The dust jacket of R. Crumb's newest work, an illustrated version of 'The Book of Genesis,' contains this warning: 'ADULT SUPERVISION RECOMMENDED FOR MINORS.' Crumb says that he wanted to prevent people from thinking, Oh, a Bible comic book; I'll give it to my kid!"People my age remember
R. Crumb from the late 60s and early 70s as part of the underground comix movement, with one of his most memorable drawings the "Keep on Truckin'" comic, sometimes criticized for images that were sexist and racist.Is Crumb's illustrated Genesis simply a perverse anti-religious comic, exploiting the admittedly numerous R-rated scenes in the book of Genesis (think about it - Sarai and Pharaoh, Noah, Lot's daughters, Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Dinah and Shechem, Tamar as a roadside prostitute, etc.)? It looks like much more than that - a serious attempt by a talented graphic artist to make sense of the Genesis narrative. In doing so, Crumb inevitably adds an interpretive layer in his drawings and his heavy reliance on Robert Alter's translation of Genesis. Gary A. Anderson writes about this in in a fine recent review ( "The Bible, Rated R.," First Things, Feb. 2010, 13-15).
In a famous essay from his book Mimesis, Erich Auerbach described the Genesis narrative as "fraught with background" and filled with omissions and mystery in its representation of the reality behind the story.
When you retell the story in a graphic novel format, you're forced to fill in a lot of that background - and Crumb does. Take a look at how Crumb portrays the famous "Sacrifice of Isaac" story of Genesis 22, or the story of Dinah in Genesis 34. Crumb's brief commentary at the end of the book reveals that he has adopted a rather quirky interpretation of the Genesis narratives. Behind the portrayal of the strong women of Genesis we can see remnants of the replacement of a matriarchal society by patriarchal dominance. (He gets this from the work of Savina J. Teubal, Sarah the Priestess [Swallow Press, 1984]).But take a look for yourself. You'll find the book in Hekman Library in the Graphic Novel section, at BS1233 .A785 2009.
