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Rating: 
Summary: Good Early Crumb Fairy-Tale
Review: Crumb's "The Yum Yum Book" is quite different from what the average Crumb fan has come to expect from the gangly, bespeckled cartoonist. "The Yum Yum Book" was written when Crumb was 19, around the time he met his first wife, but wasn't published until some years later, 1975 I believe. The story is your basic love story much in the same tradition as The Princess and the Frog with a dash of Jack and the Beanstalk thrown in. The content is very tame compared to Crumb's later work and is actually quite sweet and, dare I say, wholesome. The characters include a giant (literally) apple-cheeked woman whom the pathetic, misunderstood frog falls head over heels in love with although she tries many times to eat him. The woman is portrayed very much in the way that Crumb draws them now; she is very strong with large, powerful legs and prominent buttocks. The frog, Oggie, finds her at once menacing and extremelly attractive. I won't spoil the ending for you, instead I'll just say that the illustrations and the colors are rich and very well-done. This book was also refered to briefly in the classic documentary "Crumb".
Rating:
Summary: Pleasant, innocent Crumb! Missing Link in Comics History!
Review: This book is not a good representation of what R. Crumb is all about, for newcomers to Crumb fandom. It is too unique, and just a brief stage in his artistic development.But, this is a great book for Crumb collectors. It is a large, ambitious labor of love that was undertaken by a teenaged R. Crumb, ... thus this is sitting on the dividing line between Crumb's childhood talking animals, homemade comics, and his career-making, counter-culture work that would come a few years later. "Big Yum Yum Book" is LIKE a fairy tale, but an "R."-rated fairy tale, so it is definitely not for kids (too much nudity). There are also many similarities, (Jack & the Beanstalk, fairy tale candy cottages, "Crime and Punishment" by Doestoyevsky, Godzilla movies), that I'm not sure that R. was even aware of them all when he made this book. This is an interesting book because it seems to be an early, missing link in the evolution of the comic book graphic novel, which would become en vogue some 20 years later by comics stars like Frank Miller. But here's Crumb beating the world to the punch yet again, (Crumb was also a pioneering fanzine maker, way back in the 1950's). This is a full length book, nearly 150 pages long, designed to be read and published as one complete book, not a series of comic book reprints collected after their first publications elsewhere. The book would rate higher, except it does not lead to a clear point, or moral to the story; or it fails to make any intended point. All in all, this is a very nice, sweet work by an eager but unsure R. Crumb, during a formative stage before he would become a counter-culture trailblazer. I recommend this highly for any established Crumb fans; but since this is such a unique R. work, it is not a good book for new fans to get a taste of what R. is all about. Cute and yummy, but not classic Crumby.
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