Doody show and how these people

were all kind of cranky and stressed. And she said the seat of the pants of Bob Smith's outfit was kind of frayed and you know. And he was like, real mean to the kids when it was off camera. Kukla Faranali was cuter though. Kukla Faranali, that was a little bit, that was better than Howdy Doody that way. It was more lovable.

You know, Kukla was kind of cute, little lovable guy, little hand puppet. It franned, like the woman, she was like talking to the puppet. So it was a little more reassuring. It franned the woman, she was like talking to the puppet. So it was a little more reassuring. It was cuter. Did the frozen smile on Howdy Doody's face strike you as deranged? It was just creepy and weird. You just say, what the heck? What does that have to do with anything? It didn't look like a kid. He was supposed to be like a kid in a cowboy suit, but he didn't come off. He just came off as a creature like from Mars. There's some underlying thing you can't quite define that was just disturbing

and sinister and scary about it all, all that stuff. Okay, the things that you say about these puppet shows, that they show that the adult world is strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister, that's the kind of description of what your cartoons became like. Strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister. It's like that's what you set out to do. Well, yeah, but I guess what... Not for children, of course. I mean, it wasn't for children. Yeah. What I was trying to do was to uncover that sinister quality, the dark, sinister,

strange, disturbing part of things and not hide it, not keep it hidden. I started doing that in 68, 69, putting it out there, the snowids, you know, they were these little creepy gnome creatures that I, at LSD, I would catch out of the corner of my eye, sneaking around and giggling in the background of my life. I had to show that, I wanted to show that sinister aspect, that noir dark side of things and how it's I guess it's almost like making fun of the veneer of cuteness or whatever it is that they think covers that, you know. It's just all a veneer. It's not real cuteness. It's a completely fake attempt to cover up what life is really about in the whole mass

media thing. We're all, in Girl Up in America, you're a child of the mass media, of the pop culture, unless your parents guard you and protect you from that very conscientiously other, my parents didn't. They shoved us in front of the TV, and we're just products of pop culture. So that's what you have have to work with. We've talked a little bit about how your visual imagery was changed by LSD. What about your sexual fantasies? I mean so much of the comics that you've done have had to do with sexual fantasy. Hi girls!

Were they were those fantasies as dark before LSD as they were after? Yeah, unfortunately, the LSD didn't really change much in my way of my sexual fantasies, but I found a way to express them that made them metaphorical to me. I could saw them more metaphorically. You know, in In LSD you see that life, everything in our world is a metaphor. Or as Alan Ginsberg said, things are symbols of themselves. And so I saw my own sexual fantasies that way. It's all, and try to understand what they meant metaphorically. Otherwise, we just feel helpless in this face. Things don't mean anything.

We feel helpless. What does it mean? What do these fantasies mean? Where do they come from? Why do I have them? I don't understand or express that somehow in some way. I got off to drawing those things. I got off drawing them.

I admit it. I confess. But that's, I wanted to ask you about that. Did you want your more sexually oriented comics to function as turn-ons, to be like pornography? No. Pornography in the lives of its readers? Or did you want it? No, I didn't. Uh-huh.

No. It was only for myself. I had no motive to turn other people into my sexual fantasies or my sexual preferences at all. It was just expressing what was inside myself in some way that revealed, hopefully, the metaphor that it was, and many variations of that. 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, these are crumbs fantasies, they're absolutely right.

I can't, you know, I got no argument with that. Yeah, that's what it is, yeah. Yes, this comes, all comes out of my mind. Well, in your new book you describe yourself as in a sex, as sexually in a state of arrested development. You say, all my natural compulsions are perverted and twisted. Right, right. So, I see myself as a very, as a very negative person actually. I'm kind of almost like a negative of the normal, well-adjusted guy. Everything that he is is, I'm not, and everything I am, he's not.

It's almost how I see myself. Maybe not 100%, but I'm like the person of the night, he's a guy of the day, etc., etc. No. When you were young, you went for a while to Catholic school, he's a guy of the day, et cetera, et cetera. 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? Did you pray to get rid of these thoughts? You know, it's a funny thing. At the same time the thoughts were, those fantasies were attractive and gave me pleasure. At the same time, I was deeply disturbed by their sinfulness. So something had to go and what went was the church and the whole sin thing. That had to go. You quote one woman in your book as accusing you of ruining underground comics by encouraging all the younger boy artists to be bad and do comics about their

own horrible sex fantasies. Do you feel like your comics inspired a lot of other comics of kind of bad sexual misogynist? Yeah, I did. misogynist. Yeah. Well, it just, you know, opened the gates for other young boys who had these, who probably were also comic nerds when they grew up, and that's why they're drawing comics. And so they also had the same kind of frustrations and resentment towards women or the same kind of, not precisely, I never saw anybody else draw precisely the same kind of stuff

that I drew about sex, but you know, similar things or just it allowed them, it permitted them when they saw my work, it crumbs, he's cool and he's doing it, so you know, I guess I can draw stuff that puts women in this position too, but you know, of having violent acts committed against women, but I don't think, I can't think of any artist offhand who is like totally obsessed with just drawing brutal violence against women. I think that's just, you know, but you know, feminists and other people that are involved in any kind of a, you know, political obsession like that and you can't blame them for it. There's no, they're looking for that.

So they're looking, oh, here's one right here. Look, here's an example of, you know, somebody being violent to women or here's somebody abusing a woman, you know, they're looking, oh, here's one right here. Look, here's an example of somebody being violent to women, or here's somebody abusing a woman. You know, they're looking for that. And yeah, sure, you can find it. It's there. Yep. Do you?

But one of my defenses is that I don't think I ever drew it in such a way as it could be taken as propaganda for behavior like that. I don't make that sort of behavior towards women look heroic or commendable. I mean, the characters that are doing those things are always, you know, creepy little twisted guys.

They're not, you know, heroic virtuous images of, that someone would want to emulate. R. Crumb speaking with Terry Gross in 2005. We'll continue their conversation after a break, and we'll also listen to a later interview in which the cartoonist is joined by another cartoonist, his wife, Aileen Kaminsky Crumb. And film critic Justin Chang reviews Thunderbolts,

the newest superhero movie from Marvel. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air. Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.

["The Black Fashion Show"] Are you like me? Do you love picking the best and worst looks on the red carpet? Well, for the first time ever, The Met is dedicating their annual gala to the history of black fashion. So from where I'm sitting, the looks could be really good

or not. I mean, will someone wear a do-rag when they shouldn't? Let's get into the backstory of black fashion and rate the best and worst looks together. This week on the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR. Before you started doing underground comics, you worked for American Greetings. Right. Were you doing greeting cards or? Yes. Yes, I drew hundreds Were you doing greeting cards or?

Yes. Yes, I drew hundreds and hundreds of greeting cards. Gosh, I'd like to see those. Have they been exhibited? No. What were they like? They're pretty bland. They're bland.

I didn't write them. I just did the drawings. They had a staff of writers. Uh-huh. And you went to work with a nine-to-five job. You punched a time clock. It was in Cleveland. You know, I got up at six o'clock in the morning and took the rapid transit to work every day and

you know, I went to the bar after work and drank with the guys and then went home and asked myself, is this my life? Is this what my life is going to be from now on? So what are some of the things that you drew for the greeting cards? This is what, birthday cards, get well soon cards stuff like that You know they had this department that at that in the late 50s. They started making these kind of more hip looking greeting cards They were tall and thin you know yes, I sure do That that was it. I was in that department and they were there were funny or funny in quotes and funny Yeah, they were there funny And some of them actually were funny. They had a couple of writers who actually were gifted comedy writers who just got stuck

in Cleveland because they were alcoholics or whatever. But they wrote very funny cards. Often their best cards were censored and never used because everything had to pass by the approval of the wife of the guy who owned the Walgreen drug chain. And if she didn't like the cards, then they couldn't be distributed. So some of the best stuff never actually got distributed. Now, we've talked a little bit about how influenced you feel you were by early comics. And musically, so much of the music you love is from the 20s and 30s. How were you first exposed

to like graphics of that period and music of that period? Right, right. Well, as a kid in the 50s, the comics were in decline, the TV wasn't that great, you know, so I used to start looking for older stuff, and the first older stuff that I, you know, that peaked my interest was older comic books that you could find in Salvation Army stores, and also old stuff on the kiddie shows on television. On TV, on these kiddie shows, they showed old cartoons from the 30s, you know, old Betty Boop and Popeye and all that stuff. And the music was great, the drawing style was great,

they were very, very appealing to me as a kid. This is like 53, 54, 55 in there. And the music was, I don't know, just grabbed me somehow and then also you could see these really old Hal Roach comedies, Lauren Hardy, this R Gang, Little Rascal stuff, I loved that stuff when I was a kid. And as I got

into my later teens, I always looked for really early movies that were on TV on the Late Show. Louis from 1930, 31, 32. I just loved the whole style of the period. Somehow it attracted me deeply, the music and everything. And then I started looking for some other way to find the music of that period because I loved hearing it in those TV, you know, runs of those old films and then I discovered old 78 records. I discovered that this old music was actually on these records that were sitting around these same places at the old comic books or in other old stuff and so I started buying old 78s and and still collecting them today.

And how did you start playing banjo? I had musical inclinations from childhood and at first I tried to make myself a cigar box ukulele but that didn't play so well. I couldn't really make it play efficiently and effectively so then my mother for Christmas when I was 12 years old gave me a plastic ukulele, which was playable. I could actually tune it and play it, so I learned to play that. And then I graduated to the banjo later. I just like attracted to old music, you know.

I was kind of out of it, nerd. I wasn't really much into rock and roll or things of my contemporaries. I don't know. rock and roll, or things of my contemporaries. I don't know. Like I said, I'm not going to go negative. I'm kind of an oddball character. R. Crumb speaking to Terry Gross in 2005. Let's listen to the 1929 song, Singing in the Bathtub,

covered by R. Crumb and his cheap suit serenaders from the album of the same name. I'm gonna be a good boy. When we return, we'll listen to another of their conversations from 2007, in which the cartoonist is joined by his wife, Aileen Kaminsky-Krum, who was a cartoonist also. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. In 2007, Terry spoke with R.Krum and his wife Aileen Kaminsky Crum. She was one of the first women to create autobiographical comics back in the 1960s. They married in 1978 and moved to the south of France in the early 90s.

R. Crum created Zap Comics in the 1960s. Aileen first became known for her contributions to women's comics and Twisted Sisters. She died in 2022. The Crumbs sometimes worked together on joint autobiographical cartoons for the New Yorker. When Terry spoke with them, she asked if their personas in those New Yorker cartoons

were much different from who they really were. It's kind of an exaggeration of who we really are, but not that far. It doesn't deviate that far from who we really are. Well, I think I get into my, we get into our George and Gracie bit when we're doing that. I mean, I feel like I'm, you know, playing my role somewhat. And you kind of feed me lines and I react in a way that, you know, I don't necessarily do in our real life. So what are your, 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. But also you're flamboyant, you're gaudy, you're crass, Jewish Long Island thing that you have and you're bold and I'm more kind of gray and Goyish. Yeah, the Jew and the Goy. He's like from a Minnesota farm family and I'm from like a long line of shmata salespeople. Would you tell the story of how you both met?

Who tells it, me or you, Robert? You tell your version, I'll tell my version. Okay, well I was like being a Jewish cowgirl in Arizona at the time, and I thought I was completely unique. What year is this? This was like in the late 60s, or 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 adventurous. 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? You know? 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. 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 gonna 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. And that's my version. Well, that's pretty much how it was, yeah. Yeah. Remember, when you met Aileen, did you think that she looked like

one of your comic characters? I was drawn to her strongly, yeah. She had all the requirements, and you know, but yeah, my initial interest in her was strictly, you know, oh, here's a cute hippie Jewish slut. She'd probably easy out. When did you foresee her work and what did you think of it? Shortly after I met her, because she had just started drawing comics at that time. And she showed me this stuff that she had done in this first comics and they were so crazy and expressionistic. I immediately found them very interesting

and compelling and so deeply personal. And I'd never seen any comics like that drawn by a woman before deeply personal. There was a few women at that time, Trina Robbins and others, who were drawing kind of feminist comics. But to me, there was two kinds. There was Trina stuff, which was like feminist fighting hero types, you know, girl detectives and things. And then there was the hippie flowery stuff that someone like Willie Mendez was doing that's very sweet with unicorns and stuff like that.

And here's Aileen. It's like ugly. It's self-deprecating. It was just very confessional. That was the first time I ever saw a woman do that ever. And it probably was the first time women ever did that in comics. It's like the Jean Reese of comics there. Donna Rickles. Donna Rickles, right.

You know, and as we talked about, Robert, the last time you were on Fresh Air, you know, when you were doing your comics in the 60s, they were kind of very controversial among women. I mean, some women thought they were great, but a lot of women thought that they were really kind of sexist and very few. Very few women thought they were great. Very few women thought they were great. I got a hard time from the other feminist cartoonists for going out with Robert that was like yeah tell us what that was

like what kind of comments did you get about that and what did you think of the way he drew women were you ever you know offended by his emphasis on large breasts and behinds and and the kind of you know sexual obsessions that were you know described in in the comics. Tell the truth Aileen. Well I was really happy that somebody liked my physical type finally. I was really flattered that he that was his like idea. What about all the six sadism and all that stuff? Well it corresponded with my own masochism but aside from that I you know I thought that feminists had a cartoonists had no right to tell me who

to go out with and how to conduct my personal life. In real life, Robert was my best fan, the most supportive person I could have ever been with in terms of my work. 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 know it's true. She makes you 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? 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 like feminist enough. My feminist consciousness was not evolved enough and Diane Newman was also in that group. I brought her into that early group also we met and I really that group. 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 Griffiths. So she was also iced out. And they called us camp followers, as a matter of fact, in an article in the Berkeley Barb. 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 like have sex with men and dress in sexy clothes and play it for all we could get out of it and still be in totally in control of ourselves. We thought of ourselves more as sexy Amazons, which

also went along with the way Robert saw women. So, you know, when he'd do things like vulture demonizes, I said, yeah, I could go with that. I kind of feel like that. Or, you know, devil girl. Yeah, I'm devil girl, you know. 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, you know, so. Matthew 5.30 I'm much more fearful and feel more victimized than Aileen does. Absolutely. You know, 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. Well, Aileen, you write about how when you met Robert, he was like really famous and that... Aileen McClendon At that time, I was only really known in the hippie subculture. Danielle Pletka Well, that eventually maybe, eventually he became famous, but you say he

didn't handle it well and you saw what fame did to him. What did it do? Aileen McClendon 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, all these women wanted to have sex with him.

He was completely overwhelmed and he just wanted it all. And he couldn't handle any of it. And he said yes to everybody. So there would be tons of people around who had, you know, 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 like actually mentally unbalanced, you know.

And it was the 60s and everybody was taking drugs too. So it was just a complete chaotic scene. And plus there was a certain amount of money coming in and then rock stars were hanging around him. so it was it was a very decadent very chaotic disgusting unclear you know for me it was an uncomfortable scene I actually fled from that you know at one point and then Robert came came and sought me out afterwards I think that you know he 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 he was gonna destroy him. And it was a very sad thing. Robert, is that an accurate picture? Afraid so. So yeah, when Aileen fled from it in 74, I went after her, because I realized that she's like the life raft.

And I mean, I said it in interviews and stuff before that I sometimes I think if I hadn't, you know, grabbed onto Aileen, I might be dead now because I was involved with all these crazy women. They're all crazy. You know, and Aileen seemed to have her feet on the ground somehow. And I needed someone like that. She was the only one that was cared enough about me or was willing to, you know, take me on. And I needed someone like that. Aw. So cute.

Aline, is that ever a burden? Because, Aline, like, you have all these, like, kind of, like, demons and crazinesses of your own, but it sounds like in the relationship, have to like be the sane one. No, no, no. It's not like that. No, no, it's not like that. Okay.

It's not like she's the sane one, but that she is better at handling, you know, people. She's better at... she can think on her feet quicker. Like you know, if a journalist comes to the door unannounced and wants to talk to me, let's just have... I'll throw him out. Aileen will throw him out. I just, well, okay. Yeah. And like this last week in France, some journalists came there to talk to me. And I let them in and I'm sitting in the kitchen table, Aileen comes downstairs, she looks around and says, what is this? Who are these people? How'd you get in here?

And Robert told me he didn't want to talk to any more journalists. And Robert, what are you doing? So I was so embarrassed, I got up and fled the room. And Aileen just told those people, de-gaget, she kicked them out. And I couldn't do that. I can't do it. I'm weak. 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, hate to use that word, families, and that I think we parented each other. I think that, you know, we both completed each other's childhoods in a positive way so that then we functioned much better as adults as time went on. And I think that we did that for each other. So, I...

We did, yeah. We parented each other. You were my life raft too. You were the kind father that I never had. Oh. 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 was completely mutual. Thank you, dear. Well, I want to thank you both so much for talking with us. Thank you.

Loads of laughs. Thanks, Terry. It was fun. Cartoonists R. Crumb and his wife Aileen Kaminsky Crumb speaking to Terry Gross in 2007. A new biography of R. Crumb is out by Dan Nadel called Crumb, A Cartoonist's Life. And many of Crumb's original comics, drawings, and scrapbooks have been published by Tashen. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews the latest Marvel superhero movie, Thunderbolts. This is fresh air. Our film critic Justin Chang says that Thunderbolts,

which topped the box office last weekend, is the first Marvel superhero movie in some time that's actually worth seeing. Florence Pugh reprises her role from Black Widow as the CIA operative, Yelena Belova, and there also are return appearances by some Marvel franchise veterans, including Sebastian Stan and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Here is Justin's review. Trauma has become so overused as a plot device that I'm grateful I went into Thunderbolts, not knowing that it would plunge so deeply into its characters' mental health issues. The movie, directed by Jake Schreier from a script by Eric Pearson and Joanna Kahlo, may not be the most original treatment of those issues, but it's sincere and heartfelt in the way it approaches them. It also happens to be the most enjoyable Marvel adventure in some time. It isn't a self-satisfied joke like Deadpool and Wolverine, or a forgettable

slog like this year's Captain America Brave New World. Thunderbolts is an unwieldy jumble, to be sure, and it's been designed, like all Marvel films films to help extend the brand onto infinity. But for an impressive stretch, it actually looks and feels like a real movie, with solid action, vivid emotional stakes, and characters memorable enough that you won't mind seeing them again in the inevitable sequel. The star is the terrific Florence Pugh, who was introduced several movies back as Yelena Belova, the younger sister of Scarlett Johansson's now-deceased Natasha Romanoff. Like Natasha, Yelena is the product of a top-secret Russian program that turned innocent children into spies and assassins.

Years later, Yelena still can't shake off the grim memories of her indoctrination, or her grief over Natasha's death. There's something wrong with me. An emptiness. I thought it started when my sister died, but now it feels like something bigger. Just a void. Yelena now works as undercover muscle for CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who's played by a breezily menacing Julia Louis Dreyfus, with a touch of Veep-style incompetence. Valentina is bad news, and before long, Yelena is betrayed and trapped in a deadly lair in

the middle of nowhere. To get out alive, she must join forces with a few other similarly betrayed and trapped operatives, some of whom have special powers. Hannah John Common plays Ghost, who can pass through walls. Wyatt Russell is enhanced super soldier John Walker, who's kind of like a surly Captain America. And then there's a random nice guy named Bob, played by Lewis Pullman, who has no idea why he's there, and appears to have no powers of any kind. But both he and the movie have a few surprises in store. In time, Yelena, Ghost, Walker, and Bob escape Valentina's clutches. But the danger never lets up, and they must

work together to take her down. Fortunately for them, their ranks soon expand to include the Marvel mainstay Bucky Barnes, a formidable fighter with his own physical and psychological scars, well played as always by recent Oscar nominee Sebastian Stan. And then there's Yelena's boisterous adoptive father, a Russian expat limo driver who goes by the superhero moniker of Red Guardian. He's played by a bumbling, scene-stealing David Harbour. In time this ragtag crew begin calling themselves the Thunderbolts, a name inspired by a youth soccer team that Yelena was a part of years ago. Like that team, Yelena and her unlikely comrades are a scrappy bunch of underperformers,

basically a third-rate Avengers. The story is unapologetically formulaic. Valentina's scheme, which involves turning the Thunderbolts into a public enemy, scheme, which involves turning the Thunderbolts into a public enemy, smacks a bit of Pixar's The Incredibles, and every other Marvel movie that has featured a cataclysmic assault on a major city. But even amid such familiar mayhem, Shrier finds fresh, vivid angles. The action is clear and coherent. The character dynamics strike the right balance of earnest sincerity and glib humor. And it's oddly moving to see the characters put their bickering ways aside and team up to protect as many innocent bystanders as they can. For a brief

moment I was reminded of what made superhero movies fun in the first place, before they became Hollywood's dominant export. But Thunderbolts does have more than fun on its mind, and here's where that trauma element comes in. Yelena is continually haunted by reminders of her past, when she was forced as a child to become a ruthless killing machine. But she isn't the only character here confronting emotional pain and a profound sense of emptiness. The movie builds to a surreal sequence, an almost being-John Malkovich-style romp through the subconscious, that floats some fascinating questions. What if loneliness were the single most destructive force in existence? And what if human connection really was powerful enough to save the world?

That may sound like a trite sentiment, but it's nonetheless worth repeating. And for two hours or so, Thunderbolts just about makes you believe it. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed the new Marvel movie Thunderbolts. On Monday's show, actor Danny McBride talks about the final season of HBO's The Righteous Gemstones and his journey from Hollywood to South Carolina where he co-founded Rough House Pictures. He'll tell us about how he's built a unique comic empire blending sharp satire with

southern charm. Hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shura.

Our Technical Director and Engineer is Audrey Bentham with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld and Charlie Kaya. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nespritt. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David B. Nkuli.