Week 6: Underground Comics

Robert Crumb's Whiteman is about a family going camping in the woods and the father takes his two kids out to explore nature. While the kids are wanting to stay out longer and look for "bigfoot," they leave their dad behind because they claim to have seen a footprint of the creature. The dad is left alone in the woods chasing after his children when out of nowhere a hairy creature kidnaps the Whitman in sack and brings him back to his pack. Sexual encounters are had between the man and the female yeti. The man falls in love with the yeti and wants to stay with her.

The story reminds me a bit of Peter Jackson's King Kong with how the giant ape was fascinated by a female human. Instead of unimaginable, sexual encounters ensuing with that of Whiteman, the beast falls to his death. I've read another piece of Crumb's and I have to say, he's pretty out there. I read one story of his where he talked about his life, basically bragging about his current life, and takes us back to when he was in his mother's womb (literally.) We are treated to a graphic birth of Crumb submerging out of his mother's womb. The mother proceeds to have sexual encounters with her newborn baby but luckily the father walks in and asks what the mother is doing and she immediately stops (looking upset that her husband was home.) Newborn Crumb tries to escape literally back into his mother's womb but the father pulls him back out and tells him that he needs to get a job. Crumb is then kicked out and cries as he has to look for a job.

I don't think I'll ever understand Crumb's disturbing, crude, sexual, works as he is said to have taken LSD and claims to not like drugs after his experience with it. I beg to differ.