[REVIEW] The Book of Genesis, Illus. by R. Crumb

About a week ago, I got my grubby little hands on R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis, Illustrated. As a comic lover, and a God nerd, I was psyched to receive such a treasure. And a treasure it was.

There have always been illustrated Bible stories for children, but they tend to take liberties with the texts, and the drawings often reflect the ideals of the old white men who drew them. Crumb’s Genesis is something completely different. It even comes with a parental advisory on the cover.

This is no ordinary illustrated Bible.

Crumb blesses us with an introduction, outlining the approach he took to the texts, and this sets the tone for the style of the whole book. He discusses how he has tried to reproduce every word from his sources, the King James Bible being one of them. He warns of the folly of taking the Bible as the Word of God, saying, “I believe it is the words of men. It is, nonetheless, a powerful text with layers of meaning that reach deep into our collective consciousness, our historical consciousness, if you will.” He reminds us that the Bible we have today has been woven together by folklore, priests, secret meetings, and political regimes. Much has been lost. Much is guesswork. He says “The text is, after all, so very, very, OLD!”

This clever introduction sets us free. We can look at the passages we are about to read as stories, wacky wacky stories, that may not make sense to us at all, but still they are the stories that tell us of the birth of a culture, and a movement, and a religion (or two or twelve).

You may know some of the Genesis stories better than others, so I’ll only touch on a few.

Genesis opens with God working his mojo and creating the earth, the heavens, the oceans, the beasts, the fish, man, woman. Thanks to the whole ‘illustrated’ part, we get to see Adam’s junk, and Eve is bootylicious. Seriously, the drawings are stunning and real to life. Okay, I’ve never actually seen an ancient Sumerian woman, so I don’t know what they look like, but I bet Eve looked a lot more like Crumb’s version, rather than the traditional skinny white chick with the strategically long hair covering her lady bits. Crumb’s Eve is stacked, with junk in her trunk to spare. Moving on…

There is a wonderful drawing of the serpent who tempts Eve to eat the apple. He looks like a dinosaur. Think about it.

The look on Noah’s face is priceless when God tells him to build the ark (you want me to do whaaaat?). It is these facial expressions which are peppered throughout the book that add so much depth to the stories. Their faces are littered with facepalms, eye rolls, huh?, and WTF moments.

There is some gruesome imagery of bodies floating in the water after God sends the great flood. People often forget that part: the mass death and end of civilization part, and focus on the happy little animals sitting two by two, snug in their ark.

You can practically hear the sound of porno music as he takes us GRAPHICALLY through the lineage of Abraham. Any God nerd will admit that lineages are painful to read. Long lists of begottens are a sure fire cure for insomnia. Crumb however, manages to bring this tradition alive by providing a portrait of almost everyone in the family tree. Each person has their own distinct face and costuming and expression. This must have been an arduous process to draw. We don’t know what these people looked like. He had to come up with each and every person’s image. Amazing.

Oh, what’s that? Incest. Lot’s daughters are date raping their dad. Nice.

Eventually, we get to the story of Joseph, the weepy bad ass with the technicolor dream coat. Well, it’s not technicolor. It was an ornamental tunic. I guess it was a pimpin tunic because it made his brothers madly jealous. Eventually they just chucked Joseph into a pit and left him there. Boys will be boys. But Joseph gets discovered by slave traders and becomes a slave to Pharaoh, eventually working his way up to become Pharaoh’s right hand man. This allows him to provide his dastardly brothers with their comeupins.

There are many other odd and inspiring and wonderful stories in Genesis, and Crumb tells them all masterfully. The drawings are amazing; black and white but with so much texture. The no-holds-barred approach to sexuality, violence, and the just general fucked-upedness of the text is refreshing, especially since he stayed so close to the scripture. It’s in there people, look it up. The Bible ain’t always pretty.

Crumb’s commentary in the end of the book attempts to explain certain issues, drawing from Sumerian legend to matriarchal vs patriarchal interpretations of the events, but he is the first person to admit that he doesn’t know why Genesis is so weird sometimes.

I am just so thankful for the blessed clarity of it all. If you’ve ever sat down and tried to read the Bible, especially starting at Genesis, you know it’s a really hard read. I have translations that dumb it down as much as possible, but still, the text is so dense that you have trouble taking it all in at first read. This illustrated format seems to draw it all out. You can absorb the thoughts with the help of looking at the expressions on the faces of the drawings.

Will Crumb illustrate the whole Bible? I’d be for it. Well, there’s a few books he can skip… although I’m sure Steve Dillon could produce a BAD ASS and gory Leviticus, and Dave McKean would totally rock Revelations in a way that would leave the art world changed forever. Really, in order for a story to survive, it has to be told in the language of its readers. Maybe our language is comics?