Underground comics legend R. Crumb has made a highly anticipated return to the medium after a 23-year hiatus with his new comic book "Tales of Paranoia," published by Fantagraphics this month. The 80-year-old widowed artist, now based in France, is simultaneously showcasing original drawings from the book at David Zwirner gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibition features original illustrated panels from the comic book alongside recent drawings and excerpts from his personal sketchbooks.
Crumb's latest work demonstrates the same masterful artistic technique that made him famous, though notably without his previously controversial explicit content. However, his signature elements—witty humor, self-deprecation, paranoia, narcissism, anti-establishment commentary, and self-proclaimed neurosis—have evolved to reach new levels of darkness. The absence of his wife and longtime collaborator, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who passed away in 2022, appears to have profoundly impacted his work and heightened his self-awareness and introspection.
Left to confront his inner demons alone, Crumb now explores themes of mortality and life's meaning with unprecedented depth. "What does it all mean at this point in life?" seems to be the central question driving his current artistic exploration. This existential pondering permeates throughout his new comic panels, creating a body of work that feels both deeply personal and universally relatable for anyone grappling with life's bigger questions.
One particularly revealing work is "Crumb Family Covid Exposé" (2021), a collaborative comic created with his late wife Aline and their daughter Sophie. This piece illustrates how the pandemic sent Crumb spiraling down a rabbit hole of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The comic reveals Crumb as an anti-vaxxer who deeply mistrusts government authority, showing him secretly panicking while his wife responsibly gets her vaccinations. The unique artistic approach shows both Crumb and Aline drawing themselves in each panel from their respective perspectives, creating a fascinating dialogue between two different worldviews.
"The Very Worst LSD I Ever Had" (2023) stands out as one of the most disturbing stories in the collection. In this deeply personal work, Crumb revisits a traumatic acid trip from 1966 that has haunted him for decades. What troubled him most about the experience was how the memory had been blocked from his consciousness for years. While Crumb was no stranger to psychedelics during the counterculture movement, this particular trip left him permanently paranoid. The story recounts how he and his first wife Dana visited a house known for distributing the drug, only to become convinced they were unwitting subjects in a science experiment. When Crumb shared his fears with Peter Cornell, the person who had given them the drug, Cornell ominously responded, "And now you're going to die."
Crumb first gained national attention in the 1960s through his distinctive artistic style, characterized by intricate crosshatching created with his favorite tool, the Rapidograph pen. This signature technique helped establish his place in both underground comics and mainstream pop culture, most notably through his iconic cover art for Janis Joplin's 1968 album "Cheap Thrills." His work successfully bridged the gap between counterculture art and commercial success, making him one of the most recognizable artists of his generation.
The fine art world has long embraced Crumb's work, and his latest comic series continues this tradition, now displayed as neatly matted and framed pieces in Zwirner's second gallery space. To break up the visual monotony of the presentation, the gallery's back wall is painted bright mustard yellow and features the exhibition title, while a seating area with several of Crumb's books invites visitors to browse. However, the standing-only format for reading the wall-mounted comics can become physically challenging and tiring for visitors wanting to fully engage with the dense textual content.
Crumb's personality presents a fascinating study in contradictions that he openly displays in his work, perhaps as a form of personal catharsis. He's simultaneously liberal-minded yet anti-vaccine, self-doubting yet confident, and committed to monogamy while admitting to having a wandering eye. This complexity makes him a genuinely mixed-up individual who isn't afraid to put all his flaws and inconsistencies on public display through his art.
In this new series, Crumb primarily focuses on his paranoia regarding vaccines and political authority figures, expressing deep distrust of virtually everyone in positions of power. His work "Conspiracy Theories!" (2025) features two panels of dense text that outline what he sees as the dire nature of today's political climate. While the extensive text can be challenging to read, several powerful phrases stand out: "Large numbers of people now harbor suspicions that there was something phony or rigged about the whole pandemic narrative," "What's really going on?", "Where does one turn for reliable sources of information," and prominently displayed in large black block letters, "QUESTION AUTHORITY."
The exhibition presents a genuinely unsettling experience that could easily leave visitors with a profound sense of doom about the current state of the world. What makes this new work particularly compelling is how Crumb's authentic emotions—his feelings of helplessness, paranoia, and existential dread—can genuinely affect viewers. The raw honesty of his internal struggle creates an unexpected emotional connection that makes his paranoid worldview surprisingly sympathetic, even for those who might normally dismiss such perspectives.
The cover of "Tales of Paranoia" perfectly encapsulates the ambiguity of Crumb's current mental state with a large yellow starburst containing the question: "Batshit Crazy or True Perception—Who Can Tell?" This tagline essentially summarizes the entire exhibition and Crumb's current artistic philosophy. Welcome to Crumb's world of 2025—it's definitely not a pretty picture, but it's an undeniably honest and compelling one.
"R. Crumb: Tales of Paranoia" continues at David Zwirner gallery, located at 616 North Western Avenue in Melrose Hill, Los Angeles, through January 10. The exhibition was organized by the gallery and represents a significant moment in contemporary art, marking the return of one of America's most influential underground artists during a particularly dark and introspective period of his life.
