Tales of Paranoia, by R. Crumb

A comic book review. Warning: Snarky footnotes (but not that many)

Joe Surkiewicz

It was a bright day when I learned that R. Crumb had released his first comic book in over two decades, Tales of Paranoia.1 Those of a certain age will need no introduction to this ‘60s icon—the cartoonist who kicked off the underground comics movement by creating Zap Comix, Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Angelfood McSpade, the cover to Janis Joplin’s2 Cheap Thrills album, and, last but not least, “Keep on Truckin’.”

Note the disclaimer in the upper left of the comic book’s cover: “Warning: This comic is not popular entertainment.”

So it’s no nostalgic dive into the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll ‘60s,3 but a short, 12-comic collection of up-to-date rants (with Crumb’s trademark, meticulous drawings) about the current state of affairs facing humanity: 5G, the covid “pandemic” and “vaccination,” censorship, “conspiracy” theories, the Deep State, and paranoia in general.

That’s a list of topics many of us are at home with.4 The over-arching theme, though, is paranoia—starting with a conversation with a longtime doctor friend who brushes off Crumb’s nerve-wracking obsession with Pfizer’s huge profits during the “pandemic”—and evidence that it was years in the planning:

As your longtime friend I strongly advise you to stick with what you know, which is drawing funny pictures. Try to calm down and stop torturing yourself with fear. Billions of people have had the covid vaccine and are doing just fine!

And the final admonation:

Crumb doesn’t go along with that. In the next comic, he dissects a 2021 Rand Corporation5 report, Detecting Conspiracy Theories on Social Media, giving it a close read: “Who are these people?? What is going on in their minds? Are they just, you know, career driven?… I don’t know about you, but to me this gobblety-gook!” Crumb goes on for several pages of densely lettered panels, summing up his reaction to the ghastly report with this quote:

The only dive into the deep past is “The very worst LSD trip I ever had/Cleveland, mid 1966,” which predates Crumb’s San Francisco years. Not just the bad reaction: Crumb has no memory of what happened after taking the “weird drug.” But in an epilogue, he grapples with the existential possibilities:

Maybe it was just the drug opening me up to the realm that “lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowlege,” to quote Rod Serling.

“Deep State Woman” explores the career of an unnamed, high-level bureaucrat (“I don’t want her coming after me!”), a Harvard medical school grad who did all the right things with all her right connections. She climbed to higher and higher positions of power in the government, including head of the Food and Drug Administration—where she was accused of acting “illegally and outside of the scope of her authority” in suppressing information about serious adverse affects of two pharmaceuticals.6

Consequently, the plaintiffs claimed that she and her husband and his hedge fund profited by millions of dollars from existing and subsequent investments in the manufacturers of these drugs….I couldn’t find anything about the outcome of the charges against her and her huband, but as somebody once said, “These people fail upwards.”

Also included: Rants addressing a higher power (“God help me! I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but I gotta express my true feelings…this life is no bargain….There, I said it!”) and terror-filled waves of dread in the middle of the night (“I lay there, sick at heart…honest to god…no exaggeration! Oh Jesus Christ! What’s to become of us?!”).

While Crumb, as mystified as the rest of us, hasn’t reached any concrete conclusions about the problems plaguing the planet, especially with Covid and “vaccines,” he’s teetering on the edge of going full-blown “conspiracy” theorist:

There is now a severely paranoid belief going around that the evil cabal which rules the planet is scheming to kill off some unspecified number of the “useless eaters”! They plan to cut the human population way back! I have good friends who seriously believe this. Maybe they’re right! Who’s to say?? It’s not entirely unthinkable. Talk about your conspiracy theories!! I hope it’s not true!

I’m with you there, Bob. But I got my doubts, too.

Five stars. Six bucks (plus shipping). What are you waiting for?7

1

Fantagraphic Books, $5.99

2

Actually, Big Brother & the Holding Company. But you knew that.

3

And no overtly sexist depictions of scary women with exaggerated boobs and asses. At 82, I suspect Crumb is over it.

4

Also, a bad LSD trip, bad publishing deals and Catholic schooling, to which I relate. I was raised Catholic in the ‘50s and early ‘60s: Like most 8-year-olds forced to attend catechism class on Saturdays (because I went to public schools; my parents’ threats to send me to Catholic school if I fucked up guaranteed obedience), I was threatened with everlasting hell for missing Mass on Sunday and eating meat on Friday. This was taught to children.

5

“Experts” funded by the Department of Defense. Or is it War? Whatever.

6

Including her marriage to a wealthy hedge fund CEO, also a Harvard grad:

This handsome millionaire may have been our heroine’s dream man, but alas in 2014 he was summoned to testify at a Senate investigation which concluded that his hedge fund failed to pay over six billion dollars in taxes! In 2021 they had to fork over 7,000,000,000 dollars. Yeah, that’s right—seven billion! Can you imagine??

7

For more on Robert Crumb’s life (and especially his miserable childhood), check out Crumb, an entertaining 1994 documentary:

Source: Age of Deceit by Joe Surkiewicz

BONUS ~ R.Crumb and His Cheap Suit Serenaders