LET 'EM EAT CRUMB

ASK ROBERT CRUMB'S WIVES AND girlfriends about the Brueghel of underground comics, and they'll say he's morose, withdrawn, almost socially autistic. Crumb agrees, and adds wryly, "That's why I'm such an exciting subject for a movie."

Well, he is. He's the subject of a spooky spellbinder called Crumb. With all due respect to Hoop Dreams, and with none to the inbred documentary-screening-committee clan of the Motion Picture Academy, which handed this year's Oscar to a former chair of that committee, Crumb is the one that should've won.

For director Terry Zwigoff, an old friend, Crumb and his family sit for an...