Episode 634 - Dan Nadel

The Virtual Memories Show

Author and curator Dan Nadel joins the show to celebrate the publication of his amazing new biography, CRUMB: A Cartoonist's Life (Scribner). We get into Robert Crumb's significance in American art, comics, and culture, Dan's first experience with a Crumb comic (it was an ish of American Splendor), the challenge of capturing the underground comics scene of the '60s & '70s, and what it took for him to get over the "R. Crumb" persona and realize how integrated Robert's personality is. We talk about Crumb's role as nexus in the history of comics, the book's focus on Crumb's drawing and how different tools opened him up artistically, what it means to see Crumb as part of tradition and not just a conceptual outlier, how his Crumb differs from the Crumb of Terry Zwigoff's documentary, and the one detail he's still dying to find out about Zap Comix. We also discuss Dan's comics and art upbringing, how he found his place as a publisher then gallery & museum curator, how he was affected by the death of Crumb's wife Aline in 2022, how his museum experience prepared him for writing about the racist and sexist aspects of Crumb's comics, the only cartoonist biography he could tackle after Crumb, whether Crumb's Book of Genesis succeeds as comics, and a lot more. Follow Dan on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter