Odds & Ends (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fans of underground comics god R. Crumb know that he started his career in greeting cards, but few have seen examples of his earliest work. Forty years of his commercial and otherwise unpublished output is collected in Odds & Ends, a lovely companion piece to his better-known work in Zap Comics, Weirdo, and the rest. Including advertisements and announcements done for friends and family, magazine illustrations, and some surprisingly sensitive portraits, the book is essential for those who want to see how the man's work evolved in private, parallel to his published work. Odds & Ends shows Crumb at his silly, geeky best. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

Called "the Brueghel of the last half of the 20th century" by no less a skeptic than establishment art critic Robert Hughes, cartoonist R. Crumb has produced some of the smuttiest yet piercingly affecting and quintessentially American art since the 1960s. Fans of Mr. Natural, the Monkey Wrench Gang, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and Crumb's agonized self-portraits won't want to miss Odds & Ends, a new, chronologically organized collection of unpublished doodles, Valentine cards drawn during his employment at American Greetings, covers for underground newspapers, advertisements for porn theaters and bike shops, and record album covers. Crumb selected the myriad b&w and color drawings here, all displaying his dark and hilarious vulgarity.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (May 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582341362
• ISBN-13: 978-1582341361
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #837,498 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great collection of Crumb's work, July 20, 2001

By A Customer

A must for R. Crumb aficionados, this beautifully designed hardcover collects many of the illustrations done for projects as varied as novels, greeting cards, scripts, and birth announcements, as well as unpublished work. Great stuff! R. Crumb is the master of pen and ink.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What a neat book!, November 14, 2002

By	Babytoxie (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Don't let the fact that it's a remaindered book keep you away! This is a wonderful hardcover collection (no jacket) of Crumb extras: doodles, sketches, advertisements, and comics. The majority are in black and white, but there is some color. Great drawings of Robert Johnson, the Cheap Suit Serenaders, and Tina Lockwood (wooo!), as well as sketches of various women. A few of his trademark characters are also here, including Devil Girl and the Vulture Women. Some photos are included, as well. It's an absolute bargain!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Crumb you probably haven't seen, March 26, 2008

By	Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Given Crumb's countercultural weirdness and his penchant for big-bummed women, the title Odds & Ends given this collection is perfect--and surely must originate with Crumb himself!

Odds & Ends focuses largely (but not exclusively) on Crumb the "commercial" artist. Arranged more or less chronologicaly, the book reproduces cards he drew when working, in the early days, for American Greeting Cards; buttons for various causes; illustrations for grassroots community newspapers like "Winds of Change"; baby shower, wedding, and anniversary announcements; letter heads, business card illustrations, and book covers; political cartoons defending environmentalism and mocking Maggie Thatcher (she's depicted as a hen laying rotten eggs) and religious intolerance (a gorilla, thumping his chest and hooting, who wears a T-shirt with a Moral Majority logo); "high-end" sketch portraits (e.g., Woody Guthrie, Alan Dershowitz, George Jones) and a cover for the New Yorker; and wonderfully self-deprecating self-portraits, including one featuring Crumb holding forth to a sound-asleep interviewer.

The book's creme de la Crumb is the set of color and line illustrations Crumb drew for the 10th anniversary edition (1987) of Edward Abbey's The Monkey-Wrench Gang (a calendar featuring the drawings was also produced. I'd read about the illustrations in other places, but never had a chance to see them until running across Odds & Ends. They're absolutely wonderful, uncannily capturing Abbey's mad (but also refreshingly sane) gang of eco-heroes.

Crumb is perfectly recognizable in the illustrations collected here, and yet there's a freshness to the pieces that's captivating. Most of his fans, I suspect, will never have seen the majority of this work--at least I certainly hadn't. It's good stuff, well worth looking at and thinking about.