R. Crumb: the celebrated antihero of underground comics—still cranky and controversial after all these years

It's difficult to imagine a greater oxymoron than "celebrity comic-book artist," but that's exactly what Robert Crumb is. Even if you don't follow comics, you're likely to have heard of him, and there's little doubt that you've seen his work. For the past 40 years, the father of underground comics has chronicled the ups and downs (mostly downs) of his life through satiric, silly, and often difficult work. This month is a busy one for the normally reclusive artist, with the release of his autobiography, The R. Crumb Handbook (MQ Publications), a gallery show in London, an event at the New York Public Library, and the unveiling of a limited-edition T-shirt he created for designer Stella McCartney, who recently rang him up for a chat.

STELLA McCARTNEY: Hi. How are you?

R. CRUMB: I'm okay. And you?

SM: I'm good. I'm seven and a half months' pregnant. I've got a big old belly, and my ass is big, you'll be glad to know.

RC: Well, in a few months get rid of the kid, but keep the big butt.

SM: [laughs] Have you been drawing today?

RC: Not yet, no.

SM: Is drawing still enjoyable for you?

RC: As I get older, my life accumulates more and more complicated baggage, which I have to slough off in order to be able to sit down to draw. When I was young, drawing was a defense, you know. It got me through life. I needed to draw when life was too scary; I couldn't handle it, so I would retreat into drawing.

SM: And that's how you communicated?

RC: Yeah, I basically lived my life on paper. Nowadays, I don't get depressed as much as I used to. When I do, I realize, Oh, there's that reflex to run and draw.

SM: Well, now you have the support of your amazing wife, Aline. Do you think there's a connection between needing someone so incredibly strong in your life, like her, and feeling insecure when you were younger?

RC: I don't know. For some reason I ended up a total artist dreamer and only able to cope with life through my work. My work was strong, but the rest of me was very, very weak. I am a slightly more balanced person now that I've gotten older, but when I was young, without the drawing I'm sure I would be dead. And once I got well-known for the drawing, then the world was killing me in another way. They just were rolling over me like a steamroller.

SM: Did you ever get women coming up to you at conventions, saying you're a total shit?

RC: Well, women didn't go to comic conventions very much.

SM: Aw ... Really? [laughs]

RC: When I was in Cologne [Germany] for this show [the Museum Ludwig] had of my stuff last year, I did a question-and-answer thing on the stage. This one woman in the back of the room asked very hostile questions. Then later she handed me a letter which was so filled with anger and resentment and hostility about me, saying, you know, why do I have to draw the way I do, that I should be more enlightened. I've gotten that sort of thing a lot. And I understand. I can't blame women for having that reaction to my work. I certainly see why they would, or why black people might think my work is racist. I can see why they might think those things, even though I feel that I have to reveal all of the various complicated contradictions and emotions and feelings that are in me. I just have this compulsion to lay it all out there.

SM: It's something that I have struggled with on our T-shirt collaboration, wondering if people are going to say, "Isn't he a total sexist pig? What the hell are you doing working with him?"

RC: [laughs] Oh, sure.

SM: How do you respond to that? I've always thought you just adored women.

RC: I have very ambivalent, emotional, neurotic feelings about women. It's a big mix-up inside of me: adoration mixed with fear, hostility, anger, wanting. I want to please them, but then I also want to, like, do bizarre, perverted things to them, especially the ones I'm attracted to. And I'm kind of resentful because I see the kinds of men most women are attracted to, and it certainly doesn't include the kind of guy I am. And there's a certain bitterness from when I was young, when girls ignored me when I told them I drew comics; I might as well have told them that I was a rubber-goods salesman.

SM: [laughs] It's definitely a nerdy subject when you're a kid.

RC: That's changing a little bit. There's a bit more glamour attached to comic books now that graphic novels are big. But when I was young, drawing comics was the most loser, nerdy, pathetic thing you could tell 'em.

SM: Well, it's not your first port of call if you're a woman and you're looking for a sexy guy. I don't think you go, "Okay, let me go to a comic shop. I'm sure I'll find a man."

RC: Yeah. When I was young, any other kind of artist or a guy who writes poetry was much more romantic and glamorous to girls than a guy drawing comics. Am I bitter? Just a tad.

SM: [laughs] So, we'll leave that whole "Does he hate women?" thing alone.

RC: No, no, I think that's interesting. I've always liked to talk about that.