Robert Crumb is to comics what Louis Armsrong is to jazz, a revolutionary who pulled a maligned and misunderstood art form out of the shadows. In the forward to his new biography, “Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life,” Dan Nadel provides some context: “There is no ‘Maus,’ no ‘Persepolis,’ no ‘Fun Home,’ without [Crumb’s] taboo–breaking … formally inventive work.” Nadel’s gripping and essential book makes good on this claim; his biography is the story of how one highly flawed and preternaturally gifted man augured a revolution in comic book storytelling with his discomfiting, sexually frank, intensely personal oeuvre. Read more
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