  This eagerly awaited graphic work retells the first book of the Bible in a profoundly honest way. Peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretations that have often obscured its most dramatic stories, R. Crumb--using the actual text word for word--has imagined the Bible as it really was. Now, readers of every persuasion--Crumb fans, comic book lovers, history buffs, and believers--can gain astonishing new insights from these harrowing, visceral, and even juicy stories. Crumb's The Book of Genesis reintroduces readers to Adam and Eve's Eden, Noah's Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Pharaoh's Egypt. Using clues from the text, Crumb fleshes out the parade of biblical originals: from the sensitive dreamer Joseph to the crafty Jacob, to the still-fetching Sarah, to God Himself. The result, four years in the making, is a tapestry of extraordinary detail, the finest work of Crumb's legendary career.
From the Creation to the death of Joseph, here is the Book of Genesis, revealingly illustrated as never before.This is the Bible that distressed 19th-century English philanthropist and man of letters Thomas Bowdler: not stories for sweet-faced kiddies, but sex and blood. Every verse in Genesis is here, unabridged, and treated—as Crumb puts it—to a straight illustration job. They're a conniving and licentious crew, these folk, and the Almighty had His hands full in weeding out the best of the lot as Future Fathers of the Covenant. It's all about seed and sons, and while the men squabble over flocks and wives and land, the women squabble over progeny and baby-daddies. Crumb folded in a good bit of domestic life as well as battles and blessings, working from the King James Version, Robert Alters's recent translation of the Five Books of Moses, museum collections in England and Europe, and swords-and-sandals epics. Zondervan's manga Genesis, pitched to children, is heavily expurgated, but Crumb's is the real deal and deserves its "adult supervision recommended for minors" label. VERDICT We could not expect less from the patriarch of underground comix—themselves notorious for sex and violence and deals gone sour. Indeed, Crumb's muscular, detailed black-and-white seems ideally suited to Old Testament scuffles and seaminess. Recommended for adult collections, especially in academic libraries.—M.C. [Page 46]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Far removed from the satirical reimagining some might expect from the father of underground comix, Crumb's long-awaited take on the first book of the Bible presents the artist's own sensitive, visually intense reflections. Where most visual adaptations edit down their prose sources, Crumb has, strikingly, included every word of the Book of Genesis within his first major book-length work. His humanistic visual response to this religious text imbues even briefly mentioned biblical characters with unique faces and attitudes, and his renderings of the book's more storied personalities draw out momentous emotions inspired by the book's inherent drama. Throughout, Genesis is a virtual portfolio of Crumb's career-long effort to instill fluid cartoon drawing with carefully rendered lifelike detail. Some might miss Crumb's full stylistic and tonal range, but the source's narrative sweep includes moments of sex and scandal that recall the artist's more notorious comics. Indeed, this monumental visual adaptation's basic strategy may subvert simply by demanding a reconsideration of its source, one that continues to motivate the complex cultural struggles that have, for decades, preoccupied this master cartoonist's landmark work. (Oct.) [Page 33]. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
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