Any R. Crumb fans as avid as I will probaly know about Charlie Crumb, Robert’s older brother who lived in his room at his mother’s house for his entire life before committing suicide in 1994. Charlie’s drawings were even weirder than Robert’s, and some of his comics, “Arcade,” were shown in the documentary “Crumb.” His artwork is also in “Crumb Family Comics,” a collection of work by R.Crumb’s brothers, son and wife. It’s very weird stuff…he has this weird technique of using endlessly overlapping folds on all textures, except the faces of his characters which are either “cartoony” or consisting of bizarre wrinkles.
I’m mainly interested in being able to read “Treasure Island,” which after a while degenerates into what R. describes as “loony writing” after the text bubbles dominate the panels, eventually dwarfing the characters and finally taking over completely, leading to pages and pages of philosophical rambling. It seems quite fascinating.
I want some way to read it. I went to R. Crumb’s website, apparently maintained by his son Jesse; it didn’t provide any way of finding Charlie’s work. Another R. Crumb website was selling Max Crumb’s paintings (Robert’s other brother) but none of Charlie’s. Does anyone know anything about this?