Tales of Paranoia

by Robert Crumb

THE FIRST R. CRUMB COMIC BOOK IN 23 YEARS!
The seminal cartoonist who single-handedly invented the alternative comics format of the one-person anthology in 1967 with ZAP returns at age 81, still raging at the world and himself, still drawing like a master, and still funny... mostly. In his latest comics excursion, Crumb dives down internet and newspaper rabbit-holes, and comes up asking questions. Why don't we know the real background of deep state careerists? And is Crumb himself just as paranoid as everyone else tells him he is? Or is that just what THEY want you to think?

Mixing memoir, essay, polemic, neurosis, and conspiracy across 12 short comics — including the final Dirty Laundry story, drawn by Crumb with a script written with Aline Kominsky-Crumb before her death in 2022 — Tales Of Paranoia shows there's still plenty of life in both the artist and the classic underground comics format.

Genres: Comics, Art

36 pages, Unknown Binding

Published November 5, 2025

About the author

Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943)— is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.

Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded as its most prominent figure. Though one of the most celebrated of comic book artists, Crumb's entire career has unfolded outside the mainstream comic book publishing industry. One of his most recognized works is the "Keep on Truckin'" comic, which became a widely distributed fixture of pop culture in the 1970s. Others are the characters "Devil Girl", "Fritz the Cat", and "Mr. Natural".

He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1991.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Crumb! ... I did skip some of the rants and focused on the line work.

[Konstantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lot of it is just very dense and sometimes not very interesting ramblings but the bit where he finishes a comic he was supposed to make with Aline and ending it with 2 panels of his current life alone and making dinner for one in his apartment hit me very hard. A book supposed to poke fun at Crumb’s neurotic self reveals lots of vulnerability and loneliness more than anything

[Julesreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest, insane, and I appreciate it (drawings are damn good from what I can tell). Does the title well and does us well.

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always loved and admired the style of Crumb's illustration, though I admittedly never really connected with a lot of the content of what is often considered his classics--save for the adaptations of other people's writing or his illustrating for Pekar, etc. I attribute this to how of-the-time a majority of the Crumb-authored work is. I'm sure if I was living then, it would have smashed my head open the way it did for many of the authors/artists whose work exists in his shadow (and whose work I do connect with).

That being said, I think this is the closest thing to a genuine immediate connection that I have ever experienced with his subject matter. As a thirty-something, Tales of Paranoia feels like a reaction to what is now MY world and I can now more easily feel what someone my age might have felt fifty years ago seeing the first of his first Underground Comix emerging into the world rather than just understanding it in a purely intellectual or historical way. Of course, this is not to say I AGREE with all of what he is exploring or insinuating but I definitely think we should be talking about it more than the current socio-cultural-political environment deigns to be acceptable.

Crumb comes across as bright, thoughtful, anxious, self-aware, paranoid (duh), and lonely. He is voicing an alternative perspective to the mainstream informed by his research into the questionable science, politics, and bureaucracy of this century of American humiliation. And, for the most part, it works really well. Some of it is funny, much of it isn't, all of it is beautifully illustrated. There are A LOT of words in this slim comic and some of the pieces are a little samey. You do walk away feeling a little bad for the old coot and more-so, if you are a thoughtful person with a mordant intellect, you walk away worrying that in fifty years you might fade into the same shaky paranoid shell that Crumb so brilliant self-portrays in his illustrations.

Regardless, even if you pick up this book for no other reason than to gawk at the amazing line and shadow work, or the grotesque faces and bodies, or the brilliant page layouts, there is still something to appreciate and learn. After all, genius is still genius even if you don't always get it or agree with it. We can only hope there's more to come and that it doesn't take a quarter century to arrive (if we have that long).

Read in the first printing of the beautiful Fantagraphics single issue.

[J.D. DeLuzio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Crumb, now an octogenarian, presenting his first published solo work in more than twenty years. His artwork remains technically excellent and dark. Unfortunately, too much of the art here consists of his face, as he rants on, literal old man yelling at the clouds (I'm not the first to make this comparison. I won't be the last), but at least acknowledging that's what he's doing. Seriously, much of the comic resembles a screencapped YouTube vlog or illustrated Reddit post. Although Crumb has time for other conspiracies and his own history of paranoia, he directs most of his rant at the Covid pandemic and Big Pharma. He both questions and defends his own conspiratorial leanings, while dismissing others. In all fairness, the ones he dismisses are pretty dumb and dismal. He at least tries to be informed, even while bemoaning his inability to be certain of anything.

The comic becomes something far better whenever Crumb decides to do something else. His final story with and about his late wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, is genuinely touching. He also gives us a disturbing account of his worst LSD trip (if it even was LSD in this instance; he's not certain), which did little to diminish his paranoic tendences. Read it for these tales. If you're into comic art, buy it, for no other reason, than Crumb's creepy cover.

Crumb has always been able to engage and fascinate readers or, perhaps, a certain kind of reader, even when we disagree with or are even outraged by what he says and draws. Tales of Paranoia is more sad than outrageous. Crumb completists will buy it, but I wouldn't recommend it as an entry point to his work.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tales of Paranoia is Robert Crumb’s first book of new comics in 23 years. At 82, Crumb remains a master draftsman able to imbue existential drama even in stories whose outward actions consist only of depictions of Crumb in bed worrying over anxious thoughts. His paranoid musings cover COVID-19, the vaccines developed to counter it, the “deep state,” bad “LSD” trips, and pleas to what may be an imaginary god.

A problem common to believers in conspiracy theories is that otherwise healthy skepticism toward any assertion of fact or truth is not balanced by a distinction between possible and probably or a foundation upon which facticity or truth can be established—it’s just radical doubt all the way down. Although I find fault with some of his reasoning, Crumb is as articulate and expressive in his with his writing as he is his drawing, given to entertaining points of view contrary to his own. He may be old but he hasn’t mellowed and shows every sign of refusing to go gentle into that good night.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Nate Portnoy · Rating 2 out of 5]

his least engaging/interesting book yet

just kept thinking of this old man yells at sky meme



refusing to engage with how information works today strips healthy skepticism of its purpose and turns it into defensive posturing. You’re not part of some intelligentsia because you know how to get to the third page of google.

it’s tough because there are some real world breaks in how we understand what’s “true” today. if you told me twenty years ago that there were microplastics in everyone’s balls and that there really WERE billionaires running competitive pedophile rings, I would’ve told you to get the fuck outta here. but now that enough improbable things really have turned out to be real, we’ve lowered the bar of plausibility so low that every unhinged thing is being treated as possible. it’s fun n all to point out but i really wish crumb in all his lived experience offered anything even close to wisdom rather than just drinking from his rabbit hole. whatEVER

OH - also did he get baby reindeer-ed

[Matt Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crumb remains one of the great illustrators and funny book makers and Paranoia is excellent in that respect. I think it could also be subtitled "Confirmation Bias: The Comic." The basis for Crumb's skepticism around vaccines seems to be purely emotional however he goes to great lengths to demonstrate research and cite his sources. Of course, he looks only for evidence that supports his thesis without ever presenting a rationale for the thesis in the first place. He also makes statements that seem sinister but can be resolved with a few minutes of looking. While the conspiracy theorists often urge people to "do their own research" it's clear that Crumb's assertions are the result of pretty amateur sleuthing.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of shorts that mainly consists of the same character/characters in slightly different poses, no backgrounds and pages packed full of text.

In an artistic sense, it's rather lazy. Can't say the ramblings are lazy, but they do feel like top of the head thoughts about various topics. They are coherent enough, and he sure wants to tell the world his thoughts on things. They are just not insightful or interesting enough to fill page after page with, making the whole thing feel rather pretentious.
Given Robert's age, it's still an impressive feat, and there's not a lack of skill in the drawing department. That's why I have to give it 2 stars instead of 1.
Can't recommend this to anyone though

[Nicolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first significant Crumb work I read was The Book of Genesis and it remained that way for more than a decade. Save for some forgettable shorts of Crumb, I haven't had a Crumb book since.

Until Tales of Paranoia arrived late 2025, which became my latest Crumb read. The art doesn't disappoint, delivering what one would expect from Crumb the drawer, meticulous pen and ink drawings of grotesque and exaggerated human forms.

As for the stories, I couldn't finish the main story. It was exhausting keeping up with Crumb's ranting. The rest, however, were accessible and I enjoyed those.

[Deniz Rudin]

no surprise that Crumb has become a facebook conspiracy theory grandpa—it’s not like he was thinking clearly before. but still a sad experience reading this work of amorphous ranting, which contains virtually no visual pleasures. most of this is dedicated to repeated drawings of Robert, with the frame devoted to unspooling his enervating, infuriating monologues. it reminds me of the direction Charles Crumb’s work took as he became increasingly isolated from society, the hermetic repetitive dialogue eventually completely overwhelming the figures in the frame

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's Crumb after Crumb - always susceptible to conspiratorial thinking, being a child of the 60s ("question everything") and whatnot - has spent a few years inhaling RFK-adjacent tweets like so much spraypaint huffed from a bag. still good, because his work is good (his graphic-novel rants are always enjoyable even when one disagrees with him) and because he's got the self-awareness to say what is going on here (it's also not new to this volume, as his misremembered/hard-to-remember anecdote about his bad LSD trip and his largely laudatory Philip K. Dick bio-comic (not included, but worth googling) make clear). Highly recommended if you've consumed as much of this strange old man's content as I have.

[Jessie Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is just what you think it is.

[Simon Popek · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,0 ⭐️

[Canavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

✭½

[Al McCarty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Crumb and I hope that this is not his last comic. I skipped a bunch of it. More comics, Bob, and less of whatever this was.