Drawn Together: The Collected Works of R. and A. Crumb - Hardcover

Crumb, R.; Crumb, A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 087140429X ISBN 13: 9780871404299

Publisher: Liveright, 2012

Synopsis

Rumored for years, Drawn Together finally charts the daily exploits and erotic craziness of this “First Couple” of comics.

Who could have imagined that in 1972, when Aline Kominsky, a Long Island escapee and bodaciously talented artist, broke her foot one rainy fall day, it would result in the most unique collaboration in comics history? Laid up in her house, she was persuaded by R. Crumb, her nerdy, neurotic boyfriend, to pass the time drawing together a “two-man” comic. The result is a jaw-dropping yet tender account, not only of the joys and challenges of a legendary marriage but also of the obstacles faced by struggling female artists. In Drawn Together, our foremost male-female cartooning couple recall their success at shocking America with Weirdo Magazine, the life-altering birth of their precocious daughter Sophie, and their astonishing move to the safe haven of France. With an irresistible introduction and a striking four-color section, Drawn Together becomes a graphic cause-célèbre and a must-have for any comics devotee.

About this title

About the Authors

Born in Philadelphia, Robert Crumb is one of America’s most celebrated artists. Thrust reluctantly into fame as a defining voice of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture with comic strips like Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Keep on Truckin’, then again in the 1990s with the acclaimed documentary Crumb and more recently the 2025 biography Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life, he continues to push himself and his chosen medium from his home in the south of France.

Aline Crumb is an American underground comics artist and the author of Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir. She lives in southern France.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Truth: “We don’t have much trouble running on at the mouth, do we?” No, indeed. Words never fail the husband-wife comics-creating team of R. and Aline Crumb. They’ve got so many that motormouth dialogue, narration, in-frame notes, and bottom-of-the-frame footnotes freight each panel. While he draws himself and surroundings, she draws herself and, when he’s not in the panel, surroundings (and their daughter, Sophie, draws herself, none too flatteringly, in the latest stories in this gathering of their oeuvre—the French is appropriate because the couple’s lived some 20 years in southern France). If his drawing is wonderfully detailed, volumetric, and fluid—the justly most famous and admired comics style of our time—hers is flat, messy, childishly exuberant, an avatar of the art brut manners of such of her peers as Linda Barry, Roz Chast, and Nicole Hollander. That contrast between them becomes yet more grist for their endless, self-conscious, ludicrously frank (often literally unbuttoned; this is adult comics, folks) yattering on sex, art, parenthood, guilt, fashion, collecting, shopping mania, the Jews and the goys, France and the French, him being more famous than her, blah blah blah. And gloriosky! It gets funnier as the years pile up. The last long story here, “A Couple a’ Nasty, Raunchy Old Things,” is as hilarious as the best routines of George and Gracie, the Bickersons, and The Honeymooners. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Liveright
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087140429X
• ISBN 13: 9780871404299
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272