My Troubles With Women

 

By Robert Crumb (Knockabout Comics)
ISBN 0-86719-374-3

Always worth a look is the work of Robert Crumb, and this themed anthology featuring short works produced between 1982 and 1989 on his legendary relationship with women, both in the disturbing Abstract and the painful, side-splitting, lustful, tender, painful and loving Concrete is a joy for the mercifully distanced beholder.

Beginning with the most recent, ‘I’m Grateful! I’m Grateful!’, before time-warping back to ‘Uncle Bob’s Mid-Life Crisis’ through ‘Footsy’, the eponymous ‘My Troubles with Women’ parts I and II, ‘Our Lovely Home’, ‘Dirty Laundry’ and ‘If I Were A King’, this very public composite of private peccadilloes, often assisted by the contributory work of his wife and partner Aline Kominski-Crumb is a funny and disquieting examination of family-building, rendered in a variety of drawing styles that are the graphic equivalent of daubing a white line in front of a chicken for any aficionado of graphic narrative.

Magical stuff – as long as you’re a consenting adult.

Art and stories © Robert Crumb with Aline Kominski-Crumb. All Rights Reserved.
Edition © 1990 Knockabout Comics.