Latest Addition To The Spill’s Library: R. Crumb’s “Tales Of Paranoia”
I’m not sure what led me to the Fantagraphics page promoting R. Crumbs newest work, Tales Of Paranoia — all I know is that the intro text on the page won me over:
“THE FIRST R. CRUMB COMIC BOOK IN 23 YEARS! The seminal cartoonist who single-handedly invented the alternative comics format of the one-person anthology in 1967 with ZAP returns at age 81…”
I’ve followed Crumb’s work since the 1970s when a friend gave me A History of Underground Comics. At that point, with that book, my interest didn’t exactly switch from comic books to underground comics — it just expanded.
I soon bought my first underground comic book, Despair, and started drawing Crumblike, for a short while. Since that time, I’ve dipped into Crumbland now and then (reading-wise, not drawing-wise) as I’ve picked up various Crumb collections over the years, buying any I run across in used bookstores. Truth is, even though Crumb had entered into The New Yorker cartooniverse with his “Elvis Tilley” cover of 1994 and subsequent strips, I wasn’t paying that much attention to his bibliography. While reading Dan Nagel’s Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life (out this past Spring) I took some of the Crumb books off the shelf here at Spill headquarters, and paged through, revisiting old times. And then, about a week or so ago when I learned that 23 years — twenty-three years! — had passed since an original Crumb comic book was published, I couldn’t wait to see what he had to offer us.
With today’s arrival of Tales Of Paranoia I immediately sat with it and began reading — something I haven’t done with any comic book (or graphic novel) in quite some time. I couldn’t wait to see what Crumb was up to in 2025, at age 81. My first impression after reading through was a question: is it possible Crumb is drawing better than ever? Yes, it is possible.The comic’s theme (paranoia) strikes me as one of the major through-lines from his earliest work — it’s always been there (I’m far from a Crumb expert — all I know is what I believe I’ve felt looking at his work for half a century). Not quite halfway through Tales Of Paranoia book is a one page comic, “I’ll Just Stand And Wring My Hands And Cry” — it’s my favorite piece, and the one I’ll remember. It reminds me of early Crumb, but it feels timeless. Bottom line: it’s a pleasure to find Crumb’s still Crumb — thoroughly himself, as no one else can be.