By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 4, 2010)

Crumb – The Criterion Collection Blu-ray

So you thought your childhood was fucked up? Meet the Crumb family. Then shake your head in wonder that R. Crumb didn’t grow up to be a serial killer, as opposed to an underground comic icon. Director Terry Zwigoff’s propensity for championing the “outsider” (Ghost World, Bad Santa, Art School Confidential) was firmly established in this 1994 doc. Zwigoff toiled on his portrait of the artist for nearly a decade, and the result of his labor of love is at once hilarious, heartbreaking, outrageous and moving. Although the film looks to have been shot in 16mm, Criterion’s hi-def upgrade pays off most noticeably in the montages of Crumb’s classic Zap Comix panels and vivid artwork. There are some great new extras in this edition as well; most notably the 50+ minutes of deleted scenes.