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God as the artist's cranky Jewish father

The Book of Genesis Illustrated
by R. Crumb
(WW Norton & Co., October 19, 2009)

There is nothing sacred to underground and alternative comics creators. Irreverence has been a defining characteristic of the movement since the 1960s, when creators like R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton began using the words-and-pictures medium to create scathing, sex-and-drug-filled satires of square culture. No subject was safe from the savage pens of these cartoonists, and religion—or, more specifically, sanctimoniousness—was a common target.

Yesterday, October 19, was the official publication date of Crumb’s Book of Genesis Illustrated, a work five years in the making. Far from the sharp satire that one might expect from the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, Genesis is a remarkably straight, even reverent, adaptation. In his introduction, Crumb explains that he avoided adding interpretation or clearing up confusing passages, leaving the Bible as is “rather than monkey around with such a venerable text… I approached this as a straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” He notes the irony that devout, didactic Bible comics creators are more willing to play around with scripture by inserting “completely made-up narrative and dialogue,” while he, a non-believer, lets the text speak for itself.

But, as every student of the Bible knows, there’s no such thing as a reading without interpretation. A big challenge from the start: how should God be depicted? In an interview with Time, Crumb explains that he considered rendering God as a light emerging from a cloud, or coyly recontextualizing him as a black woman, but in the end settled on a more pedestrian bearded and robed figure that he says resembles his father: “if you actually read the Old Testament,” he told Time, “he’s just an old, cranky Jewish patriarch.”

The choice of translation is also a matter of importance. Crumb states that his text is compiled from several sources, including the King James version, though it is primarily drawn from Robert Alter’s recent translation in The Five Books of Moses. Clearly, Crumb is more interested in liberal biblical scholarship than evangelical fervor. His purpose here is not to make the text “relevant for modern readers,” but to return it to its Jewish roots from a Christian interpretive framework that refuses to let it stand on its own.

The Matriarchy Hypothesis

The eight pages of notes at the end of the book suggest another agenda, as Crumb reveals his preoccupation with the idea of a pre-Jewish matriarchy hidden beneath the text of Genesis. He frequently refers to “biblical scholars” who support his arguments, but hardly names any (the notable exception being Savina J. Teubal, whose name finally surfaces toward the end of the annotations; it seems that her book Sarah the Priestess was one of Crumb’s major sources).

But Crumb isn’t a scholar, and it’s not entirely fair to ask him to spend too much time substantiating claims that, after all, only appear in the endnotes. The important thing is his visual interpretation of the story, and with a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-them panels showing goddess idols, the matriarchy hypothesis doesn’t break through into Crumb’s visual narrative. Where he does insert footnotes directly into the adaptation, they tend to offer either etymological explanation or curious gee-whiz excitement, as in his exclamation that “Noah was credited with being the first man to make wine! See chapter 9.”

The design of the book’s jacket belies the seriousness of its contents. The back cover places portraits of the major players into captioned circles in homage to the design of EC Comics’ horror titles like Tales From the Crypt. The front, though, which features a customarily serious image of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, also offers pulpy blurbs (“All 50 chapters—nothing left out!”) and a coy recommendation: “Adult supervision recommended for minors.” The boards themselves, which show only a stately, gold-embossed title that mixes gothic blackletter and Crumb’s own underground-comix typography, is a bit truer to the nature of the contents.

Despite the moderate interpretive philosophy behind the adaptation, there’s no doubt that this is a Crumb comic. His Eve is a typically zaftig seductress, and his panel illustrating Rachel’s “comely features” is as rear-end-focused as one might expect. And because he provides so straight an adaptation, he doesn’t shy away from either the sex or the violence present in the text. But neither does he linger on these moments; the story of Lot’s incestuous encounters with his daughters, which the ’60s Crumb would surely have stretched to at least four lascivious pages, is completed in six panels.

If there’s a weakness in the adaptation, it’s that the visual splendor of events like the creation story and the Flood overshadows the more down-to-Earth sections of the narrative. We keep waiting for something big and exciting to happen. Instead, the panels seem to become smaller as the book goes on, as if the worldly tales of the patriarchs need to humble themselves within smaller panels than the grandly cosmic creation. The result is a bit of visual tedium as we wait for an event that’s big enough for a wider panel.

Tags: basil wolverton, bible, comics, genesis, graphic novel, r. crumb, robert alter, scripture

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