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Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who transformed comics first as a muse and then as a feminist artist, dies at 74
(JTA) — Robert Crumb put the “x” in comix by setting to paper his basest sexual longings, including strong-legged Jewish women who were cowgirls and who went by the name Honeybunch Kaminski.
So when an actual strong-legged Jewish cowgirl named Aline Kominsky walked into his life, it was love at first sight, and never wavered.
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who died Wednesday at 74 in France of pancreatic cancer, was late to the revolution her husband launched in comics a few years before they met, with his Zap Comix. The “x” was a signifier of what was then known as “underground” comics and referred to the unfiltered treatment of humanity that censorious publishers, politicians and public figures had all but washed out of the art.
She soon fully embraced the art form and then helped transform it.
Working with her husband and then on her own, Kominsky-Crumb brought to comics raw self-lacerating accountability and subverted crude stereotypes about Jewish women — including those peddled by her husband — by taking possession of them.
She started out as a self-acknowledged sex object reviled by second-wave feminists and became a hero of younger feminists for modeling unfettered sexual expression. She was the brassy Jewish stereotype who became the muse who guided her husband to a deeper consideration of Judaism.
Kominsky-Crumb, born Aline Ricky Goldsmith in 1948 in the Five Towns, a Jewish enclave on Long Island, had a Jewish upbringing that was in many ways conventional, horrifying and both at the same time. She wrote about the warmth of her grandparents’ home and how she sought in it succor and about the pressures her materialistic parents placed on her. She said she was named for a Five Towns clothing store, Aline Ricky, that sold French fashion knockoffs. She resisted her mother’s pressure to get a nose job.
In one autobiographical comic, she recalls seeing one Jewish girl after another coming into school after plastic surgery. “Me ‘n’ my friends developed a ‘big nose pride,’” she writes, and one of the characters says, “I could not stand to look like a carbon copy!”
She told fellow Jewish cartoonist Sarah Lightman about the ordeal. “Like, I kept my nose, but it was really a close call, because my mother had me in Doctor Diamond’s office and he measured my nose. I remember that. They took an instrument and measured your nose. And then he took a piece of paper and he said,’ look, we can make it look like this.’ And I said, ‘Oh my God.’ My mother said, ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous, gorgeous.’”
In her teens, Kominsky-Crumb fled the suburbs for Manhattan. She studied at Cooper Union, an art school, and lived on the Lower East Side, earning plaudits from her instructors for her painting, but getting bored. She had a baby and gave it up for adoption to a Jewish agency, an experience that scarred her, and later led her to become outspoken in advocating for abortion rights.
After she married Carl Kominsky, they moved to Tucson, Arizona, which she called “hippie heaven.” There, she left her husband for a cowboy who lived with two brothers and his father in what she said was “the middle of nowhere” where she helped out on horseback, albeit under the influence of hallucinogens. (She said her beau was killed in a shootout with a romantic rival after she left.)
In Tucson, she met two pioneers of underground comics, Kim Deitch and Spain Rodriguez. They encouraged her to move to San Francisco, which was the scene of the burgeoning movement.
She did and met Crumb at a party in 1971, within three years of his having created “Honeybunch Kaminski, the drug-crazed runaway” (1968) and “Dale Steinberger, the Jewish Cowgirl.” Kominsky-Crumb, who had kept her first husband’s last name because it sounded more “ethnic” than Goldsmith, was so taken with the her husband’s lustful Jewish imaginings, and how closely she physically resembled them, that when she started creating her own, she named her avatar “Bunch,” a shortened version of the character whose name most closely matched her own.
It was kismet, except it wasn’t at first. Crumb and Kominsky-Crumb got together, but maintained open relationships. Crumb endured Kominsky-Crumb’s dalliances with other men for decades, but Kominsky-Crumb was not as able (or willing) to reciprocate. When one of Crumb’s exes arrived at their commune in Mendocino, she told The Comics Journal in 1990, she was furious. “I had a total s— fit,” she said, “I was wearing these giant platform shoes. I ran out the door and I fell and broke my foot in six places.”
Crumb sent the ex on her way and entertained the recovering Kominsky with a pastime he and his brother worked out as children: They would co-create a comic.
That process drew the couple closer, and also became a decades-long unflinching chronicle of a relationship. A culmination, “Drawn Together,” was critically acclaimed when it came out in 2012.
In one passage in the 2012 book, she gently chides her husband for resorting to antisemitic tropes — although it was tropes about loud, slightly unhinged, sexually voracious Jewish women that drew them together.
One page depicts the couple in bed. Crumb is stung by an accusation of antisemitism from Art Spiegelman. (Spiegelman joined with Crumb to launch the underground comics scene in the 1960s, but they grew apart as Spiegelman, who would author the Holocaust chronicle “Maus,” sought to attach an overarching philosophy to the genre, while Crumb continued to crave crude authenticity.)
Crumb says that Spiegelman “seems to be taking my ruminations about the Jews as antisemitism … I certainly didn’t mean it as such.” Kominsky-Crumb draws herself into the panel, listening to her husband, as a little girl wearing tefillin, a T-shirt with “kosher” in Hebrew and a Star of David pendant. In the next panel, once again appearing as a grown woman in a negligee, she makes clear to Crumb why she feels vulnerable as a Jew in the marriage.
“Dahling, you do call the Jewish religion ‘Brand X’,” she says.. “Now I might even think that’s true in some ways … and I’m one o’ them … I’m allowed to say that!”
Crumb draws himself as wounded but also awakened. “Oh, I see … ulp.” Crumb dedicated his masterwork, “The Book of Genesis,” a searing illustrated narrative of the Bible’s first book, to Aline.
The Crumbs’ collaborative work was celebrated among aficionados, but it wasn’t until 1994’s “Crumb,” a documentary directed by Crumb’s close Jewish friend, Terry Zwigoff, that she emerged into the broader culture. A vibrant, peripatetic Kominsky-Crumb cares for their daughter, Sophie, and revels in their life in a small French village, where they had moved a few years earlier, while Crumb continues to hold back, playing the wounded, misunderstood artist.
It was an arrival of sorts for Kominsky-Crumb. She had for a time been marginalized even on the underground scene, her deceptively simple art derided as sloppy. She helped found the Wimmen’s Comix collective in 1972, and wrote about her Jewish upbringing in the first issue, a piece entitled “Goldie: A Neurotic Woman.” But she was soon frozen out because some of her colleagues thought her musings about longing to be dominated (and her tendency to dress that way to please Crumb) were denigrating to women. “The Yoko Ono of Comics,” is how the New York Times described her early years.
She left the collective and joined another Jewish woman artist, Diane Noomin, in launching “Twisted Sisters” in 1976. Its cover depicts hers seated on a toilet wondering “How many calories in a cheese enchilada.” The message to her erstwhile colleagues, who depicted women heroically, was clear: Kominsky-Crumb would indulge her full unvarnished self.
It would take decades, but a later generation of feminists would come to understand her autobiographical “Bunch” not as a self-loathing caricature but as a means of understanding ones whole self. In 2020, Lightman launched an interview with Kominsky-Crumb by reviewing a 1975 cartoon, “Bunch plays with herself” that shocked even the underground scene at the time with its graphic depictions of a woman exploring every corner of her body.
“I didn’t do it to be disgusting but it’s, like, about every horrible and fun thing you can do with your body,” Kominsky-Crumb told Lightman. “I think it’s an amazing piece of feminist art,” Lightman said in the interview, “because women are drawn to be gazed at, and [here we see] their bodily juices, and everything. … The last panel is the best. ‘My body is an endless source of entertainment’.”
In 2007, she and Crumb created a cover for the Jewish counterculture magazine Heeb, where she is cradling him in her arms. “”I feel so safe in the arms of this powerful Jewish woman!” Crumb says.
By 2018, she was scrolling through her phone to show a New York Times reporter pictures of Crumb cavorting with the grandkids. (Daughter Sophie in adulthood also is a comics artist.) The photos then transition to photos of women’s behinds, taken in Miami.
“I’m enabling his big butt fixation,” she said. “Well I don’t have a big butt anymore so I have to offer him something.”
“It was her energy that transformed the American Crumb family into a Southern French one, with her daughter Sophie living, marrying and having three French children there,” the official Crumb website said in announcing her death. “She will be dearly missed within that family, by the international cartooning community, but especially by Robert, who shared the last 50 years of his life with her.”
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The post Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who transformed comics first as a muse and then as a feminist artist, dies at 74 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Condemns Far-Right Podcasters Carlson, Kelly, Owens, Jones: ‘They’re Stupid People, and They Know It’
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump on Thursday dropped a nuclear-level social media bomb to explode on the growing contingent of far-right podcasters who have now emerged as some of his most vehement and volatile critics, especially over the war with Iran.
“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump posted on Truth Social, opening a 482-word broadside.
The president then revisited his assessment from earlier this week that Carlson is a “low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” offering his theory that all four prominent podcasters “have one thing in common: Low IQs.”
“They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” Trump wrote. “Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did!”
The president then took aim at his critics’ professional setbacks, writing, “They’ve all been thrown off Television, lost their Shows, and aren’t even invited on TV because nobody cares about them, they’re NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS, and will say anything necessary for some ‘free’ and cheap publicity.”
Carlson left his influential perch at Fox News in April 2023, shortly after the network settled a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, partially in response to his on-camera statements. Kelly left Fox in January 2017 and pivoted to NBC News, which she left in 2019 following the cancellation of her program “Megyn Kelly Today” after outcry over her statements on the alleged acceptability of blackface in Halloween costumes during her youth. In March 2024, The Daily Wire announced that the conservative entertainment company and Owens “ended their relationship,” following the host’s decision to embrace the example of her friend, rapper Kanye West (now known as Ye) in promoting a variety of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Trump took a moment to level personal insults at Carlson, Owens, and Jones.
Labeling Carlson a “hand flailing fool,” Trump blasted the broadcaster “who couldn’t even finish College,” calling him “a broken man when he got fired from Fox” and lamenting that “he’s never been the same.” The president further taunted Carlson, suggesting that “perhaps he should see a good psychiatrist!”
Trump also took a side in the defamation lawsuit filed in July against Owens by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, following the podcaster’s unwillingness to stop accusing France’s first lady of secretly being male.
“‘Crazy’ Candace Owens, who accuses the Highly Respected First Lady of France of being a man, when she is not, and will hopefully win lots of money in the ongoing lawsuit,” Trump wrote.
The former beauty pageant promoter who married a Slovenian model in 2005 then offered his unapologetic assessment of the two women’s physical appearances, expressing his preference that “Actually, to me, the First Lady of France is a far more beautiful woman than Candace, in fact, it’s not even close!”
Owens responded to the Truth Social post, sharing a screenshot with various lines highlighted in red and writing Thursday to her 7.8 million followers on X that “it may be time to put Grandpa up in a home.”
Trump next turned his ire toward the host of Info Wars. He wrote that “Bankrupt” Jones — who currently owes $1.4 billion following his losses in a series of colossal 2021 and 2022 defamation judgments — says “some of the dumbest things, and lost his entire fortune, as he should have, for his horrendous attack on the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, ridiculously claiming it was a hoax.”
Jones also responded on X, accusing anti-Trump Republicans and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of putting hum under a spell.
“We Hope and Pray That President Trump Wakes Up From The Mind Control Spell That The Never Trumper Neo-Cons and Netanyahu Have Put Him Under,” Jones wrote.
In an accompanying 24-minute video, a confused and dejected Jones spoke in front of a black and green digital map of the United States. He sat at a desk with a printed-out copy of the Truth Social statement, describing incredulously how the president’s posting “demonized the living hell out of us for challenging him saying he would destroy an entire civilization in one night never to come back, the definition of genocide.”
In addition to defending himself, Jones on X also re-posted a video of white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes saying, “I love Alex, I’ll always love Alex. And I’ll always be loyal to him as well.”
Holding up his hands and gesturing, Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and fellow conpsiracy theorist, said, “That’s my guy, that’s my GOAT [greatest of all time] … And that’s a real n***er, OK? Alex Jones is our motherf**king n***er and always will be … That is the blueprint, that is the archetype.”
The recent promotion in mainstream media outlets of criticism from Carlson, Kelly, Owens, Jones, and others appears to have motivated Trump’s post.
“These so-called ‘pundits’ are LOSERS, and they always will be! Now Fake News CNN, The Failing New York Times, and all of the other Radical Left ‘News’ Organizations, are ‘hailing’ them, and giving them ‘positive’ press for the first time in their lives,” Trump wrote.
“They’re not ‘MAGA,’” he added, referring to his “Make America Great Again” movement. “They’re losers, just trying to latch on to MAGA.”
Trump asserted that if he wanted to persuade the rogue podcasters to return to his MAGA movement he could do so but had more important things to do with his time.
“As President, I could get them on my side anytime I want to, but when they call, I don’t return their calls because I’m too busy on World and Country Affairs and, after a few times, they go ‘nasty,’ just like Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown, but I no longer care about that stuff, I only care about doing right for our Country,” Trump wrote.
On Tuesday, former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) joined numerous former supporters of the president in calling for his removal through the procedures outlined in the 25th amendment of the US Constitution, a call backed by Owens and Jones.
Greene shared Trump’s post, writing on Thursday in response that he “has gone mad as he wages war against Iran, a broken campaign promise.” The former lawmaker added that she “fought alongside Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones to help get Trump elected. And now he goes off on a rambling rant attacking all of us in one post.”
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Israeli Restaurant in Munich Targeted in Suspected Antisemitic Attack
Broken glass and shattered storefront windows mark the façade of an Israeli restaurant in Munich after assailants smashed the windows and threw pyrotechnic devices inside during an overnight attack. Photo: Screenshot
An Israeli restaurant in the German city of Munich was attacked on Thursday night when assailants smashed multiple windows and threw pyrotechnic devices inside in what authorities suspected was an antisemitic assault — the latest in a series of incidents unfolding against a backdrop of rising hostility toward Jews and Israelis nationwide.
As of Friday morning, local law enforcement had opened a criminal investigation into the attack in southern Germany, with authorities probing a possible antisemitic motive and reviewing security footage and witness accounts as part of the ongoing inquiry.
The restaurant was closed at the time of the attack, and no one was injured, though the perpetrators caused damage estimated at several thousand euros.
Police said the assailants had not yet been identified, and it remained unclear how many people were involved in the attack.
Munich’s State Security Service, which handles politically motivated crimes, took over the case, as authorities worked to determine the circumstances and identify those involved.
“According to the current state of investigations, the display windows were forcibly damaged, and pyrotechnic devices were thrown into the restaurant,” police said in a statement, adding that the origin and type of the devices had yet to be determined and remained a key line of inquiry.
Opened in 2007, the restaurant is located on Hessstrasse in the Maxvorstadt district, Munich’s central university quarter near the Old Town and the main railway station, an area known for its cultural institutions, student life, and busy pedestrian streets.
Restaurant employee Grigori Dratva, the owner’s brother-in-law, told the German DPA news agency that there had been “no direct threats” ahead of the incident.
“We don’t want to make accusations, but we are a visible Israeli restaurant, so the assumption is obvious,” Dratva said.
Despite the attack, Dratva said the restaurant planned to reopen later the same day after the damaged windows were temporarily secured and scheduled for replacement, adding, “We won’t be intimidated.”
The Munich-based Conference of European Rabbis (CER) strongly denounced the attack, warning it reflected a troubling and escalating pattern of antisemitic incidents, while calling for swift measures to strengthen protections for Jews and prevent further violence.
“This attack is not a one-off, but rather part of a dangerous trend that we have been seeing since Oct. 7, 2023,” CER’s General Secretary Gady Gronich said in a statement, referring to the ongoing surge in antisemitic incidents following Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel over two years ago.
“Until now, Munich was a safe place for Jews, and it must stay that way. What’s needed is a clear line: zero tolerance against antisemitism, with harsh punishments that do not lead to repeat incidents, and no room for those who sow hate in our society,” he continued.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre.
According to recently released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials have warned that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
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The Pentagon fears the Vatican’s authority in a battle over Christianity’s power
The Vatican has not been a major player on the geopolitical stage in, well, at least a few centuries. The Catholic state is tiny, and has not had a real army or ruled land since, give or take a century, the days of Machiavelli.
Nevertheless, in January the Pentagon summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, then the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S., to a meeting, according to reporting from The Free Press. There, Elbridge Colby, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, sparred with the Catholic diplomat in light of Pope Leo XIV’s outspoken opposition to the war in Iran, and to wars in general.
According to the report, which cited anonymous sources, the Pentagon told the cardinal, has the military might to do “whatever it wants” and that the pope “better take its side.” NBC reported its own Vatican sources calling the meeting “most unpleasant and confrontational,” and Catholic outlet The Pillar reported a senior Vatican official describing the meeting as “tense” and “aggressive” though not overtly threatening.
Then, one of the Pentagon reps reportedly referenced the Avignon papacy, a niche bit of church history that the official transformed into a cudgel. During this period, from 1309 until 1376, the papacy moved to France, where seven different popes lived in the territory of Avignon, under the influence of the control and influence of the French crown.
Since the reporting broke, both Pierre and Pentagon representatives have rejected the framing of the meeting as a threatening one. Vatican representative Mateo Bruni said that the meeting “provided the opportunity for an exchange of views on matters of mutual interest.”
The Department of War’s X account posted that the meeting was a “substantive, respectful, and professional” one in which the participants discussed “morality in foreign policy, the logic of the U.S. National Security Strategy, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and other topics.” The department denied any mention of the Avignon papacy.
Still, the fact that the Pentagon met with the Vatican ambassador at all is a first, and notable for demonstrating the impact of the pope’s moral leadership and the importance of Christianity in driving and justifying U.S. military actions — in particular, the war with Iran. And the public’s engagement in the debate over the specifics of the meeting proves that the U.S. government is right to care what the church says about its wars; people take it seriously. Military might is not the only force for influence.
Pivotal to understanding what the meeting meant is the disputed reference to the Avignon papacy, a historical moment in which a country’s secular government clashed with the church over symbolic and moral authority. The fact that there is even uproar and debate over whether an esoteric piece of history was mentioned in the meeting is proof enough of the stakes of the meeting.
To understand why Avignon is so pivotal — and why a Jewish publication would even be covering a piece of Catholic ancient history — it’s important to understand that, during that time period, in the 1300s, Europe was Catholic. Martin Luther wouldn’t nail his 95 Theses to the door of the church for two more centuries, and Protestantism didn’t exist. That gave the Vatican massive influence as the leader of Christendom, which encompassed all of Europe, and arguably much more. Kings were seen as vassals of the Vatican, carrying out its orders.
When the French king, Philip IV, asked for the church to fund his war against Britain, the pope refused. In 1302, Pope Boniface VII drove the point home with a papal bull stating that submitting to the pope was required for eternal salvation, placing the Vatican’s authority over all royal power. And he threatened to excommunicate Philip.
In response, the king had Boniface VII beaten to a pulp, and he died shortly thereafter. His successor, not incidentally, forgave the king and restored his religious authority. France used its power at the time to stack the church with French-allied clerics, and the move to Avignon followed shortly thereafter, with the next seven popes all of French background.
Fundamentally, the Avignon papacy was a conflict over symbolic authority. Philip IV wanted his wars to be blessed, and righteous. The Pentagon, clearly, wants the same for the war on Iran, with historically freighted roles. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has declared the war a Christian mission for the U.S., fighting alongside Israel as the world’s Jewish state — together targeting the Islamic Republic.
The idea that the Pentagon might have summoned the ghosts of the Avignon papacy shows that the U.S. still cares about the moral authority of the peace-preaching Vatican as a rival to military might. And the debate over whether anyone referenced what sounds like a nerdy piece of history is really a debate over the influence of the U.S. as a world leader, and its bona fides as what the current government purports to be a Christian nation.
Catholicism is becoming increasingly high profile in the historically Protestant U.S. Six out of nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic. Vice President JD Vance is a Catholic convert. Unsubstantiated rumors are flying online that the pope is considering excommunicating Vance. There is clearly still power in the church, at least culturally.
And Leo XIV has leaned into that cultural authority. In numerous speeches, including his Easter address, the pope has appeared to directly respond to American government officials and decisions, expressing sympathy for migrants as Trump’s deportation efforts accelerated, and critiquing “imperialist” military might as he entered into war with Iran. Despite being the first American pope, he has refused multiple invitations to the White House, including one for July 4 this year to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday; instead, he is pointedly visiting migrants on the same day.
“The Pope may well never visit the United States under this administration,” a Vatican official told The Free Press.
The particular clash between the White House and the pope also centers in large part around Hegseth, who is a member of an extremist Reformed Christian church, not a Catholic. (Though he does have a tattoo reading “Deus Volt,” a rallying cry during the Crusades — which were certainly Catholic.) After Hegseth gave a speech declaring that God had blessed the war with Iran and asking troops to pray for military victory, the pope said that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” Despite their different Christian movements, summoning a Vatican representative to the Pentagon, whatever was said, shows that Hegseth wants the pope on his side, and recognizes his speeches as a major factor in geopolitics.
The battle for Christian moral authority between the government and the pope also comes alongside a more internal Catholic clash in the U.S. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is fighting high-profile Catholic influencers such as Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes, who regularly justify their open antisemitism with Catholicism. Though the pope himself has yet to weigh in, it’s another face of an ongoing struggle to define what Christianity means.
In today’s world, it’s hard to imagine a speech from the pope or the threat of excommunication carrying real weight, among so many churches with many theologies about war, antisemitism and the Middle East. The Vatican is no longer the singular authority over the West, and the pope’s power is largely symbolic. Whether or not anyone in the Pentagon meeting said that the U.S. has the military force to do anything it wants, it’s true.
Yet the fact that the government is engaging so seriously with the Vatican is a sign of the increasing centrality of Christianity, both Catholic and otherwise, in the U.S. government, and in American society. As Christian nationalists in the Trump administration seek to go back to the imagined glory days of Western culture, when Christendom rules, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the oldest, largest and most public face of the religion, or to deny its moral authority.
In a world in which the Vatican has only soft power, the pope’s decrees carry only as much power as they are given. But however soft the pope’s power may be, that surreal Vatican visit to the Pentagon suggests that even the best-armed military in the world is afraid of it.
The post The Pentagon fears the Vatican’s authority in a battle over Christianity’s power appeared first on The Forward.