The rest of Mystic is a trace more focused. "Don't Tempt Fate" is an autobiographical excursion; in it, the cartoonist ruefully describes an incident from childhood that led to his getting whomped in the mouth by a large chunk of cinder block: one of those all-too-typical childhood incidents that remind us it's a miracle that any of us survive into adulthood. A whole generation of autobiographical cartoonists has taken from Crumb, and this six-page piece shows why. His images of boyish thoughtfulness and vandalism can't help but conjure up similar childhood memories.

Third and final full story is a smutty goof: the artist resurrecting a third-tier funnybook character from his youth (in this case, Archie Comics' Super Duck) and fashioning a sex comic around him. The conceit's amusing - particularly when you consider that this character has his origins in the most hypocritically squeakyclean comics line extant - but not much more that that. The big (literal) climax concerns our hero's disastrous attempts at spicing up his relationship w./ his girlfriend Uwanna by overdoing it on a Viagra-like drug. The results are as visually dirty as you imagine they'd be.

For a book entitled Mystic Funnies, we sure spend a lot of time wallowing in the profane. But that, for Crumb, is one of the central contradictions of human existence. For all that we may yearn to experience something profound, if given a choice, most of us'll pick quick-&-dirty gratification every time. "I don't go with this 'Mystic' bullshit," comics guy Shnooter tells Crumb in an introductory one-pager - just before holding a gun up to the artist's head to get him to produce. ("Don't get upset," he tells the reader. "It wuz only a metaphauh!") The strip ends with Shnooter singing 60's Sinatra's strutting Statement of Purpose, "That's Life." As funny as it seems, that's the closest most of us Americans get to mystic crystal revelations, anyway. . .

Mystic Funnies is probably not the book for someone wanting a good intro to this curmudgeonly underground legend. For that, I'd recommend one of the volumes in Fantagraphics' ongoing reprint series, The Complete Crumb Comics, starting with Volume Four which offers the man's early Zapwork up to the most recent book in the series, Volume Sixteen, which presents his more nuanced mid-80's material ("The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick," for instance.) But those of us who've faithfully followed the man when he was up & down (& over & out) will be happy to see him putting out another comix book - even if it was produced with a "metaphauhical" gun to his head.