R. Crumb: Bible of Filth

One of America’s most celebrated cartoonists, R. Crumb helped define cartoon and punk subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s with comic strips like Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Keep on Truckin’. Inspired by Thomas Nast, Honoré Daumier, T.S. Sullivant, and James Gillray, among others, his drawings offer a satirical critique of modern consumer culture, and frequently seem to possess an outsider’s perspective—a self-conscious stance which Crumb often relates to his personal life.

Originally published in France in 1986 by Futuropolis, the first edition of Bible of Filth was never distributed in the United States because of its graphic sexual content, which included some of Crumb’s most explicit comics from underground magazines such as Snatch, Jiz, Zap, XYZ, Big Ass, and Uneeda. This revised and expanded English edition from David Zwirner Books, printed on bible paper and bound in leather, contains all the original pieces from the 1986 volume as well as over one hundred pages of additional material. Organized chronologically, there are comics from 1968 to 1986 that were omitted from the first edition and an entirely new selection of work created after 1986.