Autobiography comics continuum

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Sexual psychosis as autobio? & Noah’s Ark © 1980 Robert and Charles Crumb. Every time I pick it up, it makes me nervous.

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Rory Hayes, “Snot-Nose Harold,” Snatch Comics #3, 1969. It’s the latest entry in a decades-long history of stark biographical or semi-autobiographical works by graphic artists.

Here are Glenn’s 13 CAN’T-MISS COMICS AUTOBIOGRAPHIES. (Needless to say, much of this column is NSFW.) — Dan

By GLENN HEAD

The comics below have been an inspiration for my own autobiographical work over the decades.

Crumb’s Comics and Stories #1 from April 1964. This primitive two-page comic (drawn while Hayes was still a virgin) shows the burning, raging beast that lurks beneath male sexual desire. A disarmingly candid portrayal of a difficult topic, where even the mother’s boyfriend is too complicated to be a straight-up villain.

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Chartwell Manor is out May 25, from Fantagraphics.

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MORE

— 13 GREAT SKETCHES: A ROBERT CRUMB Birthday Retrospective.Click here.

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By Robert Crumb and Charles Crumb (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-0-93019-343-0 (HB vol 1) 978-0-93019-362-8 (TPB vol 1)

ISBN: 978-0-93019-373-7(HB vol 2) 978-0-93019-362-1 (TPB vol 2)

These books employ Discriminatory Content for comedic and dramatic effect.

He still publishes his comic at [1] (NL).

  • Aline Kominsky-Crumb published Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir (2007), her life story, with inserted photographs.
  • Carol Lay wrote and illustrated The Big Skinny (2008) about her experiences with weight loss.
  • Alison Bechdel published Are You My Mother? (2012), an autobiographical graphic memoir that examines Bechdel's relationship with her mother through the lens of psychoanalysis.
  • Erika Moen began Oh Joy Sex Toy (2013-), a semi-autobiographical online comic strip.

    Four ‘R. Spain didn’t draw himself in the story but later admitted in an interview to being there. The earliest volumes have been constantly described as the least commercial and, as far as I know, remain out of print, but contrary as ever, I’m reviewing them anyway before the highly controversial but inarguably art-form enfant terrible/bête noir/shining hope finally puts down his pens forever.

    autobiography comics continuum

    As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Unwashed hippies, LSD hangovers, pie-in-the-sky idealism — and for what? That kid who wants to escape, to be an artist, to get laid, but just doesn’t know anything yet.

    The series led to Pekar meeting his wife Joyce Brabner, who later co-wrote their graphic novel Our Cancer Year about his brush with lymphoma.

  • In the late 1970s Jim Valentino began his career with autobiographical comics which sprung out from him having literally sold pages laid out on the sidewalk as he'd sit there leaned against a store front.

    This hasn’t dated a bit. Crumb, “I Remember the Sixties,” Weirdo #4, 1982. R. Crumb’s sixties “nostalgia” trip is anything but nostalgic. The squalor, loneliness, and despair in this comic show Art at his most truly vulnerable. Later most of these were repackaged into a trade paper back through Image Comics called "Vignettes". The autobiographical genre had turned into English-speaking alternative comics subculture's "signature genre" in much the way that superhero stories dominated the American mainstream comic books, the stereotypical example recounting the awkward moment which followed when, the cartoonist sitting alone in a coffee shop when their ex-girlfriend walks in.

    Even when it does, you can’t stop reading.

    Autobiography announced itself early in underground/alternative comics. Seth created some controversy by presenting realistic fictional stories as if they had actually happened, not as a ploy to fool writers but as a literary technique.