Robert Crumb episode: Apple's plan to be a pro artist and meet her hero. How did this work?!

Robert Crumb episode: Apple plan to be a pro artist and meet her hero.

Rough auto transcript:

Alyssa Crumb Drawing Board OCTOBER

[00:00:00] Simple advertisement. Dear, Vanna White. No, no, no! You can't show that! This is for kids! Oh, right, right, right. We'll edit that out. I'll show a more PG page. If there is one. There isn't one.

Welcome to Studio Bean Can's Drawing Board . These are collections of musings, thoughts, arguments, cut on tape while recording the time lapse videos, and um, put together just for you.. I hope you enjoy it. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Oh, okay. I think it did say my thing was like 300 or something like that. Oh, three hundred's fine. Yeah. It might've been that you had, it originally made for a half sheet. Oh, oh man. Maybe I, I'm pretty sure that I could, you know, it might've been five. 5. 5 by 8. 5 and then it like upscales it and then you get the, JPEG [00:01:00] artifacts.

. Come on. Come on, sit, sit down. Where's that other coffee, Kirt? I threw it away. You're full of . It's in the back? I thought it was Alyssa's. Yeah, but I gave her mine because I hadn't drank from it yet. Oh.

Ugh, Spider Man. Well, I did something really stupid, I realize. What'd you do? I didn't bring my iPad. I brought my iPad. Yeah. She's ready.

Um, dum dum dum dum I'm so ashamed. Is it on? , one thing I realized I've never, we've never done is actually introduce all of us. That's something I thought would be reasonable to do, like, I'm Daniel McCluskey, creator of Cloud Town, among other self published books. Cloud Town is my first book with a big [00:02:00] publisher.

It's gotten good reviews. Things are going well. Awesome. My name is, uh, Alyssa Appleberry, but people call me Apple. And, um, I'm currently a tattoo artist, and I'm also practicing cartooning and making comic books. So, I like to draw adult comics. Do you mind me asking how old you are?

I am, I'm 20. Alright, so Alyssa is 20, we live in one of the most expensive places in America, and she went from , well you went to high school, an art high school, so you have some formal art background, more than I do. Alyssa also went from, you know, living at her dad's house, or whatever, to...

Living at my dad's house without him in it. Yeah. , he moved out. All right. Yeah. Yeah. And so suddenly you were paying rent and you made it work by working at a comic shop and starting from scratch, getting your tattoo license. And that involved, setting goals, building a portfolio.

You did a lot in that first year [00:03:00] when, I think I met you when you were 18, right? . Yeah. I started working at Mission Comics at 18 years old. And I definitely put, , a ton of work into,, both aspects of being at the comic store and tattoo shop. But it's also really helped just, , being friends with the people around here and talking with them and asking their advice for the process.

So, . Yeah, it's, uh, cool to be, , around the people that are similar to me to learn how it works. Also, , your life... Like, we don't have to, talk about this, but like your high life is pretty hard . Uhhuh. , you were like eating a one taco from Taco Bell. Yep. A week or something , yeah.

And, your ability to like try hard and make that art and get the tattoo stuff running is what made you be able to be here and hustle. Yeah. It's the, it's the only thing I had for sure, like, . I, I just knew that if I kept going eventually it would get somewhere and today you have your first comic you printed, right? I might blur it out because I'm trying to be relatively [00:04:00] PG 13. But this is a comics anthology, ? This is "Repulsive". So this is my, uh, very first comic book anthology featuring six different underground cartoonists based in San Francisco, mostly in Mission Street.

I created this anthology to try to meet Robert Crumb because he said that he was coming to the country. He didn't even say he was coming to SF, he just said he was coming to America. He's definitely going to be on Mission Street. So I texted my tattoo mentor and I was like, I'm going to try to find Robert Crumb.

And she's like, okay, how do we do that? I was like, let's try to make an anthology so that we could show it to him. And, , , that's how this started. This is the birth of Repulsive. And, um, the birth. Yeah, it was a natural birth. I didn't force the labor. It came out. It came out perfectly

But I [00:05:00] did. You did? Yeah. No shit. Yeah, so, uh, What the flip? Like, I didn't give him this anthology, but I ran into his daughter, and , I gave her one of my zines, and , my tattoo mentor, who also makes comics, I'll show you, you can censor this, but um, she did this comic right here, she did the, like, first comic of the whole anthology.

So, uh, I gave her my Zine and this comic to Robert Crumb's daughter, and I was like, please give this to Robert Crumb, like, out of breath, , sweating, because I had, like, run over to where she was, because I saw she was, , on Valencia Street via Instagram, like, she was supposed to order, so I was like, I gotta get there, I, like, ran out with, like, my comics and shit.

And so I met her and she was cool. She even asked if I did a zine with her, but I was like, no, sorry I haven't worked on a project with you. That'd be cool. I've been in a anthologies that Sophie Crum has been in because she does a bunch with Birdcage Bottom Books and I've done a couple. I think they were in Too Tough to Die, the [00:06:00] aging punk rocker anthology.

Really? That's awesome. Is that a publisher? A publisher and indie distributor.

That's cool. Yeah. That's awesome. But then don't you have a photo with Robert Crumb on your Instagram? Yeah. Can you send that to me? Did you actually meet? I'll show him. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I met his daughter and then, um, we talked a little bit and then I went back and like I told Mary, I was like, I gave, I gave her my comic, like she said she was gonna give it to Crumb.

And then, a day later, I was walking home from work after the comic bookstore. And for some really weird reason , I was like, I'm just gonna walk a different route home, like, just to try it out. So I walked, like, parallel to Mission Street down, and um, like, for a few blocks, and then I felt like something really weird in my legs, and then, , I don't know, it was just something, I was like, man, like, like, I feel like I'm having a stroke or something, like, I'm gonna die.

And then I seen, like, this old man across the street, and I was like, Man, that guy looks like Robert Crumb. I thought I was a heat, the heat or something. , I thought I was [00:07:00] tripping out. And then I walked a little closer to him, I was like, Holy shit,

This guy looks exactly like Robert Crumb.

And then I, I went up to him, I was like, Hey, are you Robert Crumb? And he was like, Yeah. And then, and then I was like, oh my god, , I gave you my comic, did you read it? And he was like, And I was like, I was like, what'd you think? Like, did you like it? And he was like, no, I didn't like it.

And then I just sat there. I didn't say anything after I didn't respond. And he was like, you got to stop doing drugs. And then I like I took the joint out of my mouth. I was like, smoking . I was like, yeah, you're right. I got to stop smoking. I got to stop doing drugs. So, yeah, we talked for like a couple of minutes.

That's like a PSA. Yeah, yeah. You should put that on television. Make your comics better. Hey, that's what happened. I don't believe you.

So he, like, at first he wasn't smiling. Like, he was just like, like, you know his face he does? Let me show the camera more. That's... And so I was [00:08:00] like, wait, wait, I was taking a bunch of photos, I was like, man, I feel dorky here, because I had the headphones on, right? I was like, man, I gotta take the headphones off for this.

This is Robert Crumb. So, so he's like, he's not smiling, like, he's not. Oh wow, that's right around here, isn't it? Yeah, , so I took it off, he started smiling. The comic that you showed him, which comic was it? This was my very first, , zine.

It wasn't even a comic book. Oh, was it with the flash? Yeah, it had the Cerebus flash on the back. Oh, okay. And like, my wizard in the tower comic. So, my very first ever zine, I think I can bring it from the back. Yeah, I took my headphones off and he started smiling because he thought it was funny. Hey, what's up?

Oh, that's awesome. What a... What? Yeah, man. That's amazing. Robert Crumb owns this zine. He loves it. Well, yeah, I heard he doesn't like it, but it doesn't he doesn't like the art, but he loves the book [00:09:00] He loves me Well, I feel like that's actually pretty good motivation, right?

Yeah You're trying to do better every time, right? Yeah, yeah. No, actually, no, like, he doesn't. I don't think I would have recognized him. Man, but like, he looks like how he draws himself. To the T. Like, he looks exactly how his illustrations look.

So, I was like That's what I've heard. He looks very Robert Crumb esque. Like, he was like He's like what an old man would look like if he looked like Robert Crumb. That's how he looks like himself. That's wild. What a national treasure. Yeah, man. But he did He told me to keep making comic books and , you know, like I'd always keep doing that if he didn't tell me.

But that's really good advice. I think it's good Creators should just be honest and say, No, I don't like it. No, it's nothing personal. It's just, I think it sucks. I think that's actually a lot better than being like, Oh yeah! Keep it up! Keep going! Like, I mean, that's also [00:10:00] good. I mean, there's a balance.

But you're not getting anything. You don't want to be destructive and try to break someone. But saying it's not good and keep going is actually kind of amazing. That's the best of us. I don't know if I can do that. Because everyone isn't really that good. Yeah. If you were, you'd notice. He probably wouldn't like any of these comics in here.

Yeah. Well, a couple. Maybe, maybe a few. . He might like his own. I'm sure he'll find something. Uh,​

Um, I have another mission for you and I think you might be the only person able to do this.

Yeah. You now need to meet Alan Moore. Yeah.

Right,​