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Cartoonist Robert Crumb's sexual confessions make the boasts of bootie-chasing, misogynistic rappers sound like nursery rhymes. In this limited-edition Taschen anthology, the dean of underground comics attains a Masters and Johnson level of clinical detail and fetish obsession. In panel after panel, Crumb mounts, hog-ties and literally rides a parade of well-built women. Rubenesque figures with thighs like telephone poles, these fantasy females (and some fondly recollected real-life conquests) tower over sketches of Crumb, which resemble, at their worst, neurotic and sweaty imps. Crumb's self-image -- a wiry, egotistical man deflated by self-loathing and shameful lust -- is on full display, appearing in many strips to be a selfish, confused child seeking comfort.

In his foreword to this handsomely bound volume of ungentlemanly work, Crumb admits to a certain masturbatory motivation and accepts the role of sex-pervert buffoon flaunting his particular fetish (size does matter). But while many may be turned off by Crumb's sexual self-inventory, it's refreshingly honest to see a man untie the knots of frustration and fear laced around modern sexuality. Flipping a few stereotypes as he revisits some of his work completed between 1980 and 2006 -- the weak, mopey man-child lusting after a powerful giantess -- doesn't hurt, either. In "My Troubles with Women Part II," Crumb cops to being a perverted and horny teen who uses his power and fame in later life to indulge his fantasies, in part stoked (and warped) by previous rejection. It's the stuff of countless artist bios and seedy biopics. But it's also a messy confluence of human motivations that Crumb's sexual sketches illustrate well. Freud coined the phrase "anatomy is destiny," but Robert Crumb's work takes the concept to a new level of kink.