Robert Crumb is the most famous and well respected of all underground comic artists, and the first underground artist to be accepted into the mainstream of popular American culture. His comics are notable for explicit, detailed, and unflattering self-confessions, in which strange sexual fantasies abound. When not writing about himself, he has targeted the American consumer-culture establishment, but also anti-establishment hippies and dropouts as subjects for his satire. Crumb's art veers from gritty, grubby realism to extremes of Expressionism and psychedelia. As both an artist and a writer, Crumb is a true original. Relentlessly unrestrained and impulsive, his work reflects few influences other than the funny animal comics of Carl Barks and Walt Kelley, and the twisted, deformed monster-people of Mad artist Basil Wolverton.

The Philadelphia-born Crumb lived his childhood in many different places, including Iowa and California. Seeking refuge from an alienated childhood...