This movie chronicles the life and times of R. Crumb. Robert Crumb is the cartoonist/artist who drew Keep On Truckin', Fritz the Cat, and played a major pioneering role in the genesis of underground comix. Through interviews with his mother, two brothers, wife, ex-wife and ex-girlfriends, as well as selections from his vast quantity of graphic art, we are treated to a darkly comic ride through one man's subconscious mind.

The film is based on the popular Dutch childrens book by Chris van Abkoude. In a Dutch port in 1921 lives a 10-year-old orphan boy known to everyone simply as Little Crumb. His poverty-stricken mother Lize van Dien filled with shame was forced to turn him over to Mrs. Koster soon after he was born. Foster mother Mrs. Koster, who has cared for him since he was a baby, is very poor too, unable to support him by herself and proves to be a cruel taskmaster who insists Crumb bring her money before shell feed him. Somehow he must earn his keep out on the streets and can only go home after he has earned enough money. Crumb becomes an urchin stealing from the streets barrows and the shops to stay alive, sleeping in churches or huddled in doorways. Sometimes he has to run off from the police and he has earned the enmity of the most grownups around him.

Everything is normal with the Krumborg family – but when you know them, nothing can surprise you anymore. The two robbers Boris and Ivan want to kidnap Krumme. Krumme wants to learn to ride a horse. Mom wants a healthy Christmas. Dad doesn't want a healthy Christmas. And it's hardly surprising that Krumme's Christmas present for Yrsa ends up under Mrs. Olsen's bed, or that caretaker Svendsen tries to repair Mrs. Olsen's sink – even though it's not broken. And the youngest member of the family, Grunk, has eaten all the Christmas decorations. Yes, everything is completely normal in the Krumborg family...

In 1987, Robert Crumb presents himself: raised by a Marine father, educated in Catholic schools, married at 21 in Cleveland where he worked for a greeting card company, dropping acid in 1965, heading to San Francisco and getting in on the formation of Zap Comix, gaining celebrity, loving old time jazz, starting a band, living in a commune, meeting Aline Kominsky who became his second wife and his partner in art, having a daughter, and developing a more realistic drawing style. The confessions include his loneliness, his obsessions with women, his bewilderment by fame, his sense of the disintegration of Sixties' subculture, his nervous breakdown in 1973, and his peace now.