The Paul Morris Gallery is offering a reward of full retail value for six pieces of original art by underground comics legend Robert Crumb stolen in two burglaries Nov. 17 and Feb. 27.

Sometime between midnight and 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 27, five Crumb drawings were stolen from the gallery while in transit from the 2001 Armory Fair in New York, where the works had been on exhibit for the previous five days. Four were from the popular place-mat drawing series and one was a sketchbook drawing from the 1960s. The place-mat drawings have been published in Volumes I and II of the Waiting for Food books published by Kitchen Sink Press and Amsterdam publisher Oog and Blik. Of the five drawings displayed during the show, only one drawing, "I Want Everything," was sold during the exhibit. All the works were insured for the full retail value: the place-mat drawings for $5000 each and the 1960s work for $8000.

Upon the Armory Fair's conclusion on Monday, Feb. 26, the drawings were packed into crates and moved to storage at pier 90 at 55th St. When the artworks were returned to the gallery on Tuesday afternoon, Morris discovered that the crates had been broken into, the frames were smashed and the drawings cut out of the mounts, thus placing the time of theft at sometime early Tuesday morning. The police were called and fingerprints were taken off the frames. To date, no progress has been made in the case.

This incident was actually the second Crumb-related art theft from the Paul Morris Gallery in less than four months. Ernest Thought He Wuz Losing His Mind, reserved for an undisclosed public museum on the West Coast, was stolen directly off the gallery wall during the Crumb exhibition Friday, Nov. 17, 2000. The theft was reported to the police the same day and the crime remains unsolved.

With the second instance of art theft of the same artist's work from the same gallery within such a short time, Morris agrees the crimes are conspicuous. "I don't think it was taken by a longshoreman," he said. "It has to be somebody who knows and really appreciates Crumb." Morris said the loss goes beyond the financial value of the drawings. "I would buy the works back," he said. "I am offering an amount that would make someone eager to return them or sell them to me. If I went to a flea market or the San Diego convention and saw them, I would just buy them rather than make a fuss about it. It doesn't deprive a private collector; it deprives the public. This work was going to a public collection; it cheats a huge audience and it also cheats Robert Crumb out of placement in a museum."