Word Made Fresh
R. Crumb gives visual form to the first book of the Bible
JEET HEER
The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
BY R. CRUMB
$24.95 List Price
For more info visit:
Amazon • IndieBound
"In the beginning, there was a father who craved respectability; he
begat a bad boy who enjoyed shocking polite society. The father was
Max Gaines, one of the founders of the American comic-book industry
and publisher of the early adventures of the Green Lantern and Wonder
Woman. Stung by criticisms that comics were corrupting America’s
youth, Max rebranded himself as a purveyor of uplifting material,
releasing Picture Stories from the Bible in 1942 and soon thereafter
starting a firm called Educational Comics. After Max died in 1947, his
wayward, mischief-loving son, Bill, took charge of the firm. Unlike
his dad, Bill didn’t shy away from the reputation comic books had for
sensationalism. EC, which now stood for Entertaining Comics, became a
clearinghouse for blood-drenched horror titles such as Tales from the
Crypt, as well as for the irreverent Mad. These taboo-breaking comics,
sold for a dime to any kid who wanted to read them, provoked a
hornet’s nest of censorious opposition.
Although Max and Bill Gaines had antithetical aims, both are
precursors to Robert Crumb in his Book of Genesis Illustrated. Like
Max, Crumb has returned to the sacred text at the heart of Western
civilization, but the result is a comic as unsettlingly drenched in
sexualized violence as Tales from the Crypt and as subversively
disrespectful to cultural icons as Mad. Those familiar only with the
Crumb of the ’60s and ’70s, the sex-obsessed chronicler of Mr. Natural
and Fritz the Cat, may be surprised to learn that he has a bookish
side. Since the early ’80s, he has been releasing a remarkable series
of literary adaptations, faithfully and lovingly based on scenes from
works such as James Boswell’s London Journal, Richard von Krafft-
Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, and Franz
Kafka’s stories. These are all works of literary extremism, focused on
scenes of heightened feelings and antisocial behavior. Crumb’s Book of
Genesis is the culmination of his Classics Illustrated impulse. As he
did in earlier adaptations, the artist embraces a volatile, often
abrasive text soaked through with lust and blood.
But The Book of Genesis Illustrated is far more ambitious than Crumb’s
previous adaptations, which tended to be only a few pages long. This
time, he has tackled a sizable text, all fifty chapters of Genesis,
omitting very little (such as “and Bethuel,” on the scholarly grounds
that these two words were added by a scribal interloper). The
completeness of this version is important, because, as Crumb rightly
complains, every other comics adaptation seems to have been
streamlined and modernized, often to make the shocking old stories
palatable to readers, especially kids. In the rendition of Noah’s
story in Picture Stories from the Bible, for instance, no mention is
made of Ham seeing his illustrious father naked and earning a curse
for the transgression. In the 1975 DC Comics “Limited Collectors’
Edition” of the Bible, the sin of the men of Sodom seems to be that
they are too greedy, and any hint of homosexual rape is carefully
avoided…”
For the rest of the story, go to:
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/016_03/4342
or to buy, go to:
http://www.crumbproducts.com/
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