Musings: "Zap"
On occasion1 I mention "my hero and rôle model, Robert Crumb" — indeed I did so relatively recently. So the email flyer from Last Gasp publishing in Seattle for this latest agglomeration of newly-respectable underground comix "art" (in which he naturally features among many other fine artists) made me smile (though not at the $450 price tag):
The (excuse the pun) "customary" response to any threatened mass influx of "Crumb" across the UK's borders in the past has tended to be all-too-often a hissy fit and instant conniptions among the peculiar mouth-breathers one can find trailing their knuckles across the floor of the remote shed dedicated to safeguarding Britain's morals in Brenda's Customs and Excise organisation. This possibly unwise footnote...
... could well give these hapless thugs and Visigoths cultural aficionados the wrong idea. They would do well to check the dictionary definition of irony before leaping, as it were, to their pre-fixed conclusions. Not that I need worry, I bought this much cheaper paperback over 30 years ago. It extracted all the crumbs of Crumb from the first 10 of the (apparently) now 17 issues of this distinguished organ:
Keen-eyed readers will spot there are actually 11 issues featured on the front cover. And Crumb scholars will already know why there's an issue #0. It's a long, and in places quite sordid, saga of printer shenanigans at best. Thanks goodness for Chester Carlson's fine invention.