Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943)—known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—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.
Robert Crumb was born on August 30, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is of English and Scottish ancestry, and is related to former U.S. president Andrew Jackson on his mother's side. His father, Charles, was a career officer in the United States Marine Corps; his mother, Beatrice, a housewife who reportedly abused diet pills and amphetamines. Their marriage was unhappy and the children — Robert, Charles, Maxon, Sandra and Carol — were frequent witnesses to their parents' loud arguments.
Gilbert Shelton (born May 31, 1940, Houston, Texas) is an American cartoonist and underground comix artist. He is the creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, Wonder Wart-Hog, Philbert Desanex, Not Quite Dead, and the cover art to The Grateful Dead's 1978 album Shakedown Street. He also did the cover of the early classic computer magazine compilation "The Best of Creative Computing Volume 2" in 1977.
He graduated from Lamar High School in Houston. He attended Washington and Lee University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his bachelor's degree in the social sciences in 1961. His early cartoons were published in the University of Texas' humor magazine The Texas Ranger.
Directly after graduation, Shelton moved to New York City and got a job editing automotive magazines, where he would sneak his drawings into print. The idea for the character of Wonder Wart-Hog, a porcine parody of Superman, came to him in 1961. The following year, Shelton moved back to Texas to enroll in graduate school and get a student deferment from the draft. The first two Wonder Wart-Hog stories appeared in Bacchanal, a short-lived college humor magazine, in the spring of 1962. He then became editor of The Texas Ranger and published more Wonder Wart-Hog stories.
Joni Mitchell, CC (born Roberta Joan Anderson; November 7, 1943) is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto. In 1965 she moved to the United States and, touring constantly, began to be recognized when her original songs ("Urge for Going," "Chelsea Morning," "Both Sides, Now," "The Circle Game") were covered by notable folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her own debut album in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell and her popular songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock" helped define an era and a generation. Her more starkly personal 1971 recording Blue has been called one of the best albums ever made. Musically restless, Mitchell switched labels and began moving toward jazz rhythms by way of lush pop textures on 1974's Court and Spark, her best-selling LP, featuring her radio hits "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris."
Gary Groth (born 1954) is an American comic book editor, publisher and critic. He is editor-in-chief of The Comics Journal and a co-founder of Fantagraphics Books.
Groth is the son of a U.S. Navy contractor and was raised in the Washington, D.C. area.
Inspired by film critics like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, and gonzo journalists like Hunter S. Thompson, the teenage Groth published Fantastic Fanzine, a comics fanzine (whose name referenced the Marvel Comics title Fantastic Four). Later, after turning down an editorial assistant position at Marvel Comics in 1973, Groth worked briefly as a production and layout assistant at the movie and comics magazine Mediascene, which was edited by Jim Steranko.
After dropping out of his fourth college in 1974, Groth and his financial partner Michael Catron put on a rock and roll convention that ended in financial failure. Nonetheless, he and Catron dabbled in music publishing with the short-lived magazine Sounds Fine.
In 1976 Groth founded Fantagraphics Books, Inc. with Catron, and took over an adzine named The Nostalgia Journal—quickly renaming it The Comics Journal. Groth's Comics Journal applied rigorous critical standards to comic books. It disparaged formulaic superhero books and work for hire publishers and favored artists like R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman and creator ownership of copyrights. It featured lengthy, freewheeling interviews with comics professionals, often conducted by Groth himself.
Santiago Segura Silva (born 17 July 1965) is a Spanish film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.
Santiago was born in the Carabanchel neighbourhood in Madrid. After studying Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid, he decided to pursue a career as a film-maker and in 1989 he directed the short Relatos de medianoche with a budget of 7000 pesetas (around US$50). In 1992 he went on to direct his first professional short "Evilio", followed with "Perturbado" in 1993.
In 1993 he had a small role in Alex de la Iglesia's film Acción mutante. Two years later he starred in El día de la Bestia, from the same director and that role made him famous in Spain. In 1998 he directed the film that brought him to stardom, Torrente: El brazo tonto de la ley (1998), in which he also acted as the lead character José Luis Torrente, a sleazy crime-fighter. Its popularity led to a sequel (Torrente 2: Misión en Marbella) and a computer game (Torrente: El juego). Torrente 2: Misión en Marbella made €22,838,500 at the Spanish box office, becoming the highest grossing Spanish film of all time. Torrente 3: El Protector, the third film in the series, was released in September 2005. Its advertising campaign parodied Batman Begins, using the phrase "Torrente Acabado" ("Torrente Finished"). Although he declared Torrente 3: El Protector would be the last of the Torrente series, Torrente 4 was released in 2011. In 2010, he played the title role in El gran Vázquez, based on the life of the legendary cartoonist/wastrel Manuel Vázquez Gallego.