The Book of Genesis (graphic novel)

AUTHOR: Crumb, Robert

ARTIST: Robert Crumb (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: W. W. Norton

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2009

Publication History

Robert Crumb’s The Book of Genesis began as a satirical story about Adam and Eve; however, noting the compelling nature of the biblical text, Crumb decided to create a respectful, mostly literal depiction of the Genesis narratives. To accomplish this goal, Crumb relies primarily on Robert Alter’s Genesis: Translation and Commentary (1996) and occasionally on the King James Version of the Bible. Crumb also notes that though many comic book versions of stories from Genesis exist, these works invariably add extratextual dialogue. Crumb believes that the texts translate well into graphic form and need no inventive dialogue to make them more readable.

After working on the project for more than four years, often in seclusion, Crumb published Genesis with W. W. Norton as a hardcover edition in October, 2009. The 11 x 9-inch book has a dust jacket designed to suggest Comics Illustrated, with its title resting upon a solid yellow rectangle and a significant scene from the work: God casting Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. The dust jacket includes the warning “adult supervision recommended for minors.”

Plot

In the Bible, Genesis is a large collection of highly compact, self-contained narratives that span from Creation to Joseph’s death in Egypt. These narratives are often linked through recurring themes and motifs. Many of these narratives have been interpreted typologically, in essence prefiguring or foreshadowing later events in other books in the Old Testament and the New Testament, as certain narrative elements are subtly repeated and expanded.

Crumb’s Genesis follows the stories of the biblical book, beginning with Creation and the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve disobeying God by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). Firstborn Cain’s sacrifice is rejected by God while younger brother Abel’s is accepted, and Cain murders Abel. Generations later, God commands Noah and his three sons to build an ark and gather animals into it; floods the entire world, leaving only Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark; and promises never to destroy the earth again with water.

God tells Noah’s descendant Abraham to leave his hometown, Ur, and establishes a covenant with him. In an effort to continue the family line, Abraham’s childless wife, Sarah, sends her to Abraham to impregnate, and Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. When Sarah gives birth to Isaac, her only son, at the age of ninety, Ishmael and Hagar are expelled from the family. When God decides to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleads with God to save Sodom, but only his nephew Lot’s family is saved just before God destroys the cities. Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back on the destruction. Lot commits incest with his two daughters after they force him to become drunk. Following a directive from God, Abraham takes Isaac to Mount Moriah to be sacrificed, only to be stopped at the last minute by God’s messenger.

Abraham’s servant providentially finds Rebekah, Isaac’s future wife. Their elder son Esau sells his birthright to younger twin Jacob, who steals their father’s blessing. Jacob flees home and dreams of a ramp (Jacob’s ladder) reaching up to heaven, with God’s messengers ascending and descending it. Jacob meets future wife Rachel at a well and begins working for her brother Laban. Laban deceives Jacob, giving him older sister Leah as a wife instead of Rachel and makes him work longer to win Rachel. Jacob and family flee Laban. He successfully wrestles with a heavenly being and demands a blessing. His daughter Dinah is raped, and his sons Simeon and Levi kill the men of Shechem in retaliation.

Jacob gives his youngest son Joseph an elaborate tunic (coat of many colors). Joseph has a dream of honor and glory. His brothers throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery. He becomes a slave to an Egyptian official, Potiphar, whose wife attempts to seduce Joseph and has him imprisoned.

Meanwhile, Judah’s son Er dies, and following ancient Hebrew custom, Er’s widow, Tamar, marries his brother Onan. When Onan dies, her father-in-law Judah wrongfully prohibits Tamar from marrying another of his sons to continue her husband’s line. She disguises herself as a prostitute and becomes pregnant by tricking Judah, who then sees the error of his ways.

In jail, Joseph interprets the dreams of the royal cupbearer and the chief baker. He later interprets Pharaoh’s dreams about the coming seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine and becomes regent. When a famine strikes the region, Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt for grain and unknowingly bow before his feet. He forgives them, and the family is reconciled and settles in Egypt.

Characters

•God, the primary protagonist, is drawn as a large man with a long white beard, flowing white hair, and a wrinkled brow modeled on Crumb’s own father. God appears about a foot taller than Adam and Eve. God creates the world, makes covenants with those whom he chooses, passes judgment on the wicked, and provides blessings to those he chooses.

•Adam is physically well-proportioned with long dark hair. He names the animals, eats the forbidden fruit along with Eve, and fathers Cain and Abel.

•Eve is presented as an idealized woman with full breasts, wide hips, a full bottom, and thick thighs and calves. She is tempted by the serpent, eats the forbidden fruit along with Adam, and gives birth to Cain and Abel.

•The Serpent, the first antagonist, is a foot shorter than Adam and Eve and appears as a large lizard standing upright on two legs. He tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and is consequently cursed by God to slither on his belly.

•Cain is a strong man with a thick beard and full head of hair. He murders his younger brother Abel.

•Abel appears as a young man with soft features and no facial hair. He is murdered by Cain.

•Noah is an old man with receding white hair and a full white beard. Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark are the only survivors after the Flood.

•Abraham, a.k.a. Abram, is an older man shown with wild white hair (later bald) and a scraggy beard. He obeys God’s commands and is even willing to sacrifice Isaac, though he is ultimately stopped.

•Sarah, a.k.a. Sarai, is Abraham’s wife and Isaac’s mother. Although she is about ninety, Crumb depicts her with the familiar body type of his idealized female physique.

•Lot, Abraham’s nephew, appears initially as a young man with dark hair and a beard. He is forcefully dragged out of Sodom shortly before Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed.

•Hagar, a younger woman with short stringy hair, is Sarah’s servant and Ishmael’s mother.

•Ishmael, a wild, rugged young man, is the son of Hagar and Abraham. After being expelled from Abraham’s family, he prospers with twelve sons who become chieftains of their own clans.

•Isaac, born when his mother is ninety, marries Rebekah and fathers the twins Jacob and Esau. He favors Esau but mistakenly gives his dying blessing to Jacob.

•Rebekah, the beautiful wife of Isaac, favors Jacob and directs him in deceiving Isaac into giving his blessing to Jacob rather than Esau.

•Esau, a hairy, redheaded, rugged hunter favored by his father, sells his birthright to his younger twin brother and loses his father’s blessing to Jacob.

•Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, a mild man who prefers to stay in tents, is favored by his mother. He successfully bargains with Esau for his birthright and misleads their father into giving him Esau’s blessing.

•Leah, the older and less beautiful sister of Rachel, marries Jacob through the trickery of her brother, Laban. She gives birth to many children.

•Rachel, the beautiful, favored wife of Jacob, gives birth to Joseph but dies giving birth to Benjamin.

•Joseph, the favored son of Jacob, is sold into slavery by his older brothers but later gains power when he interprets Pharaoh’s dream. Eventually, Joseph brings his family to live in Egypt.

•Tamar is the widow of Isaac’s grandsons Er and Onan. When prevented from marrying their younger brother, she tricks her father-in-law, Judah, into impregnating her, thereby taking through sexual politics what was hers by right under ancient Hebrew custom.

Artistic Style

Crumb uses his typical black-and-white crosshatch drawing technique but avoids wildly exaggerated caricatures found in much of his other work in favor of more realistic body types. Genesis uses boxes for exposition, word balloons for dialogue, and the rare thought balloon. The panels are clearly defined, and their number varies from page to page, with as few as one per page (as in illustrating God’s creation of the world) to as many as eighteen (illustrating each of Esau’s named descendants).

Crumb avoids using sound effects of any kind, preferring to rely solely on the images. For example, on one three-paneled page, Crumb depicts the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the first panel, as the flaming hailstones fall on the cities, no sound is represented other than the images of panicked people attempting to escape. The second panel presents a street-level view of bodies and buildings burning, but again, without relying on overt sound effects. The final panel presents a long-range view of both cities being consumed by fire, smoke rising to the sky.

Crumb does occasionally use speed lines, as when Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi swing their swords to kill Shechem and Hamor. He also indicates a character’s surprise using various techniques, such as a question mark in a speech bubble, drops of sweat, or lines encircling a character’s face. The panel borders appear freehand, as they are slightly wavy.

Themes

The narrative of Genesis presents a large inventory of themes, including the nature of God, the relationship between God and humanity, and humanity’s relationship with itself and Creation. Genesis presents God as the source of all life and the controller of Creation. The creation account describes a highly structured but unnatural event as God simply speaks into existence light, air, water, land, plants, sun, moon, stars, and animals, suggesting both the power and the orderliness of God.

One important theme concerning God’s relationship with humanity in Genesis is that God favors the disfavored. Throughout Genesis, the favored position of firstborn is consistently diminished, as the latter born is honored: God accepts Abel’s offering but rejects Cain’s; God favors Isaac over Ishmael; God chooses Jacob over Esau to establish the Israelite nation; God elevates Joseph over his older brothers. This theme is also echoed in Jacob’s favoring of Rachel over her older sister Leah and in Jacob crossing his arms so that his right hand rests upon Joseph’s younger son, Ephraim, instead of the firstborn, Manasseh, when Jacob speaks his blessing.

Genesis also deals with some purely human themes, as humanity is shown at both its heights and its depths. These issues include temptation, immoral choices, sibling rivalry, the significance of the spoken word, the uniqueness of humanity, sexual politics, deceit, hatred, jealousy, murder, revenge, family politics, doubt, redemption, mercy, love, and forgiveness. Many of these themes have been richly and consciously reproduced throughout much of Western literature and beyond by Edmund Spenser, John Milton, Søren Kierkegaard, Flannery O’Connor, and many other writers.

Impact

The response to Crumb’s Genesis has been mixed. Initial reports concerning the work led some to believe that Crumb was going to create a satirical and salacious send-up of Genesis. Indeed, Crumb’s reputation and earlier body of work gave credence to these concerns. In the introduction of the work, Crumb acknowledges that he expected some readers would be outraged. A number of critics suggested that Christians would be scandalized when they discovered the sordid details contained in Genesis.

Upon publication, however, that anticipated outrage never materialized. In fact, reviews varied from mild praise to mild disappointment. Those hoping for a sardonic treatment of Genesis were disappointed in Crumb’s straightforward presentation, while reviews in Christian Century, Commonweal, and First Things offered guarded praise and Christianity Today and its more cerebral counterpart, Books and Culture, did not bother to review it. The sharpest criticism came from Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who restated a long-standing view within Christianity that visual representations of God are forbidden.

While praising much of Crumb’s Genesis, Alter, whose translation makes up almost the entirety of the text, notes the difficulties of visually representing the text’s rich ambiguity. He at once faults the work for limiting the range of possible readings while recognizing this inherent characteristic of the medium.

Further Reading

Lee, Young Shin, and Jung Sun Hwang. Manga Bible: Names, Games, and the Long Road Trip—Genesis-Exodus (2007).

Siku. The Manga Bible, from Genesis to Revelation (2008).

Wolverton, Basil. The Wolverton Bible: The Old Testament and Book of Revelation Through the Pen of Basil Wolverton (2009).

Bibliography

Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Scripture Picture.” Review of The Book of Genesis, by Robert Crumb. New Republic 240, no. 19 (October 21, 2009): 44-48.

Alter, Robert, and Frank Kermode. The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1999.

Bloom, Harold. “Yahweh Meets R. Crumb.” Review of The Book of Genesis, by Robert Crumb. New York Review of Books 56, no. 19 (December 3, 2009): 24-25.

Crumb, Robert. “R. Crumb, The Art of Comics No. 1.” Interview by Ted Widmer. Paris Review 193 (Summer, 2010): 19-57.

Frye, Northrop, and Alvin A. Lee. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Jeffrey, David Lyle, ed. A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 2009.

Ryken, Leland. The Literature of the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1981.

Ryken, Leland, and Trempor Longman III, eds. A Complete Literary Guide to the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2010.

Ryken, Leland, James C. Wilhoit, and Trempor Longman III, eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998.