There are cartoonists who are authentic provocateurs right from the start. Robert Crumb, who has just turned eighty, is among them: his drawings, with that unmistakable heavy stroke and tangled characters, but above all with his often subversive contents and well beyond the threshold of common decency, have profoundly marked the American underground of which the author of “Fritz the cat” was the recognized star.
When his strips crossed the borders of the States, the best youth of Italian comics from the 70s drank there: Andrea Pazienza owes him above all in his early works such as Pentothal, but also in Massimo Mattioli, another member of the group of Cannibale and Frigidaire , there are traces that lead back to a master who never wanted to be called that.
Coming from a difficult family, bespectacled and shy, Robert Crumb gave free rein to his imagination in the drawings, releasing a creative energy capable of inventing a delirious world of eroticism and violence, the one that stirred in the belly of his America and that l he author transfigured in an unmistakable style. The animated version of his Fritz the Cat made in 1972 by Ralph Bakshi was released in Italian cinemas forbidden to minors, because at that time the adventures of a feline womanizer and drug addict could only collide with censorship.
Crumb confronted himself without awe and with excellent results also with the sacred monsters of literature, starting with Franz Kafka, but also met Charles Bukowski on his artistic path, certainly closer to him in terms of artistic aptitude and ability to deal with the scary of existence. It cannot be missing from the shelves of every comic book enthusiast, but in reality its reading is recommended to anyone who does not stop at provincial labels and whips like those who continue to place comics among the creative expressions of the B series, too proletarian and pop to be admitted to the A series of art.