People often ask us how Mineshaft began working with Robert Crumb. In 2000 Everett and I were living in Guilford, Vermont where we started publishing Mineshaft in January, 1999. We lived in a small shack that was 15 feet by 15 feet and had no running water or electricity. We did all of the computer work for the magazine at the library in Brattleboro where I worked. I rented a darkroom walking distance from the library in an old brick building near the Common Ground Cooperative Restaurant where Everett was working at the time. Sometimes in the evenings Everett would rent movies that he watched on a VCR and tv that were stored in the studio area of the darkroom while I developed film or printed black & white photos, or sometimes I would join him. One night he rented the movie CRUMB that we had wanted to see for a while. When the movie was originally released in 1995, Everett happened to see it listed in the paper at a movie theater in Eugene, Oregon, an hour's drive from where we lived at the time out in a small cottage in the woods near the Umpqua River. We weren't familiar with Crumb's work, but had heard good things about the movie. We drove to the theater one night soon after, only to find that CRUMB had been removed earlier than the date listed in the paper. After finally watching this excellent movie directed by Terry Zwigoff, Everett was inspired to write a letter to R. Crumb in which he included a copy of Mineshaft #4 which at the time was the most recent issue. A couple of months passed by when Everett and I were out making our almost daily walk to the mailbox. This was an enjoyable route on a rutted dirt road that passed by a beaver pond. We'd often see blue herons there. We shared the mailbox with a couple of other people and it was often over-stuffed with mail since Everett and I were the only ones that regularly picked up our mail. As Everett pulled out the mail, I could see he was excitedly holding an envelope with handwritten lettering that would become familiar and always a pleasure to see. Everett opened the envelope and looked inside to see a packet of sketchbook drawings and a letter from R. Crumb! We hurriedly walked back to our cabin where we poured over the wonderful treasure of drawings. Everett put together the front cover of Mineshaft #5 using the sketchbook drawing, "EWW Your Innards!", that Crumb had sent. At that point we didn't know any comics artists and were fairly isolated, so Everett thought that he would do the hand lettering himself. It was a great issue with six sketchbook drawings by Crumb and a special feature, "Freedom in the Death House: The Art of Tommy Trantino", by Everett. The cover offended the one bookshop in Brattleboro that had carried Mineshaft and now they wouldn't sell it, and a patron in Japan cancelled his order of 50 copies because of the front cover. One evening about a month after Mineshaft #5 had come out and Crumb had been sent his box of contributor copies, I was working in my darkroom. Everett knocked on the door and said he had a surprise for me. When I came out, he showed me two pages covered with Mineshaft logos that he recieved in the mail with a letter from Robert. Crumb wrote, "Was pleased to see my artwork reproduced in your little art-poetry mag, but I was offended to see my nicely crosshatched drawing on the cover underneath such a crappy no-where LOGO, so I've designed a few logos for you to use in the future if you want." We've been using Robert's fantastic logos ever since in the magazine, on our website, flyers, and other material.
Since that time, Robert Crumb has continued to send envelopes filled with his incredible artwork. He also includes fascinating letters that we began to publish in Mineshaft #10. Our admiration for Crumb inspired us to dig deeper into the amazing world of Ungerground Comix. We began to order numerous old comics from Don Donahue's shop, Apex Novelties. Everett contacted many of the underground artists and found them not only doing beautiful and creative new work, but also interested in collaborating with Mineshaft. Crumb also encouraged wonderful artists such as his wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, and daughter, Sophie Crumb, to contribute to the magazine. In addition to this he introduced us via mail to artist Peter Poplaski and writer J.R. Helton. R. Crumb has not only been a contributor to Mineshaft but an inspiration and great promoter of the magazine that we truly appreciate.
To date Mineshaft has had the pleasure to publish nine front covers by R. Crumb: Mineshaft #5, #6, #7, #9, #10, #11, #13, #15, and #21; ten back covers: Mineshaft #7, #8, #12, #14, #16, #19, #20, #22, 23, and #24; and a total to date of 139 pages of artwork and letters appearing in every issue since Mineshaft #5.
March 28, 2004
Everett:
Here’s some more sketchbook pages for MINESHAFT, plus the new $5.00 price tag you requested.
I see you got some stuff from my old buddy Robert Armstrong. Did you get his address from me??
I like the mix of text, cartoons, drawings & photos you’ve got going in MINESHAFT these days... Keeps things interesting for the “modern” reader. Like me, f’r instance, since nowadays almost everybody suffers from “A.D.D.” (Attention Deficit Disorder). But they don’t, we don’t, usually know that we’re suffering from it, since it is a condition of modern life, in which we can constantly distract ourselves with media of some kind or other, to the point where we’re all JADED and have the patience and focus of a seven-year-old child, a spoiled child at that.
I was quite surprised to see these drawings by Simon Deitch. They are quite fine. He has a strong vision, but, unlike his brother Kim, I think he has a hard time disciplining himself to turn out artwork. And I believe his health is not good, also. Last I heard, anyway.
I’ve never seen Thackeray’s illustrations before. That, too, was surprising, and the “Black Hole” fashion photo was very creepy and disturbing. Hope it doesn’t turn into the next youth trend. Yipes!
And in response to Peter Bagge’s letter, I would say, yes, Pete, there is something profoundly wrong with you that you “could care less what it all means.” But I think he does care, in his own way. He’s just basically archly conservative, though in a very brilliant, personal way. Of course his Divine Grace Swami Bhaktivedanta is a silly old pompous windbag, but he’s absolutely correct about the four defects of “a living being who lives in the mundane world,” meaning ALL of us, every one who lives in a physical body: we are certain to commit mistakes, we are subject to illusion, we have a propensity to cheat others, and our senses are imperfect. And you could add to this list a fifth defect: we desire to violate and dominate others; and a sixth defect, we choose to remain willfully ignorant; and a seventh defect, we think we’re hot shit, we think we know everything there is to know; and an eighth defect, and a ninth, and a tenth...
What bewilders me is how anyone could NOT be interested in “THE BIG QUESTIONS”... And I know some very intelligent people who aren’t, such as Peter Bagge. My wife Aline is kind of like that, too. She treats my “quest” for the meaning of life as something hopelessly sophomoric in my personality, a youthful naïveté that I never outgrew.
Maybe she’s right.
I often find myself marveling at Aline’s sharp, hard, pragmatic perceptions about life and people. With her it’s usually about personal interactions, human behavior, a Jewish, Freudian vision of the psyches of our friends and relatives. Scary sometimes.
Me, I’m always preoccupied with, you know, trying to open my third eye or some other nutty thing like that, rather oblivious to the motivations and maneuverings of the people around me. We make a pretty good team, though. Aline, with her sharp eye for human behavior, protects me. I might be DEAD by now if I hadn’t gotten attached to her.
In your letter of Oct., 2003 you mention getting a C.D. of Bennie Nawahi. I agree that he is great, in case I didn’t already tell you. And there is a lot of other great Hawaiian music recorded in the late 1920s-early’30s. Two record companies, Columbia and Brunswick, recorded in Honolulu in those days and gave us a legacy of many great string bands and singers who never left the islands.
By the way, how’s your prostate, old chap, old bean, ol’ sport? I’m still hale and hearty at 60, knock on wood, I try to exercise regularly these days, which is new for me. I was never very interested in my own body. All my attention was focused obsessively on the female body, especially big, robust ones. I get no joy from my work-outs, it’s just maintenance. But I can stand on my head for five minutes now. It’s not fun but I like the challenge, and I want to try to keep my body tough and resilient as long as I can. I was amazed to read Kim Deitch’s letter in MINESHAFT about him doing a hundred push-ups a day! A HUNDRED PUSH-UPS!! Try it sometime! I can do 20 and then I’m shot... Does he do them all at once, I wonder, or at intervals during the day??
The body feels like a hulking dead weight. I’m just a natural-born weakling, that’s all. I got almost no upper body strength. I got beat up by a girl in third grade. She broke my glasses. I was crying. Her and her girlfriends ridiculed me and she yelled, “Oh go on home to your Mommy!” And I did, actually. No wonder I have all these sadistic fantasies... And you know what? There are a lot of masochistic women out there... It’s a big well-known secret. And a lot of them are very strong ladies who are very forceful and powerful in the world. Life’s full of surprising ironies... Almost nothing is as it appears.
But let us not dwell too long on such matters... It makes people uncomfortable to drag such stuff out in the open.
Guess that’s all for now...
-R. Crumb (originally published in Mineshaft #14)
Oct. 15, 2008
Everett:
First, just to tell you how much I enjoyed the recent issue of Mineshaft (No. 22). Again, every page worth reading! Great cover featuring spectacular show of strength by Muscle Beach strong woman, and attractive logo and layout by Armstrong. Love the Muscle beach photos. These old-time strong women are generally much more appealing and pleasing to look at than the female weightlifters of our own time, who build themselves up with huge, bulging muscles which even look grotesque on men. The old-time strong women still have the nice feminine curves and rounded shapes that have made women alluring to the male of the species since we first stood upright and visual excitement became a primary part of our mating practices. Traditionally, a plump young woman with wide hips, big breasts and big ass, was more cock-stimulating that a very thin, hipless woman, let alone one with a muscle-bound, masculine upper torso and narrow hips. I don’t get what’s going on with the mode for skinny women among western middle-class men. As for the overly-muscled female weight-lifters, I’ve known a couple of them. They seem to mostly be doing it out of some personal motivation of their own, to please themselves and compete in contests, and not under the influence of male body builders necessarily. A strange subculture. These 1950s strong women, as the photos show, were obviously very strong without having huge, male-like muscles. They look proud, healthy and fearless!
And of course I was so flattered to see my letter to you of Nov., ’07 given so much space. S’funny, reading it typeset in print made it seem so much more eloquent and brilliant than it was in hand-written form... By the way, I read the Paul Winchell autobiography, Winch... One of the most bizarre autobiographies I’ve ever read, and it was very hard for me to really see into his world, from the way he wrote about it... Something didn’t add up there. But I don’t doubt his claim that they stole the credit for his artificial heart invention. What a strange man! I remember as a kid watching him with his ventriloquist dummy on television and thinking, “He’s not funny.” Jimmy Nelson, now long forgotten, was much funnier.
You never did answer my question about what kind of drug dealer you were. Come on, Everett! Come clean! Own up!
I greatly enjoyed Jay Kinney’s “Rant”. More of that! Urge him on to send more! There are so many irritating aspects of our contemporary world in need of his curmudgeonly bludgeoning! It’s endless! How ‘bout this financial collapse! What’s the big shock!? It’s amazing they were able to keep up the colossal swindle as long as they did before the whole thing caught up with them. And now, the very same scoundrels who pounded the drum of “free market” and “keep the govt. out of the boardroom” are screaming for the govt. to save their hateful asses with everyone else’s hard-earned money! They should all be put in re-education camps and made to do road repair work and wear gold armbands with a big dollar sign on them. Fucking bastards! I’ve been predicting this collapse for thirty years, blah blah...
Also enjoyed Aaron Lange’s piece about Kim Deitch. I like his cartoons a lot, and now he’s showing ability as a commentator as well. In his essay he talks about how the underground comics came out of the sixties and just kept coming, never fizzled out, as most of the “counter culture” did... Even though many commentators in the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s pronounced alternative comics a dead movement, much to my annoyance. I believe the reason it kept going and continued to produce fresh, creative work is (A), it was an artistic movement solidly grounded in a strong graphic tradition, and (B) there was never a lot of money to be made in it. You have to love the medium to keep working in it. This discourages a lot of the jive hustlers from staying in the comics medium, or from entering into it at all. When they perceive how much work it is for so little reward and glory, they look elsewhere to apply their dubious talents. The comics medium was kept vigorous by these hard facts of life. It might be changing, with “graphic novels” now having a market niche and big publishers eager to put them out. I see a lot more pretentious, puffed up comics coming out lately, not to mention a couple of ridiculous and ill-conceived books on how to draw comics and get them published. Not a good sign.
You mentioned in your letter of August 7th that you “don’t listen to a lot of music”, that you “burned out listening to rock and roll” when you were “a young chap.” That’s a very interesting statement and makes me wonder: does the popular music of the “youth culture” of, say, the past thirty years, lack whatever it is that might sustain people into middle, let alone old, age? Will punk rock and heavy metal still be listened to by its fans when they’re sixty years old?? I know plenty of people in my age group, in their sixties, who still listen to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, etc. Mick Jagger still gets up on stage and jumps around as if he was 25... Embarrassing to behold, in my eyes, but the “Stones” still have much of their original fan base. But their stuff is mild compared to the shrieking aggressiveness and sense-numbing anti-music that came later. Maybe it’s just not possible to keep listening to that stuff after one passes a certain age, I dunno. What sort of music were you listening to in your youth that you put under the broad category of “rock and roll”? Was it “punk”, or what? I know there are now dozens of categories and sub-genres now that I have no idea what they’re talking about. I just don’t follow it at all... Can’t stand rap or “emo” or any of it. I’m stuck in the music of my grandparents’ time. I don’t even like the music of my parents’ generation, the “swing era”, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and all that. Nor do I care much for post-war country & western or rhythm & blues. Those old 78s of the ‘20s & ‘30s have me frozen in time.
You say your current favorite genre of music is the old-time Hawaiian stuff. I agree that it is wonderful music. I, too, love it. Much of it still has not been reissued from the 78s. But, in my book, there are many equally great genres of music recorded in that era, the 1920s & ‘30s... It was a golden age. Of course there’s still good music around, plenty of it. You just have to make an effort to find it. But blasting loud, hostile, aggressive youth-culture music? I dunno... It all sounds bad to me. It’s “non music” or “anti-music”. It projects an attitude which a lot of young people might think is “cool” or something, but to my ears it sounds like a blight on the cultural landscape, along with all the hard drugs, spray-paint graffiti and blah blah rant rave... Who knows, I could be just another old crank. Maybe a hundred years from now they’ll be talking about the golden age of western youth culture and lamenting the passing of all this stuff that I personally think is utter, total, complete SHIT!!
It’s very interesting that you say you “burned out” on “rock and roll”... I’m curious to know what that’s about. Can you elucidate further?
As for the election, I like Obama. I voted for him by absentee ballot. It’s the first time I voted in my life. McCain’s looking worse and worse every day. Recently Obama said to some guy who asked him to explain his belief in increasing taxation on the rich and corporations, that he wanted to “spread the wealth around”. McCain’s chief campaign strategist, Steven Schmidt, said, “Spread the wealth around. We will focus acutely on that. ‘Spread the wealth around’ is a big mistake.”
God forbid we should spread the wealth around! Incredible. If America votes for McCain there’s no hope. Then again, it’s yet to be seen what sort of dirty tricks and chicanery the Republicans have up their sleeves to MAKE SURE that McCain wins the election, to rig the voting... Hopefully, the people are by now alert enough to the republicans having rigged the last two elections to not let them get away with it again. One optimistic hope is that even many of the wealthy class are fed up with the “fiscal irresponsibility” of the economic policies of the last 30 years, and maybe those people have enough power to stop the “neo-conservatives” from continuing to have so much control of the government. Maybe the very rich are “allowing” Obama to win the election!
Y’know, all of us down here in the muck, we’ll never know what really goes on at the top levels of power and wealth. We know very little about what they’re really up to. That’s why conspiracy theories are so rampant these days. Who really instigated the events of Sept. 11, ’01, and why?? Stuff like that... Endless bits of “evidence” that it was an organized, staged event by some secret kabala in the top levels of government... Who knows? I don’t discount it. History shows us that powerful men in high places have always mostly been up to no good. Why should our time be any different?
And don’t get me started on my belief that H.I.V. is not the cause of AIDS, and is only a harmless part of the D.N.A.! I’ve done a lot of reading about it... It is an enormous fraud foisted on the public by ambitious, unscrupulous men (and even a few women) in various government agencies and pharmaceutical companies. What is the real cause of AIDS then, you might ask? AIDS is not one disease. The causes are different in different societies. In the western world it was, and still is (though the numbers have declined in spite of dire predictions), mostly caused by extremely excessive use of recreational drugs, and also, by the drugs given to people diagnosed with AIDS or even just people who tested H.I.V. positive, particularly the highly toxic drug AZT, known by its brand name Retrovir (Glaxo-Smith-Kline). There are plenty of books on this subject if you’re interested. If you look at the internet, there are two sites: Rethinking AIDS and Alive and Well. I’ve read so much about this subject that I’m practically an expert on it! But a lot of people have a hostile reaction when you make such an assertion – H.I.V. doesn’t cause AIDS?? What’re you talking about?! What about all that scientific research?? Polymerase chain reaction and everything!? Are you saying they’re all wrong?? Who’re you to question the entire scientific establishment??
I wonder what Jay Kinney thinks about H.I.V. and AIDS...
Well, enough ranting from me...
-R. Crumb (originally published in Mineshaft #24)