Charles Crumb

Charles Crumb

Charles Vincent Crumb, Jr. (1942 - February 1993) was an American artist closely associated with his famous younger brother, the cartoonist Robert Crumb.

Charles often appears as a character in Robert Crumb's comic stories and autobiographical writings; Robert credits Charles' childhood obsession with making comics as the foundation of Robert's own devotion to his art.

As Charles entered adulthood he became progressively troubled both emotionally and psychologically, due to what he himself described as his "homosexual pedophiliac tendencies". As a teenager he had already developed a particular obsession for Bobby Driscoll, child star of the film Treasure Island, and much of his artwork focused on themes and characters from the film and novel. According to his own testimony, Charles Crumb never succumbed to his urges and remained determined not to. Throughout the years, he remained constantly terrified that his sexual tendencies could be discovered by his mother, or by anyone.

During his adult life, he rarely ventured outside of his family home where he lived with his mother. At this point his artwork took on specific attributes common to the psychologically troubled: repetitive and painstaking concentric lines filling in otherwise normal Crumb-esque drawings, reflecting an obsession with filling every last centimeter of white space.

Charles Crumb and his artwork received wide public attention as a result of the success of the 1994 feature-length documentary film Crumb, in which Charles and his work are featured prominently. His artwork, including notebooks filled with tiny gestural marks that suggest handwriting, has been published and exhibited, sometimes in the context of outsider art. His mother threw out a great deal of his artwork as she thought "no one would be interested in it."

In the film Crumb, R. Crumb describes how Charles would often react to things by saying "How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure."

Charles Crumb committed suicide in February 1993. He reportedly died as a result of an overdose.