Went to the Crumb show at the Frye, which I must say is really worth hitting, especialy considering it is FREE. They have some real grails of Crumbology on display, such as the famous bathtub orgy late-60’s Fritz the Cat sequence and two or three original, unpublished childhood Arcades.

The real revelation, though, and I don’t think I’m alone in noting this, is Bob’s extraordinary sensitivity as a colorist. It’s consistent – the Arcade covers from his teenage youth show it, and he’s still executing these incredible technicolor miniatures fifty years later.

The highlight was overhearing some sixty-year-old Jersey transplant explaining to his eighty-year-old deef ma why Crumb’s explorations of sex and misogyny were so important. I think she kept going “huh?” to the guy just so he’d have to yell out why Angelfood McSpade’s gargantuan ass was in fact a mitzvah, and a liberation.

The most interesting moment was coming up to the aforesaid Angelfood McSpade strip just as a fifty-ish African-American church-lady in a pink pantsuit came over to look at it. I couldn’t read her reaction, but I’m sure that she was having a more complex set of personal responses to the strip than I ever could.