Wednesday, October 21, 2009

R. Crumb does the book of Genesis



That's right, underground comix hero Robert Crumb has illustrated the entire book of Genesis. I just discovered this a couple days ago, and immediately picked up a copy. If you're at all familiar with Crumb's work, this might seem like an unlikely pairing. However, Crumb takes the work seriously. He is not poking fun-- he is, as far as I can tell on quick perusal, quite faithful to the original text.



Of course, the book of Genesis is chock full of sex and violence, and as you might imagine (again, if you know his work), Crumb does not shy away from a relatively graphic portrayal of some of these scenes. No doubt some folks would be offended by some of the images, but hey-- it' in the bible!





*****



If you are not familiar with Crumb, he was one of a group of artists in the 1960s that appeared in Zap comics, often doing the cover art as well. He created many memorable characters such as Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat. Some of this early work was extremely graphic, but his illustrations for Genesis are in good taste as far as I'm concerned.


Keep on Truckin'... yup, this is R. Crumb


Weirdo, Crumb's mag in the 80s

I can't wait to read through this book, it looks absolutely awesome! (In case you haven't gathered, I have always been a big fan of Crumb's work.) Two big thumbs up!!!

2 comments:

Dave Schinbeckler said...

I've never heard of this before, Rick. Happy to say I kept some of the old Zap Comix, and felt that Robert Crumb was the best of that generation of artists. There is an excellent documentary of his life and family, done in 1994, titled "Crumb", which is well worth watching. Here's the link:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5762540/Crumb_1994_BRRip_XvidHD_720p-NPW. Ciao - Dave Schinbeckler

RJ said...

Yes, I've seen it-- it's a must for any Crumb fan!