The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 1: The Early Years of Bitter Struggle Review

Rating: 3/5 stars

Synopsis: The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 1: The Early Years of Bitter Struggle compiles previously unreleased cartoons from Robert Crumb's early adolescent years he worked and collaborated on with his siblings Charles and Maxon Crumb from 1958-1962 along with R. Crumb's high school journal entries.

My Thoughts: While I wouldn't call myself an R. Crumb scholar, I have seen some of his short comics online and am definitely familiar with his contributions to Harvey Pekar's American Splendor series and, I must say, this is quite a bit of a far cry from what Crumb became well-known for. It was pretty clear he was still trying to find his style which at first, derived heavy influences from Walt Kelly's funny animal strips both in terms of art and dialect though as the book continues, Crumb's trademark grotesque, over-the-top style begins to emerge. The drawings themselves were great but the presentation was a tad sloppy on some of the pages since many of them were drawn on his notebook. Plus, the text was too blurry in several places which made the dialogue hard to read on multiple occasions. That being said, the writing and socio-political satire was surprisingly impressive and gave me quite a few laughs at times. In my opinion, the strongest comics were the Fritz the Cat ones though the eponymous character's hedonistic, morally-deviant nature isn't as apparent yet. Crumb's journal entries were also fairly amusing to read through.

Final Thoughts: Despite the somewhat low-quality aesthetic, The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 1 is worth a look for any Robert Crumb fan interested in seeing his humble beginnings.