And then there is the legendary cartoonist R. Crumb—lover of solid legs, worshipper of meaty thighs, champion of the ample backside. To truly know his art is to know what turns him on.

I encountered Robert Crumb’s work at the age of 8 or 9, when his comics could be found — lurking and sweating — in the “Counterculture” section of my local used-book store in San Francisco.

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In Dan Nadel’s brief foreword to his comprehensive and lucid biography of comics luminary Robert Crumb — popularly known as R. Crumb — the author describes a single condition exacted by his ...