This line from a story on LATimes.com, about the reissue of Terry Zwigoff’s exemplary documentary, “Crumb,” caught my eye:

“A habitual crank with a pronounced antisocial streak and an aversion to mainstream culture, the director Terry Zwigoff  has one of the most distinctive sensibilities in American movies.”

The rest of the piece goes on to refer to Zwigoff as someone bethrothed to non-mainstream culture; by extension, Crumb is discussed as someone outside the mainstream. I read this and wondered, does R. Crumb truly qualify as outside the mainstream?

• He’s been well-known in his field for more than 40 years.
• His work is highly regarded by art critics and collectors.
• He created at least two well-known and highly recognizable characters, Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat.
• The latter was turned into a movie.
• He provided a famous album cover for one of rock music’s most famous albums, “Cheap Thrills,” by Big Brother and the Holding Company. If you’ve ever heard Janis Joplin sing “Piece of My Heart” — that’s the album it’s from.
• He’s a recording artist in his own right, with The Cheap Suit Serenaders.
• Seventeen volumes of his collected works have been printed. All of them remain in print. More are planned.
• He’s a frequent artist for The New Yorker, supplying covers or whole comics-section inserts.
• He’s reached the iconic phase where now he appears in the work of others — referenced in books or films, or appearing as a character (in comics, or in film — in “American Splendor”  he’s played with precision by James Urbaniak).
• His most recent book was a New York Times bestseller. It was widely praised by critics.
• He’s the subject of not one, not two, but three documentaries.

Given this fantastic success, including the sort of success that most matters in the U.S. — financial — one has to ask, what does one have to do to be mainstream? At one time, the response might have been:  appear on a sitcom. But as all mainstreams have splintered into niches, as the broadcast network triumvirate has subdivided into the limitless choices offered by satellite and cable, when shows like “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Ideal” and “The Whitest Kids You Know” are able despite rather small audience numbers to to draw enough sustenance to survive, then the idea of “normal” has left the room.

So why is Crumb, for all his obvious success and enormous cultural impact, still regarded as outside the mainstream? Because 40 years ago, that’s how he seemed. When the counterculture got covered by the mainstream, when straitlaced organs like Time magazine dropped in on what was happening in Haight Ashbury, they said Crumb was out of it. And he was. But that was 40 years ago. The culture has changed. Many of the topics reserved for adult-oriented underground comix are now laugh lines on everyday TV. Given that, Crumb is the new normal.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Comics, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.