13. The Crumb Compendium (Carl Richter)

LIKE WE WERE PSYCHIC!

So we made this website to help out the Crumb collector. But it's turns out that within a few weeks from now, a new book will be published entitled:   

THE CRUMB COMPENDIUM by Carl Richter

"The definitive reference guide to the career of the greatest cartoonist of all time.
There have been other attempts at R. Crumb checklists and bibliographies published over the years, the best of which was Don Fiene’s R. Crumb Checklist, originally published in 1981 by Boatner Norton Press; it represented a landmark volume in Crumb scholarship. Now, after several years of research and 30 years since that invaluable reference work, Carl Richter delivers The Crumb Compendium, a comprehensive guide to everything Crumb has published during his 45-year career in cartooning.

The Crumb Compendium lists and organizes all of Crumb’s published work to date: comics, papers and other periodicals, books, catalogs, posters, juvenilia, cards and all other printed ephemera. Records and CDs as well as merchandise like buttons, statues and shirts are also included, as well as listings of articles and interviews, characters and comic strip titles and published photographs.

Richter’s research is impeccable — he has been a valued consultant on The Complete Crumb Comics library since its inception — and virtually all listed items were examined first hand without relying on the research of others. Most of the material is from the author’s own collection; other items were examined in private collections and university archives. In a few cases photostats or scans from other collections and institutions were acquired, and Crumb himself served as a consultant to ensure the most accurate information.

The Crumb Compendium will be heavily illustrated with rare pieces from Crumb’s career, making this an essential text for all Crumb collectors and scholars. 320 pages of black-and-white comics and illustrations"

"The Crumb Compendium lists and organizes all of Crumb's published work to date and serves as the definitive guide to the work of greatest cartoonist of all time. Comics, periodicals, books, catalogs, posters, juvenilia, cards and all other printed ephemera are included along with records and CD's, buttons, statues and shirts plus listings of articles and interviews. It will be heavily illustrated, making this an essential text for all Crumb collectors and scholars and having had Crumb himself serve as a consultant ensured the most accurate information."

So there you go. Will you need this book?
Almost certainly!

Will you need this website? 
Who knows?! 
Maybe we'll have to stop... 

(Fantagraphics seems to have postponed the release of this book...)
...as of May 2017 - still not published (!)
 

12. HUP

Oh man, do you ever need HUP Comics! 

Published by Last Gasp.

Great stuff, all post-Complete Comics.

Don't worry, later on we will provide you a complete list of contents.

11. R. Crumb Sketchbooks vols. 7-12 (Taschen)

Well folks, now it gets ugly. It's time to talk about the 

R. CRUMB SKETCHBOOKS VOLS. 7-12 (Taschen), edited by Dian Hanson.

Or as we here at the Crumbpendium refer to them, The Sell-Out Edition.

We'll let Taschen describe the set for you:

"Underground treasures

1,344 pages of Crumb's hand-picked selections from his notebooks

This six-book boxed set is the first collection of Robert Crumb sketches to be printed from the original art since the hard-bound, slipcased, seven volume series issued by the German publisher Zweitausendeins between 1981 and 1997. Unlike the Zweitausendeins edition, which included every doodle ever made by the preeminent underground artist, our best-of edition has been personally edited by the notoriously picky artist to include only what he considers his finest work, including hundreds of late period drawings not published in previous sketchbook collections. Robert Crumb requested that the books representing the second half of his career be published first due to fan demand for new Crumb material (Volumes 7-12 cover the period 1982-2011, and the forthcoming Volumes 1-6 will cover the period 1964-1981).


In the last 20 years Crumb's artistic output has slowed considerably, making new works more rare and highly prized. This collection of over 600 unseen drawings created between 1982 and 2011 makes this a must-have collectible for every Crumb fan."

Hardcover, 6 vols. in slipcase with print in portfolio, 20,5 x 27 cm, 1344 pages

€ 750

Taschen.com Crumb Sketchbooks

Well folks, we can't tell you any more about these books other than they go from 1982 to 2011, and that we can't afford them. Apparently Taschen thinks that "every Crumb fan" has € 750 to blow on Crumb sketchbooks. I wish!

Dian Hanson and Taschen have dragged Crumb into the rich man's world of haute coutre art, in direct opposition to most of what he says and claims to be about in his comics. 

These books are priced well out of the reach of the average, blue-collar Crumb fan. Why? 

Where's the cheap, paperback, loser's edition?

I hope at least ol' R. is getting a big chunk o' that change for himself...

So, yeah. You need these. But can you afford to buy them??

We shall continue our list assuming you can't.

Thanks a lot Taschen, Hanson, R. Whomever.

10. The Complete Record Cover Collection

Unfortunately, there's a lot of overlap with THE COMPLETE RECORD COVER COLLECTION and the other books. But what are ya gonna do? There's still stuff in here that's nowhere else, so you need it!

This one doesn't say "Complete"...

Oog & Blik, 2011 version (detail)

9. Odds & Ends

ODDS & ENDS (Bloomsbury, 2001) is just that. Various bits and pieces that were, for the most part, not in the Complete Comics. 

There is some overlap with other books, but for ultra-completeness you will need this book, because there are some things in it you won't find elsewhere. 

(Also published by Oog & Blik)

8. The Yum Yum Book

Now it gets a bit more difficult. 

THE YUM YUM BOOK, originally done in 1963 and published in 1975 as a hardcover, was not included in the Complete Comics, as the copyright is owned by Crumb's first wife Dana, and she refused Fantagraphics permission to include it.

Scrimshaw Press, 1975

It was reissued as THE BIG YUM YUM BOOK (The Story of Oggie and the Beanstalk).

We think this is an excellent book, although R. himself disavows it somewhat nowadays, calling it juvenile and saying it embarasses him. Don't listen to him.

Don't worry, it's still out there. Try eBay.

6. Kafka

KAFKA  
(Fantagraphics, 2007) Robert Crumb & David Zane Mairowitz

second printing

Fan of Crumb or not, this is an excellent book. We recommend it to anyone who wants to read Kafka's work; read this first. A must-have.

This has been issued with several different covers and also slightly different titles.

5. The Book of Genesis

Here we have THE BOOK OF GENESIS ILLUSTRATED BY R. CRUMB (W.W. Norton, 2009).

Not your usual Crumb fare, to say the least. But still super-cool, and this website is all about "completeness".

So get it now before it goes out of print.

4. Waiting For Food

Having amassed the complete sets of the Sketchbooks and Complete Comics, you now need to gather up all the stuff that is:

a) Not included in the Complete Comics

b) Done after the Complete Comics (i.e. after about 1992)

Why not start with the 4 volumes of WAITING FOR FOOD? These are collections of drawings done on restaurant placemats while...waiting for food. Published by Drawn & Quarterly and Oog & Blik.

May already be out of print by the time you read this...

Volume 1

Here are the other three so you know what you're looking for:

3. The R. Crumb Sketchbooks (Fantagraphics)

The next thing on the list: 
The 10-volume R. CRUMB SKETCHBOOKS published by Fantagraphics Books.

The bad news: Most of them are out of print.

But yes, they're still out there, so look around on eBay and in comic book stores, and so on. 
One or two volumes are still in print as well.

They were issued as both hard- and softcover; for our purposes either is fine. They go from 1964 to 1977. 
(For the time being we are going to skip over the Taschen  and Zweitausendeins sets of sketchbooks and come back to them later).

If you are wondering: Do I really need Crumb's sketchbooks? The answer is: Yes, you do. They are a wealth of fabulous artwork, not just a bunch of sketchy bullpoop, so go for it!

Volume 2

2. The Complete Crumb Comics

Well, we gotta start somewhere, so it might as well be here. To start off with, you need all 17 volumes of THE COMPLETE CRUMB COMICS published by Fantagraphics Books.

The bad news: They're all out of print.

The good news: Some of them have been reprinted.

And as of January 2013, it looks as if more and more volumes are being reprinted by Fantagraphics. Check the link top right here...

Since we at the Crumb Compendium are not concerned with first issues and so forth, it doesn't matter whether you get the reprints or the original issues.

However, jumping ahead of ourselves a bit, you should try to get the REPRINT of VOLUME 1 because it has more pages than the original printing.

We will go over each volume in detail later on. You can still get all of the books, for example on eBay, but it may be an arduous and expensive task. Good luck!

(We know of an entire set that "went missing" in the mail somewhere between Texas and Rotterdam...)

 Volume 16

 

1. Welcome to the Crumb Compendium

WELCOME TO THE CRUMB COMPENDIUM!

This blogsite is dedicating to providing a coherent list of the works of ROBERT CRUMB for those wishing to collect them.

The main focus will be on collecting the "complete" works (insofar as this is possible), specifically the art itself.

What this means is that this is not a checklist of the complete works and everywhere they appeared. We are not going to worry about getting every obscure publication in which Crumb's work appeared, simply for the sake of owning that publication. We leave that to the true collector fiends out there.

Most of the images used here are copyright R. Crumb. They were not used with permission, but hey, we're only trying to help the collector here, and we're not making a dime off this either.