Crazed Devolution Of A Smartist

...sometimes, a good book doesn't necessarily have to be a lengthy tome written in sweeping sentences. After finishing the hidden gem of The Murderer Vine by Shepard Rifkin, I wanted something lighter that I could breeze through in a short time. Though it was a book of few words, Matt Wagner's The Art Of Grendel was an inspiring read through. It is a giant sketchbook of various characters, covers and sequences from various Grendel tales. In the case of Sophie Crumb: Evolution Of A Crazy Artist, each page was more a collection of her drawings in chronological order displaying not only evolution, but also her natural gifts.

One theme that permeates the entirety of her collection is her mutual appreciation and burden of being the daughter of Robert Crumb. For anyone who isn't sure of who Robert Crumb is, there is a superb documentary about him entitled Crumb by Terry Zwigoff. If you have seen Crumb, I suggest going back into his collections of comix work. Though I myself have barely scratched the surface, I consistently marvel at his works in American Splendor, Kafka and Drawn Together. Though I was actually introduced to his work by seeing Fritz The Cat, I wasn't aware of Robert Crumb: the man until seeing the film American Splendor.

And in the previous paragraph, I managed to fall happily back into the trap of gushing over Sophie Crumb's father while trying to highlight her own work, a stigma that she has grown up with and mentions multiple times in the book itself. Which is shameful for me because she is an enormous talent in her own right. Her drawings as a young child are mostly rough and like that of a young kid, but there are hints at being born gifted. Into her teens and early twenties, a good portion of her work seems to mimic that of her famous father. It is the third act of her collection where she completely sheds the cocoon and shows what she is made of. So much of this period of Sophie Crumb is jealousy-inducing to the point of wanting to toss my own drawing pencils into the lake.

For a casual interest, Evolution Of A Crazy Artist is mostly something you might want to borrow from a library or a friend. Interesting and sometimes stunning as the work can be, this is not a books many will want to have on their shelves (though I suspect that may have been the intent). Evolution Of A Crazy Artist is for the fledgling or hardcore Crumb family completist. It is for someone who either grew up reading Zap Comix or has discovered their works in these more recent years and recognizes the greatness contained therein.

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