This episode explores the work and life of underground cartoonist R. Crumb, featuring excerpts from two interviews with Terry Gross. The initial interview delves into Crumb's artistic style, influenced by a significant LSD experience that led him to embrace older, "vulgar" comic styles and create characters like Mr. Natural and Angel Food McSpade, while grappling with accusations of racism and misogyny. As the discussion pivots to his early career, Crumb recounts his time at American Greetings and the eventual transition to underground comics, driven by a desire to expose the sinister undercurrents beneath the veneer of pop culture. More significantly, the conversation explores Crumb's sexual fantasies and their expression in his work, which he defends as metaphorical rather than pornographic, and his complicated relationship with fame. In a later interview, Crumb is joined by his wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, also a cartoonist, where they discuss their meeting, creative collaboration, and Aline's perspective on Crumb's controversial work and the feminist backlash she faced for their relationship, ultimately highlighting their mutual support and artistic influence on each other.
