Keep on Truckin' (comic)
Encyclopedia
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —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...
. It was published in the first issue of Zap Comix
Zap Comix
Zap Comix is the best-known and one of the most popular of the underground comics that emerged as part of the youth counterculture of the late 1960s. While not believed to be the first underground comic to have been published, Zap is considered to mark the beginning of the "underground comix"...
in 1968. A visual riff on the lyrics
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
of the Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...
song "Truckin' My Blues Away", it consists of an assortment of men, drawn in Crumb's distinctive style, strutting confidently across various landscapes. The strip's drawings became iconic images of optimism during the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
era.
Crumb was offered $100,000 by Toyota to reproduce the image for a Keep On Truckin ad campaign, but turned it down.
The copyright on this image has been repeatedly violated and images of it have been widely reproduced on T-shirt
T-shirt
A T-shirt is a style of shirt. A T-shirt is buttonless and collarless, with short sleeves and frequently a round neck line....
s, poster
Poster
A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be...
s, belt buckle
Belt buckle
A belt buckle is a buckle, a clasp for fastening two ends, as of straps or a belt, in which a device attached to one of the ends is fitted or coupled to the other. The word enters Middle English via Old French and the Latin buccula or "cheek-strap," as for a helmet...
s, and other items. In the early 1970s, Crumb's lawyer started threatening lawsuits against anyone using the image without permission. Crumb and A.A. Sales, a producer of unlicensed Keep On Truckin merchandise, reached a settlement of $750 for the past usage. But A.A. continued to sell unlicensed products after the settlement without paying additional license fees. In 1973, Crumb went to the US Federal Court, and wound up in the courtroom of Justice Albert Charles Wollenberg, who had previously ruled against the Air Pirates
Air Pirates
The Air Pirates were a group of cartoonists who created two issues of an underground comic called Air Pirates Funnies in 1971, leading to a famous lawsuit by The Walt Disney Company...
. A.A. claimed the work was in the public domain because Crumb had not included the copyright symbol
Copyright symbol
The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, designated by © , is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings . The use of the symbol is described in United States copyright law, and, internationally, by the Universal Copyright Convention...
on the work, although he had in Zap #1 as a whole. The work was covered under the 1909 Copyright Act, and any omission of notice caused the work to be public domain. The drawing had appeared on the business card of Crumb's publisher without the copyright symbol. Based on that, Wollenberg granted A.A. Sales' request for summary judgment and Keep On Truckin became public domain. In 1977, the Ninth Circuit Court reversed that decision, and it returned to copyrighted status.
The Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
pursued Crumb for thousands of dollars of taxes owed, as if he had been collecting royalties all along. Recently, Crumb has sued various entities to defend the copyright including Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
in 2005.