The Editors | July 31, 2025
Sometimes you're rewarded with the special event of a piece of art radiating with an uncontrollable urge. You get the privilege of looking at it, but there's no mistake of any delusion that this was made for your review. Art made by force with an irresistible call- and if a viewer is around for the aftermath, well, lucky you. This week marks the anniversary of the birthday of cartoonist and artist, Aline Kominsky-Crumb (1948-2022). Her work discloses someone who compulsively must tell the truth, telling stories that threaten the reader with an electric frankness and mark-making well described by the Shirley Corriher adage, "wretched excess is just barely enough" .
Thank you kindly to Drawn & Quarterly for sharing with us an excerpt from Love That Bunch, Aline's own birthday story, 'Ze Bunch de Pareé Turns 40'. Enjoy further reading with remembrances of Aline, an affectionate obituary from John Kelly, and the epochal 1990 interview with fellow former Weirdo editor, Peter Bagge, wherein Bagge makes my favorite claim regarding her work, "But the fact remains: any cartoonist who has ever sat down and deliberately scrawled out an artfully ugly drawing, who has dared to be stingingly, nakedly candid in an autobiographical story, owes her a tremendous debt."
-Sally Madden
English (US) · 