No doubt, the recent Cross Hatch review of Noah Van Sciver’s Blammo 2 hangs fresh on your brain.  So I’m happy to report that not only is the lastest issue – Blammo 3 – available through Van Sciver’s website, but just below the cut is a fresh Van Sciver comic, penned exclusively for the Daily Cross Hatch.

Julia Wertz, it should be noted that Van Sciver wants to be friends with you.  As do we all.

- Sarah Morean

[Flickr Set Here] [YouTube Videos Here]

News travels quickly in alternative comics circles. You’re greeted with reminders of this, from time to time.When the when the half of the North Bethesda Marriot conference room devoted to the Small Press Expo opened, just after 11 AM on Saturday, I soon discovered that tales of our roadside culinary misadventures had managed to arrive at the showroom floor far ahead of my fellow passengers. The reactions, strangely, were mixed between an outpouring of gastrointestinal sympathy and a defense of that American South chain that unrepentantly displays the words “scattered, smothered, and covered” at every imaginable opportunity.

The evening before, the decision was unanimous—some combination of morbid curiosity and the desire to sample the local cuisine, knowing full well that neither desire would be appeased by the next two days’ food consumption, which would likely revolve largely around the quasi-swank ambiance of the restaurant just down the hall from the North Bethesda Marriott lobby. Really, it was the same desire that drove Heidi MacDonald to purchase a bag of crab-flavored potato chips, a touch of the Maryland seasoning that she was immediately forbidden from opening within the confines of the maroon SUV thoughtfully rented by one Jeff Newelt.

As we sat down beneath the neon yellow glow of the Waffle House, moments before our waiter smiled to reveal a pair of brown filmy incisors, Ben McCool uttered cheerfully like a ravenous harbinger of impending doom, “you know, I think may be the greatest decision that’s ever been made, ever.” The tale of distress that followed that evening (and, troublingly, into the next morning, for me), is one which will live on in roadside lore, for years to come (though, for the record, so far as I can tell, The Beat’s reports of “explosive diarrhea” have been somewhat exaggerated). I mention it here for it was precisely because of that unfortunate decision that we missed the pre-SPX festivities occurring that evening at Atomic Books, featuring an impressive lineup of familiar names, like Brian Ralph, Lauren Weinstein, Jesse Reklaw, Julia Wertz, Laura Park, Theo Ellsworth, Austin English, Ken Dahl, and Ben Claassen III.

We stumbled on to hotel check-in to discover that, in spite of our request, the Marriot had run out of hotel rooms with double beds—fine for McCool and MacDonald, no doubt, but Newelt and myself were forced to request extra pillows soon assembled into a makeshift barricade down the center of the king-size bed. It was McCool and MacDonald who soon discovered that, not only had the hotel bar closed prior to our midnight arrival, but the 7-11 across the street carried no liquor, a predicament that led us to a hotel room of a comic shop owner where single-malt bourbon was being drunk from plastic cups and hotel glasses by a crew of Norwegian comic artists who had come out to Bethesda stocked with a few boxes of photo-copied minis, a mind-boggling menagerie of college and cartoons, who intensely strange sensibilities could not simply be chalked up to wacky cultural difference.

I ultimately purchased one during Sunday’s final lap around the showroom floor. One the cover an anthropomorphic duck in a fedora seems moments away from striking an unseen object or creature with a chair. He’s flanked on top and bottom by the words “Goddamit! I Didn’t Get That Boat!” and “It’s Not Difficult to Find Things with Humor to Draw in Norway.”

By Saturday morning, said gastrointestinal distress was giving way to what would turn into a nasty head cold. If, however, there’s one thing I’ve learned the many weekends I’ve devoted to convention-going, it’s the fact that, if you’re still able walk following Monday, you’ve clearly largely squandered your weekend, no matter how many bags of comics you’ve managed to buy or sell.

For the second year in a row, Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier managed to snag what was arguably the best spot on the floor, with a large table directly facing the front door, in case the checkered picnic table cloth and huge Comics Bakery backdrop weren’t eye-catching enough.

I headed immediately for the back, where Sarah Morean and Will Dinksi were setting up their table. Morean was readying a display of Man Up, the book she’d compiled for the recent Minneapolis Zine Fest, which, interestingly enough, was one of two books I noticed over the course of the two days which provided the reader with their very own fake mustache. Dinksi, for his part, was stacking up piles of his latest, Beautiful, Cool, and Irreplaceable, which, as always, retains the author’s keen eye for beautiful packaging. Morean and Dinksi kindly agreed to give me a little table real estate to display the new Daily Cross Hatch tees, which were making their debut at the show. Morean concocted a makeshift display out of stables, packing tape (borrowed from the nearby Drawn & Quarterly booth) and two SPX nametag lanyards. Leftover shirts will be available through the site, in the near future.

Along the front wall, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund was setting up its table of not-for-profit goods. Charles Brownstein, decked out in his trademark suit, was showing the fund’s two new hires the ropes, whilst trying to work out some better scheme for displaying their own t-shirts—the lanyards and staple approach apparently wouldn’t do the trick for seasoned professionals, such as themselves.

At the next table over Larry Marder was toiling away on his sketchbook, behind a bowl of dry beans that had been turned into authentic Beanworld action figures, with the help of a Sharpie. All those years working with Todd McFarlane had clearly paid off. Marder was my first interview of the weekend. He brought along a full-color proof of the upcoming Darkhorse reissue of his book. Over the course of the weekend, we snuck in Q&As with Marder, Freddie & Me’s Mike Dawson, Andy Runton, Dash Shaw, Frank Cammuso, and Kevin Huizenga, all of which will be appearing on The Daily Cross Hatch in the coming weeks.

As always, I happily leave the SPX with far more luggage than I arrive with. Dawson sent me off with the final three issues of his pre-Freddie series, Gabagool. Drawn & Quarterly had the fifth and latest issue of Huizenga’s Or Else mini, an older copy of Curses, Matthew Forsythe’s stunning Ojingogo.

Top Shelf may have had the debut single issue book of the show with Robert Goodin’s hilariously offensive The Man Who Loved Breasts (b/w George Olavatia: Amputee Fetishist). Also hot off the presses was James Kochalka’s latest addition to the American Elf series, along with Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole, in its stunning hardcover edition. Nate Powell, for his part, had secured a booth of his own, with a handful of Swallow Me Whole copies, a few older books, LPs he’d designed for his labels, and his SPX debut mini, All Bets Are Off, which culls all of its text from the Pretty Girls Make Graves track, “The Get Away.” Powell, for the record, may just be the nicest guy in comics, and as such, he happily signed a copy of Swallow Me Whole for my mom.

Powell, of course, proved one of the night’s big winners, taking home an Ignatz for Outstanding Debut. The artist wasn’t there to accept, however. When I asked Brett Warnock where he’d been hiding (Chris Staros, for his part, had spent the time between prior to the awards showcasing his chops with the CBLDF’s Owly Stratocaster), he answered that Powell had been up in his room, watching Mr. T, an allegation that Powell denied, the following morning. He had, in fact, been watching Soul Plane.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocRuLOVoLt0]

As in previous years, the Ignatz were held in a meeting room unanimously described as some combination of a university lecture hall and the United Nations, complete with glasses of water, notepads, and tiny fruit candies at ever single seat. And while Powell hadn’t shown, plenty of others had, lining the conference room walls up and down the steps. The winners list was one of the most indie-centric in recent memory. Cross Hatch favorites like Laura Pa k, Sarah Glidden, Jesse Reklaw, Lille Care, and Papercutter all took home bricks. Center for Cartoon Studies student Chuck Forsman was the big winner of the night, with two awards for Snake Oil, a Lynchian piece of dreamlike storytelling. Forsman also debuted a new mini at the show called Daffy.

Last year’s acceptance speech gorilla made a reappearance, this time accepting on behalf of Chris Onstad for Achewood. The gorilla, like all like his fellow award recipiants were presented awards bricks from the resident SPX luchador. The big hit of the night, however, was the return of the chocolate fondue fountain, which arguably provided the most compelling catalyst for emcee Heidi MacDonald’s insistence on keeping things short and sweet.

After fondue, a good number of SPXers once again descended on the nearby Korean karaoke bar, Robin Enrico and Liz Baillie were kind enough to squeeze me into their two door, along with some guy we’ve come to know only as “Wayne.” Again we shoved an ungodly amount of sweaty indie comics artists into a single room. This time out, however, our party branched out into another room, which had aptly come to be referred to as “the grown up room,” wherein the likes of Laura Hudson (who had brought down copies of the brand new issue of Comic Foundry), McCool, MacDonald, Jimmy Aquino, and Top Shelf’s Leigh Walton took a decidedly more civilized turn-based approach to karaoke singing, as the rest of us screamed and bounced to the likes of “Yellow Submarine” and “Buddy Holly.”

The ride home took an even more chaotic turn, with Dustin Harbin behind the wheel, Kochalka in the passenger seat, and Newelt and myself in the back, holding on for dear life, as we flipped an ungodly number of U-turns, ultimately driving the wrong way down a one way road. Thankfully all survived, because, had there been no diary strip to capture our final moments, we’d all have truly died in vain.

The magic of SPX has always been, at least in part, due to the fact that the show is held in a Bethesda, rather than New York or San Francisco, so most of those in attendance haven’t just happened onto the showroom floor to get in out of the heat or the cold, but have rather devoted a significant chunk of time and money into attending the show. The location also ensures that those present don’t scatter to the wind as soon as the floor closes, but rather hop in massive carpools to the next location. And, when you wake up, bleary-eyed the next morning, there’s a pretty good chance that the person riding down in the elevator with you or stumbling down the hotel halls is there for the same reason. It’s a sense of comradery by necessity almost entirely absent in big shows like San Diego, and even smaller ones like MoCCA or APE.

Sunday, unsurprisingly, got off to a later stop—despite the fact that the showroom floor officially opened an hour later, there were still a number of tables that had yet to set up shop. A few more laps around the floor yielded a handful of new treasures.

Joshua Cotter didn’t actually have any new books to sell, over at the Adhouse table. But he did happily let me flip through a notebook that will become his follow up to Skyscrapers of the Midwest. Less narratively cohesive than its predecessor, the book is a dizzying collections of patterns that may even prove more graphically impressive than Skyscrapers. At this early stage, it’s difficult to determine exactly what the artist is shooting for with the book, but it will no doubt blow us all away.

Liz Baillie set up shop across the aisle, alongside Enrico and MK Reed. Baillie was displaying copies of her Bouncing Souls-centric mini, Sing Along Forever. A woman was standing with her, behind the booth, shooting the artist for a student documentary. I happily offered myself up for interview, hoping for a chance to ride on Baillie’s purple leopard print coattails.

I’d be remiss, were I to forget to mention Sparkplug, which debuted the latest issue of Elijah Brubaker’s Reich and Jonas Madden-Connor’s Ochre Ellipse. Bodega slipped me a copy of Brian Ralph’s third episode of Daybreak, I picked up a copy of Ken Dahl’s Welcome to the Dahl House from Microcosm, and the always-friendly Ed Piskor handed off his new stop-gap mini, WIZZYWIG 1.5. I’d have asked Fantagraphics nicely for a copy of the latest Popeye book, but there’s no way the enormous volume could have been shoved into my backpack after all of that. Plus Fanta PR legend Eric Reynolds spent a good chunk of his time walking the floor with his baby daughter Clementine (whose rebellious phase will no doubt involve reading a lot of Rob Liefeld comics), leaving much of the book sales to publisher Gary Groth.

I capped off the weekend with the James Kochalka panel moderated by MacDonald, partly because I greatly enjoy James’s work and partly because Heidi would have no doubt been upset had left her behind in Bethesda.

The long ride home was punctuated by countless tolls and menacing signs for all manner of Waffle Houses. The bags full of comics in the trunk and at our feet, however, served as a constant reminder of why we had all signed on in the first place, and they would thankfully line the floor around my bed the next day, as I recovered from yet another comic convention plague.

–Brian Heater

Released earlier this week by The New Press, Brown professor Paul Buhle’s Jews in American Comics could have easily been yet another rehash of a long line of academic treatises on the subject of Jewish-American involvement in the creation of the superhero, most recently exemplified by Danny Fingeroth’s Superman Disguised as Clark Kent.

Fortunately for us, however, Buhle considers himself something of a peer to artists like Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman. A spiritual descendant of Harvey Kurtzman and his ilk, the realm of capes and tights never really did all that much for the author.

Instead, the book maps the role of Jewish creators from the early days of syndicated comics through the innovations brought forth by EC/MAD, and ultimately through the explosion of the underground and its subsequent repercussions.

For a more complete review of the book, check the most recent issue of The New York Press. After the jump you’ll find a full—if short—interview conducted with Buhle for the publication.

What sort of history do you have, writing academically about comics?

I would say modestly—I began by publishing Radical American Comics in Madison, in 1969, which is the third of the underground comics to appear. The first two were Crumb’s Zap Comics solos. Then, in the 70s, I published a theoretical version of a fanzine called Cultural Correspondance—1975 to 1983. That is digitized now. In the 90s, I wrote a fair bit about Spiegelman and Ben Katchor, my pal, and any number of artists, some of whom I interviewed in the 70s for Cultural Correspondence, The Village Voice, The Nation, and any number largely Jewish publications.

Leaping forward to 2003, I had a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education about how comics have now become a subject of academic interest. That was much circulated and much—not exactly attacked—but everyone whose name wasn’t mentioned was crabby about it, you understand. There wasn’t much of a scholarly trail then, and anyone who published an online magazine that has since gone out of business thought that he deserved an important mention.

I have another scholarly piece in Reviews in American History and another piece in Marxism Reexamined and a number of other journals. I’ve tried to do two things at once: establish a sort of scholarly dignity for non-fiction comics and recover what non-fiction has done in the past, like this guy, Jack Jackson, who did a history of pre-state Texas and was highly regarded by the Texas historical society, before he died, a few years back. Also at the same time, I’ve tried to suggest what could be done now, and why it was important to do comics on valuable subjects, without being didactic, because that follows the track of my students who read less every year—and many of them want to read comics.

You seem to largely take as your focus alternative cartoonists like Crumb. Is that a direct result of having come out of that tradition?

No, really, a lot of it is based on my growing up reading Mad comics, before it became Mad Magazine. When it became Mad Magazine, it wasn’t as good, but it was still sort of Jewish liberal and New York reaching out to me, in the middle of Illinois, which was appreciated, but also, Classics Illustrated, which we always called “Classic Comics.” That was the place I where I first read my classics. Since my sister, who is four years older, taught me how to read after kindergarten using those books, comics always had a really warm spot in my heart. Mad comics, because it was so wonderful about showing what was stupid and hypocritical about the coporate world, it was sort of like my book of knowledge. I wrote a high school paper as a junior about Harvey Kurtzman. I got a B from a teacher who liked me, but always thought that comics were degraded, as almost everyone did think.

I feel now that they have an exhaulted purpose that is only now beginning to be understood, and the comic artist, with the rarest exceptions—Spiegelman is almost the catchword, until Alison Bechdel came on the stage, and my new friend, Linda Barry-there are less than 10 that have ever been given the credit that they deserve. They’ve rarely been able to make a living. I think that I’m they’re champion, I would cheerfully say.

Is it a coincidence that the first person considered to have broken down that wall between academia and comics—Spiegelman—is a jew?

No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. It’s a strange thing, and the very first underground comics full-scale exhibit will open in Madison, in April at the University of Wisconsin. I wrote the essay in the catalog, and I noted that, in the underground comics world of the Bay Area, Jewish comic artists were not numerous. They were there, but they were not numerous. That’s because it was not in greater New York, the way that the comic industry was. But that migration eastward, after that phase ended, circa-1980, suggested that, in the greater New York publishing world, that Jewish artists probably would have been the ones who would have written vastly disprortionate amounts, compared to the common artist.

You touch on the superhero books coming out of New York in a chapter, but don’t really dwell. Does it have anything to do with the fact that it’s a well-tread area?

That’s a really good question, and someone who criticizes me on that is probably well-founded, and I have no right to be crabby about it. I really stopped reading superheroes when I was about 12. I was a little too old to start reading Marvel in the 60s. I didn’t take to them. I didn’t think that they represented a new phase of art. The art seemed very stylized, and also, I have to say I was always looking for that progressive New Deal-ish message that always seems to be in Mad Magazine.

I found Sgt. Fury to be more the tone of comics, and I know that has changed in the last 20 years—I was just looking at a writer who said that the artists want to write critically about the Iraq War, but they find themselves strapped to publishers who are still in the “celebrate the conquering heroes” mode in the mainstream. Although that may be over in ways I can’t see, I feel that the world of underground comics is so much my generation. There are so many people among them who are very good friends of mine, including Crumb and Bill Griffith—the only one who could make it into the dailies—that these are the ones that my heart went to. Plus those people in mainstream get $300 a page, and they don’t even have to ink. They have health plans, unlike my pals who have none of those things and are scraping along. So again, I feel like I’m their champion.

How integral is that concept of being an underdog to the success of the Jewish role in comics?

I think it’s integral to comics from the very first moment they appeared in the daily press in the 1890s, and not particularly Jewish. But it’s also true that my late friends, the Hollywood blacklisted artists, when they found out that they couldn’t portray struggling workers related to unions, they found another underdog who they could truly sympathize with, whether it was Katherine Hepburn as a woman or a poor orphan and on and on—some of them ended up doing animal features, with the same kind of underdog attitude. Animation was full of the same thing—mice against cats, cats against humans. You’re littler, but you can take on the giant, if you’re more clever. That resonates in a lot of Jewish culture, especially Jewish culture that’s not connect with the merchant or the Rabbi, but is out of that circle of influence.

Fitting then that it’s targeted toward children, in so many cases.

Well, that’s right, too, of course. I suppose on our weak side, we all wanted to be Superman or for girls, Wonderwoman, but that’s the immature way out—”I want big muscles, so I can punch people out.” But, by the time you get to be 12 and you realize that you’re not gonna be one of those guys with big muscles, you’ve got to figure how else to get along in the world. Then you’ve got to use your wits, and again, that goes to a certain Jewish affect, which was there, is there, and, in my estimation, will go on being there, no matter what the income levels and all of the other things that go along with that.

–Brian Heater

Released in 1972, Ralph Bakshi still considers Fritz the Cat to be the major turning point in his career, the breakthrough film that helped the animator make the blind leap from the Heckle and Jeckle cartoons of his early career at TerryToons to gritty urban underground work like Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, which, to this day, are largely considered Bakshi’s masterpieces.

Adapted from a series of Robert Crumb strips, Fritz the Cat became the first animated film to be tagged with an X Rating, courtesy of the MPAA. Despite, or more likely because of this, the film also did gangbusters, becoming the first animated film to rack up more than $100 million at the box office.

In the wake of the film’s release, Crumb made public his aggressive disdain for the adaptation well-known, going so far as to file a suit to have his name removed from its credits and later killing off his reluctant Hollywood star in a subsequent strip.

Bakshi, for the record, would like it known that the feeling is mutual. As our conversation transitions from questions about his own jump from kids cartoons to the topic of Fritz’s subversive nature (or, to a degree, he might argue, lack thereof), Bakshi’s own feelings about Crumb quickly take the reigns of the conversation, along with a commentary how the press has long opted to report Crumb’s feelings on the matter while neglecting his own. And while, despite a bit of finger pointing at me on Bakshi’s part (referring to said press as a collective “you”), I can’t honestly take an credit for this perceived lopsided account (though, for the record, at the top of the interview I did mention Crumb’s name amongst a list of cartoonists whose work I admire).

That said, it’s hard to argue with Bakshi’s assessment that the press have been far more eager to print Crumb’s opinions on the subject than his own. The matter is certainly not due to a lack of passion on Bakshi’s part. A few months shy of 70, the animator is still more than happy to let his feelings be known, with a force that, to be totally honest, is a little frightening when sitting a few feet away.

I agree to print his opinions on the matter during the conversation, and to break some of the tension, I make some off-handed joke about having momentarily lost control of my bladder in the face of the fury that’s still alive and well in the heart of the Brooklyn animator,

Bakshi pauses for a moment and then smiles, “I like him.”

[Part One].

How large a role did the works of 60s underground comic artists like Crumb play in your transition to more adult cartoons?

Not as much as you might think—a lot, but not as much as you might think. Right before then, there were bigger transitions than Crumb. That was Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, Naked Lunch, On the Road by Kerouac, John Coltrane—there were literary sources that had broken through that probably caused the underground to come alive. What were the underground’s influences? Those were more important. The underground didn’t come out of nothing.

I remember read those and saying, “oh my god.” The Naked and the Dead by Mailer was very important. There were certain literary things that blew me away. Of course the underground helped, but it was those things that influenced me much more clearly. There was a lot of agitation in the streets those days, before the underground blossomed. Dylan started to sing—it was very exciting. I would more attribute it to that.

It seems like less of a leap to make the transition in what is already considered an adult medium, rather than in something like comics or cartoons.

Well, funny you should say that, because you weren’t there, and that’s the impression.

Fair enough.

You weren’t there before comics were on television and in video games. If you were around then, comics had a massive influence—you wouldn’t even recognize it now. You can’t imagine what Captain America looked like in a drawing, if you took away all of the shit that you have now. It was massively exciting. Or Superman flying. Why did Superman go through the roof the way he did? Because there wasn’t anything else like it. In novels, to your amazement, there were codes, there were lawsuits. You couldn’t write these things, you couldn’t print these things.

Henry Miller—

Oh! Henry Miller! So this thing about being more of an adult medium—it was more adult by really small degrees. When Selby did Last Exit to Brooklyn, with pimps and prosistutes and homosexuals, it blew everyone away! It was huge! It had never happened before! When John Rechy wrote City of Night, about the homosexual scene in LA, they finally got past Miller’s lawsuits. You read Naked and the Dead and big Mailer writing an adult book couldn’t say “fuck!” There isn’t a “fuck” in the entire book. These soldiers are saying “Fug you,” F-u-g you. You die laughing at how antiquated. Go read it! He was afraid to use the word! He didn’t use the word “bitch” in The Naked and the Dead. What was so adult about that? Novels were also slow in getting to the point. When they could do what they wanted, without being afraid, finally it broke. Everything was very proper in those days. Yeah there was some sex and some unbuttoned shirts, but there wasn’t screaming.

Was your own transition slow into more adult works or did you get to do what you wanted to do, right out of the gate when you did your own stuff?

Fritz freed me. Crumb’s Fritz the Cat, which is brilliant—though I dislike Crumb—because it was fun, it was satirical, it was delightfully drawn. It made so much money that I jumped into Traffic with both feet, which no one had ever done in animation—I did Heavy Traffic and Coonskin. I had the muscle from Fritz the Cat. In that respect, if I didn’t have a hit, would I be able to do Traffic? No way. If Fritz bombed, there’d be no Heavy Traffic.

Were you more reserved in the making of Fritz than Heavy Traffic?

Yeah, Crumb—yes. That’s a very good question. When I did the Dr. Suess’s Butter Battle, I respected Suess—Ted Geisel. There wasn’t that material in Fritz—in other words, Fritz didn’t have that depth. It was cute, it was sweet, but there was nowhere to put it. That’s why Crumb hates the picture, because I slipped a couple of things in there that he despises, like the rabbis—the pure Jewish stuff. Fritz can’t hold that kind of commentary. Winston is “just a typical Jewish broad from Brooklyn.” There was nothing—it was cute and well-done, but there was nothing that had that much depth. With Traffic, Michael who had never gotten laid and was going out with a black girl, and his father’s an Italian racist, and his mother’s Jewish—we set up a situation that’s vibrating with undertones. Fritz didn’t have that. And they’re animals. They’re cut little animals. There wasn’t the depth to Fritz. I couldn’t get there if I wanted to.

Did that fact that they were cute little animals make it somehow more subversive on some level? That juxtaposition of image and content?

No. Not at all. I think it made it more palatable. I think, had it been adults, I think I would have been blown out of the water.

[Pauses] You’re a Crumb fan, which is fine with me. Let me tell you what he did. Crumb railed against me for Fritz the Cat. He killed off Fritz to get back at me, and we all read how I’m a hustler and I have a big mouth and I can’t draw, and all that shit that Crumb said. Meanwhile, he brought a camera into his house when he wanted to become famous again. He allowed a movie to be made where he shot his mother crazy and his brother eating rope—and his brother committed suicide, after the movie was finished. What kind of guy is that? Is that the kind of guy who has a right to scream at me? Is that a guy who really cares about people? Is that a guy who you should love?

You believe everything Crumb says, after he does that, and he yells at me for doing Fritz? He made millions of dollars from Fritz. He did his book. He made millions of dollars from the cat, but he still calls me a schmuck! He took the money. See, he let me make the picture for a year and a half. He took $60,000. That’s a lot of money in the 60s. That’s upfront money. He took that for the rights. And when he realized that I was going to become as famous as him, he got mad at me. He thought I was going to make him famous. He thought I was going to spend a year of work on Fritz the Cat and make him the greatest cartoonist in the world! Well, he got very angry at me, when the director got some credit. Directors always get credit. That’s my point of view on it. You guys who love Crumb don’t understand how slick he can be.

You were a fan of his work before.

Of course! That’s why I bought the book!

And you’re still a fan of his work?

Of course! I don’t like him as a person.

I’m a fan his work as well. I don’t know him as a person.

I don’t like to see guys let him off the hook. Just because I’m a fan of his work, doesn’t mean I’m going to let him off the hook. If he’s going to point a finger at me, I’m going to point a finger at him. I’d never bring a camera into my house and allow anyone to shoot my family, the way he did. You let that kind of stuff slide. That’s not fair. I don’t see anyone write that in the paper! They always write about how he dislikes my Fritz and what a hustler I am and how unartistic I am. Did anyone ever write what I just told you? No! He’s in a chateau in France, drinking wine! “Mr. Underground.” You buy that! Do I think he’s a good artist? Absolutely. Do I think he has a right to yell at me? Not a chance. Do I think he’s a son of a bitch? Oh Yeah… But you guys sit panting at everything he does. But that’s the difference with my films. I’m not afraid to speak the truth the way I see it.

[Continued in Part Three].

–Brian Heater