The Genesis of Robert Crumb

crumbgenesiscover
This autumn sees the long-awaited release of an adaptation of the Book of Genesis by underground comics legend Robert Crumb. Yes, it’s the Bible with “adult supervison recommended” on the cover.

You can expect to see some “controversy” in the mainstream media about this. People who like to be “up in arms” about things will no doubt be up in arms at the very idea of the man behind Mr Natural and Fritz the Cat doing God.

Crumb’s Genesis project has been in the works for several years, now. Here’s a Guardian article from 2004 about it, by PCOer Martin Rowson.

crumbgenesis
Would you Adam and Eve it? R Crumb in the Garden of Eden Scan from Boing Boing

According to The New Yorker, which recently carried excerpts of the book, “at first, Crumb thought about doing a take-off of the story of Adam and Eve, and then a friend suggested he do the whole of Genesis.

“Crumb accepted the challenge, but the text seemed to him so bizarre that he realised he couldn’t sustain a satirical approach. He resolved to use the words of the Bible unabridged: “I did it as a straight illustration job.”

That means that this will be no sanitised, modernised version. This is the Bible with the sex and violence left in. Sunday school teachers, you have been warned.

Robert Crumb is 65 and is set to become a grandfather at around the time that Genesis appears. The man who once claimed he gets cranky if he doesn’t draw every day is unlikely to retire, but there is no word yet on whether he is going to tackle the rest of the Bible.

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