Phantasmatic instincts. Sexuality of "perverts" in Robert Crumb comics

Abstract

The comic adaptation of Richard Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis adds nothing to the original, but the change of medium to comic from text to text-enriched series of images distributes accents differently. Equal frames, like the pedantic gallery on the cover, build contrast, the second element of which is the chaos prevailing in the lives of ôpervertsö whose fate is drawn by Robert Crumb. Their deeds can entertain or shock in the short run, but the impression that steadily builds up, and thus takes root deeper in the reader, is depression. The medicine turns out to be a character also derived from fantasy, the queen of the jungle, Sheena. Sheena, the heroine of the television series, is not only the imagined companion of young Robert Crumb, but also his phantasm, she combines the role of a sex project with the role of an erotic tutor instructing him in the subject of fantasizing (somewhat like Mrs. de Warens, Rousseau's „mummy” ). Sheena's way of life, her parameters as a fantasy center, sets out paths along which the boy's erotic imagination will take place. In later episodes of the autobiographical comic cycle My Troubles with Women, Crumb will describe his fellow women as Sheena's shadows, fetishizing not only the physical conditions of their partners, but also their openness.