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Mr. Natural No. 2, 50 cent cover, 1971 copyright, probably 1st printing
CONDITION: Very light wear, VG+
At first appearance, Mr. Natural is a mystic guru who spouts aphorisms on the evils of the modern world and the salvation to be found in mysticism and natural living. He has renounced the material world and lives off anything he can get in exchange for his nuggets of wisdom. Usually depicted as slightly overweight (although his size varies), he is bald with a long white beard, and wears a gown which makes him resemble the Old Testament God or a prophet.
Part wise man, part conman, Mr. Natural has strange, magical powers and possesses cosmic insight; but he is also moody, cynical, self-pitying, and suffers from various strange obsessions. He is endlessly being accosted by would-be disciples seeking the truth (among them such long-running Crumb characters as Flakey Foont and Shuman the Human). He typically regards them with amused condescension and a certain grudging affection, although his patience often wears thin and he takes sadistic pleasure in making them feel like idiots. While he is typically very cool and in control, he sometimes ends up in humiliating predicaments. Enormously popular during the underground comics fad of the '60s and '70s and still enjoying a cult following today, Mr. Natural has been endlessly merchandised -- as a decorative plastic statue and on bumper stickers, posters, T-shirts, etc.
According to a biography drawn and illustrated by Crumb, Fred Natural had been a jazz musician and then faith healer in the 1920s, which would mean that he was born in the early years of the 20th century, and by the time of his first encounters (set in the San Francisco area) in the 1960s, was a 60 year old man. However, in Crumb's illustration of the 1920s faith healer, Fred Natural looks approximately fifty which would make him one hundred years old in the earliest Flakey Foont encounters.
In the biography, Fred Natural leaves America and travels for many years in Asia, which is where he picks up his unique combination of wisdom and chicanery. He returns to America during the Beat era of the 1960s, and is drawn to the San Francisco Bay area by people willing to listen and pay for his improvisational spirituality.
Provenance: Collected by Ted in the early 70s while an art student at CCA in Oakland.
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