432 MY TROUBLES WITH WOMEN
self-created alter ego “Phoenix Dark” (Ben Stiller), and Th e Blue Raja/ Jeff rey (Hank
Azaria) as superheroes with negligible, if any, powers that must save the day when the
city’s Superman archetype, Captain Amazing/alter ego Lance Hunt (Greg Kinnear)
disappears. Th e fi lm is generally well-liked and has maintained a cult status, but in
keeping with many adaptations of comic books before the recent renaissance, Myste r y
Men almost disguises its comic book sources rather than celebrating them.
Lorcan McGrane
MY TROUBLES WITH WOMEN. Originally released in 1992 by Knockabout Comics,
and reprinted in 2000 by venerable underground publisher Last Gasp, My Troubles with
Wo m e n collects 10 autobiographical stories by Robert Crumb (three in collaboration with
his wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb) that fi rst appeared in the comic books Zap and Hup
and the magazine We i r d o between 1980 and 1989. Th e stories represent Crumb’s ongoing
work almost two decades after he emerged as the most prominent and infl uential creator
of underground comics , or “ comix ,” in the late 1960s. Like a few other survivors of that
movement, Crumb’s original location in the counter-cultural underground mutated into
the realm of alternative , or independent comics, a shift also marked by Crumb’s own tran-
sition from audacious autobiographical stories exposing his sexual fantasies (and frustra-
tions) to more gentle chronicles of his life as a husband and father. However, the collection
only surveys a decade’s worth of what has been a career-long exploration of the women
Crumb depicts as both the muses and demons driving his consistently controversial art.
William H. Macy, Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, Janeane Garofalo, Paul Rubens, and Kel Mitchell in
the 1999 film Mystery Men, directed by Kinka Usher. Universal/Photofest
