All in the family.

September 15, 2004 8:12 AM

All in the family. An R. Crumb original will cost you an arm and a leg, but S. Crumb will do you one better, for a whole lot less.
posted by subpixel (18 comments total)

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be for sale.
posted by subpixel at 8:14 AM on September 15, 2004

NSFW, folks!
posted by dobbs at 8:34 AM on September 15, 2004

Sophie is turning into quite the artist herself. I wonder how living in France will affect her future pieces.
posted by Keyser Soze at 8:39 AM on September 15, 2004

(please replace *how with *if)
posted by Keyser Soze at 8:39 AM on September 15, 2004

I shudder to think what demons R. Crumb's daughter must have to grapple with after growing up with that (genius) wacko as her father. Fortunately, we don't have to guess, because she's laying them out on paper! So, um, it's all good, I suppose.
posted by soyjoy at 9:15 AM on September 15, 2004

There's a bunch more of her stuff online here. I think this is my favorite.
posted by squant at 9:22 AM on September 15, 2004

Argh, c'mon, get your own identity.
posted by xmutex at 9:29 AM on September 15, 2004

you could say the same to half the underground cartoonists that have arisen since Zap #1.
posted by soyjoy at 9:36 AM on September 15, 2004

Like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the biggest mistake Crumb ever made was dragging his no-talent wife into the act, and shoving her down his fans' collective throat. There is only one Crumb. He is the alpha and omega of the "underground comix" movement. He is the great artistic genius of our time, and so far above all competitors in the fine, commercial and narrative arts, that to think that even a member of his family deserves to be mentioned in the same breath is insulting. On the other hand -- if keeps his marriage and family together, and preserves domestic tranquility, it's probably worth it. To him. That said, the daughter's work seems to bear the same relationship to her father's work that Dmitri Nabokov's work bears to his father's work: It is similiar, in a crooked kind of way, but without the stylistic energy generated by having the guts to have been the first to break that stylistic ground, and take all the ensuing risks. We'll never know what either of them might have accomplished if they had never been born into their stupendous artistic legacies.
posted by Faze at 9:38 AM on September 15, 2004

It's always the women with you, Faze. That wicked prostitute Yoko Ono, or the talentless Aline Kominsky or Harvey Pekar's wife, neither not knowing--at least, according to wrong-as-fuck-as-usual-when-it-comes-to-the-facts you--beans about comics and then there was John Kerry who can't control his wife. You sound like a really dreamy date with lots of interesting ideas. Interesting in the clinical psychopathological way.
posted by y2karl at 9:54 AM on September 15, 2004

well, neither knowing, to be sure. drat that double negative!
posted by y2karl at 9:55 AM on September 15, 2004

Copy cat copy cat...

I'm with Faze on this one.
posted by DelusionsofGrandeur at 10:25 AM on September 15, 2004

How old is she?
posted by Blue Stone at 11:39 AM on September 15, 2004

Wow. I have a copy of Zap #1, and at least according to one webpage, it's valued at $5,500. Woohoo! Now, if I could only remember where I put it...
posted by crunchland at 11:56 AM on September 15, 2004

Take out the "Like John Lennon and Paul McCartney" part - two situations that have almost nothing in common other than the basic fame/gender issues - and I pretty much agree with Faze. I loathe Aline's graphic style, and resent the amount of space her incompetent scrawls take up in, say, the strips they do for the New Yorker, when that space could have more Crumb in it. I also agree that it's up to us to suffer for his own "domestic tranquility," as he's already given us enough and apparently - previously anyway - not enough to those who actually know and love him.

I don't find Sophie's style off-putting any more than anyone else who's obviously very influenced by Crumb (which, as I said, includes a hell of a lot of cartoonists), and I can see how she incorporates some of Aline's cartooning DNA into the mix, so maybe there's hope after all.
posted by soyjoy at 1:18 PM on September 15, 2004

Next time you're in Paris, go to the Musee de l'Eroticisme (9eme Arondissment, over by the Moulin Rouge". It's a lot cooler than I thought it would be.

Top floor is all Crumb.

I can't find a link, but here's an NSFW link from our vacation photos.
posted by padraigin at 1:50 PM on September 15, 2004

The works are funny, but it's annoying to me that it's in R. Crumb's style.
posted by drezdn at 1:59 PM on September 15, 2004

Breughel the Elder and Breughel the Younger, and there are more similarities than one.
posted by crunchland at 2:17 PM on September 15, 2004