This quarter’s Mineshaft has come out with the amazing work of R.Crumb, Drew Friedman, Aline and Sophie Crumb, Max Clotfelter, Robert Armstrong, Chris Mueller, Noah Van Sciver, Glenn Head, Fabio Vermelho and many more!
I was beyond ecstatic to have my name mentioned in the Letters section by one of my favorite artists, R.Crumb, praising my work in the previous issue.
For those of you not familiar with Robert Crumb, Robert Dennis Crumb, born August 30, 1943 is an American cartoonist and musician. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contemporary American culture.
Crumb is a prolific artist and contributed to many of the seminal works of the underground comix movement in the 1960s, including being a founder of the first successful underground comix publication, Zap Comix, contributing to all 16 issues. He was additionally contributing to the East Village Other and many other publications, including a variety of one-off and anthology comics. During this time, inspired by psychedelics and cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s, he introduced a wide variety of characters that became extremely popular, including countercultural icons Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, and the images from his Keep On Truckin' strip. Sexual themes abounded in all these projects, often shading into scatological and pornographic comics. In the mid-1970s, he contributed to the Arcade anthology; following the decline of the underground, he moved towards biographical and autobiographical subjects while refining his drawing style, a heavily crosshatched pen-and-ink style inspired by late 19th- and early 20th-century cartooning. Much of his work appeared in a magazine he founded, Weirdo (1981–1993), which was one of the most prominent publications of the alternative comics era. As his career progressed, his comic work became more autobiographical.
In his letter to the editor, R. Crumb wrote, “Glad to see the work by Nathalie Tierce show up in there. She’s a strong artist and seems to be on the right track, getting even more interesting as time goes on. Too bad you can’t print her work in color. It would really pop out if you printed it in the original colors.”
