BIG ASS COMICS
BIG ASS COMICS
Rip-Off Press (1969-1971)
Robert Crumb had already produced or contributed to a multitude of comics in 1968 and early ’69, including three issues of Zap Comix and the smut digests Snatch and Jiz, not to mention all the stuff he did for tabloids (like Yarrowstalks and the East Village Other) and magazines like Help! and Cavalier. While underground comics had brought Crumb considerable social and financial status, he also endured quite a bit of criticism for his chauvinism and outright hostility towards women. After the hyper-smut content of the Snatch and Jiz comics, Crumb said that he hoped the raw porn in those books had broken all the sexual taboos and would subsequently allow cartoonists to move on to something else. In the spring of 1969 Crumb produced Motor City Comics #1, which introduced one of his most earnest feminist characters, Lenore Goldberg. The Goldberg character still perpetuated some aspects of Crumb’s sexism, but she was his strongest female figure up to that time.
Crumb’s refusal to give in to his critics is just part of Crumb being Crumb, but even he admits that his underground comics were sexist and played out his (male and female) domination fantasies. Given his rather bizarre childhood, it’s not surprising that he struggled to have healthy female relationships and harbored a certain amount of hatred towards women. As he plainly stated in a 1970 interview in the East Village Other, “I am hostile towards women.”
