Robert Crumb Underground Comix Thick Line

Robert Crumb: Underground Comix Thick Line

Robert Crumb (born 1943) invented the visual language of underground comix and in doing so created one of the most recognisable -- and contentious -- drawing styles in American art. His influence extends from graphic design and illustration through to fine art, and his particular combination of obsessive crosshatching, exaggerated figure drawing, and unflinching subject matter has no true precedent and no true successor.

Zap Comix and the Underground Movement

Crumb single-handedly launched the underground comix movement in 1968 when he sold copies of Zap Comix #0 from a baby carriage on Haight Street, San Francisco, with his wife Dana. Zap Comix (1968, Apex Novelties/Last Gasp) was the platform for his mature style: stories about Mr. Natural, Flakey Foont, and various sexual and social obsessions, all rendered in his characteristic thick-line, heavily-hatched manner. The Zap format -- photocopied or cheaply offset-printed, sold in head shops and directly at gigs -- established the economic model for underground publishing.

Key Characters and Works

Fritz the Cat first appeared in 1965 in the underground newspaper Help! Fritz became Crumb's first widely-known character and was adapted by Ralph Bakshi into the first X-rated animated feature film (1972), against Crumb's wishes -- leading him to kill the character in the story Fritz the Cat: Superstar (1972). Mr. Natural (first appeared 1967) -- the guru-figure exploiting his own followers -- is Crumb's most enduring creation and his self-aware commentary on counterculture mysticism. "Keep on Truckin'" (1968) -- originally a throwaway one-page strip in Zap #1 -- became the most reproduced image in underground art history.

Technique

Crumb's linework is built on obsessive parallel hatching and crosshatching that creates texture and form simultaneously. His figures are grotesque in the precise art-historical sense: exaggerated, fleshy, heavily built, with thick limbs and exaggerated sexual characteristics. He draws at his art's actual reproduction size or slightly larger with a mapping pen, accumulating thousands of individual strokes per figure.