Archives | Authors | Aline Kominsky-Crumb

Aline Kominsky-Crumb United States of America    PWF 2009

“I get aroused by Crumb’s sick work because many of the female objects of desire resemble me — and this appeals to my extreme narcissism.”

Aline Goldsmith was born in 1948, in Long Beach, New York — but soon leaned — like the Tower of Pisa — toward counterculture — way downtown to the East Village —not counting sheep.

After marrying her first husband Carl Kominsky in 1968, she moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she discovered the world of underground comics and began drawing — before moving to San Francisco, where she met Robert Crumb “violent, twisted — a wimp who attacks powerful females” — and published cartoons for the Wimmen’s Comix collective before clashing sharply with several members of the collective and leaving to start her own Twisted Sisters series.

In 1978, Aline married Robert Crumb — “lucky for you, I repeatedly saved your ass” — and turned their collective lives into Dirty Laundry, living in the south of France with their daughter Sophie — “playing that song for the two thousandth goddamn time on the piano downstairs — what’s it called?”

As for comics — Aline Kominsky-Crumb has served as an editor of Weirdo and Erotic Comics. More recently, she has shifted her focus towards painting — a  move shown in her graphic memoir Need More Love.

“So anyway — I guess I’ll just go on encouraging my husband to squeeze my face and jump on my butt in public — until we’re too old to care.”

Aline Kominsky-Crumb lives in Sauve, France.