The Book of Genesis Illustrated

Crumb discussed the work-in-progress in a 2005 interview (R. Crumb Speaks) with Robert Hughes, longtime art critic at Time magazine who offered commentary for the 1994 film Crumb, calling him "the American Brueghel."Crumb was able to sit down and answer some of the most commonly asked questions about his work.

HUGHES: Is God going to look like Mr. Natural?

CRUMB: Nah. He has a white beard but he actually ended up looking more like my father. He has a very masculine face like my father. My problem was, how am I going to draw God? Should I just draw him as a light in the sky that has dialogue balloons coming out from it? Then I had this dream. God came to me in this dream, only for a split second, but I saw very clearly what he looked like. And I thought, ok, there it is, I've got God.

HUGHES: And what did she look like?

CRUMB: I went through that whole thing too; maybe I'll draw God as a black woman. But if you actually read the Old Testament he's just an old, cranky Jewish patriarch. It's a lot of fun doing Genesis, actually. It's very visual. It's lurid. Full of all kinds of crazy, weird things that will really surprise people.

"The idea of millions of people taking this so seriously is totally nuts," he added. "The Bible doesn't need to be satirised. It's already so crazy...."

Amazon is offering the Signed, Limited Slipcase Edition
which includes a signed print and is only limited to 250 copies, at a pre-order price of $315. Basic Hardcover is $16.47 there.

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; Signed, Limited, Slipcased Edition edition
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393075931
ISBN-13: 978-0393075939
Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.9 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
Publication Date: Oct. 19. 2009

Following the path laid by Basil Wolverton (The Wolverton Bible), Mr. Crumb incorporated a variety of sources, including the King James Version, to re-create the Bible's first book. His style sharply contrasts that of other Illustrated Bible studies such as Siku(The Manga Bible).

Robert Crumb, currently lives in the south of France with his wife and daughter, was the subject of the 1994 documentary "Crumb." He was largely responsible for the "underground comix" movement of the 1960s that set the stage for many of the comics' greatest contemporary works, such as Art Spiegelman's "Maus."


The 66-year-old hero of underground comics who wowed the 1960s with "Fritz The Cat" and "Mr Natural", said he took up the challenge 40 years later of creating another white-haired long-bearded figure "to illuminate the text of Genesis by illustrating every single thing that's in there."

"It hasn't been done before I think," he said. "There are hidden stories that are very strong."

The lanky gray-haired Crumb, in grey suit and waistcoat for the two-hour media conference, poked fun at the Almighty hero of the book but stated he reneged his Roman Catholic upbringing to become agnostic "on a spiritual quest".



The God in his book was

"very very serious, as well he should be. It's his universe,"

he quipped, saying he depicted him as an old-fashioned patriarch "after a powerful dream in 2000 in which I saw God and that's what he looked like."

"I avoided explicit sex because I didn't want to ridicule", he said, "but you can't ever please true believers. If you're messing around with their sacred texts, they won't like it."

"Perhaps someone will want to kill me," he added, referring to recent controversy over Mohammed cartoons in Demark.

Crumb, who moved from the United States to southern France in the 1990s, said his interest in the Bible was tied to his longstanding passion for tales of ancient civilisations.

"The Bible is not the word of God. It's the words of men," he said. "I take it all as myth from start to finish".

He would never have had the patience to carry out the project during his drug-addled youth, he said. It had been an extenuating four years spent bent over a drawing-board, sketching and fixing and refixing.


Hitting out at fine arts and contemporary art, which he described as sometimes being "cockamania way out there in the twilight zone," Crumb said comic-book artists were on the other side of a "grand canyon" between the two.

"For some reason the world of fine arts is trying to embrace me" with offers of museum exhibitions not to mention an offer of three million dollars for the original drawings of his Genesis.

"But comics are not made to be on a wall. They're supposed to be read," he said.