I felt so painfully isolated that I vowed I would get revenge on the world by becoming a famous cartoonist.

The line frames artistic ambition as a compensatory response to social alienation. Crumb links “painfully isolated” adolescence to a vow of “revenge,” suggesting that public recognition can function as a counterweight to private humiliation or invisibility. The “revenge” is not literal violence but symbolic reversal: turning marginality into cultural power by making one’s inner life legible to others. It also hints at the darker engine behind some of Crumb’s work—art fueled by resentment, discomfort, and outsider status—while acknowledging the paradox that the very world one feels excluded from becomes the audience whose attention one seeks.