Robert Crumb

R. Crumb treats the source material with the utmost seriousness, and so his illustrations really bring home the book of Genesis' weird, hypnotic stories. His hyper-detailed style is a perfect match for the translation he uses, veering between stilted and bizarre and unexpectedly beautiful -- sometimes both at the same time. I had to digest this in chunks, it's just too strange and dense to take in all at once.

Girls, Girls, Girls! Step right up and don't be shy. This intimate, accordion-folded and concertina-bound portfolio of 20 never-before-seen Pinup Girl portraits from the world's most respected cartoonists opens up to reveal more than 10 feet of original and subversively erotic girly comics. Featuring R. Crumb's Lela, a robust vision of overflowing femininity, Dan Clowes' Doris, the last girl on earth, Adrian Tomine's Yuki, a young woman captured in a serene domestic moment, and Gary Panter's show more Cave Girl, a menacing yet alluring female amid raptors and pterodactyls, this highly collectible volume is not simply a collection of traditional pinups, but a string of 20 mini-narratives set in environments as disparate as the bedroom and the bowling alley, the circus or the Cenozoic. The portfolio comes in a transparent plastic box. show less

This is one of R. Crumb's masterpieces, whether it is a labor of love or of compulsion. (He worked on it for five years.) I love biblical scholarship and this "R. Crumb Meets Classics Illustrated" version of Genesis is informed by scholarship. Crumb relied on both the familiar King James Version and, more heavily, on Robert Alter's translation which is in modern English but is also extremely conscious of the original Hebrew.

The stories of the first book of the Bible are told at once with show more imagination yet close adherence to the meaning of the text as best as that can be determined. What is remarkable to me is how clear Crumb's rendition makes the stories. Even the begats become readable when there is a picture of each individual in the genealogy. This made it easier, for example, while reading about Joseph, to flip back to the relevant page and see the illustrated chart of who his brothers were and who the mother of each was. And, believe me, Genesis needs a who's who of characters.

The aptly named Mike Judge of the Christian Institute has predictably denounced Crumb's "The Book of Genesis" as "turning the Bible into titillation." Excuse me? Has Judge not read Genesis with an engaged brain? This ancient text is so full of titillation and ribaldry that to turn it into such would be redundant. There is ribaldry and brutality enough in the King James or any other standard text version of Genesis to warrant this version's warning--"Adult supervision recommended for minors"--being applied to all versions. True, only an illustrated version could show Adam's pizzle or Eve's mound, but not to show the first humans au naturel would betray the earthy spirit of the ancient people who told these stories.

Besides, Crumb never goes overboard. Take Chapter 19 (verse 5 and following, though Crumb does not clutter his illustrated text with verse numbers) where the men of Sodom want to "know" the apparent men (actually angels) who are guests in Lot's home. It is clearly understood that these citizens want to gang rape Lot's guests. The text only gives a clue to this effect. So does Crumb. He does not dwell upon this or try to make the lasciviousness of the situation any more explicit than it is in the traditional text versions of Genesis.

Yes, Crumb shows men lustily taking their wives (and daughters), but only because the original text says that they do these things. If anything, Crumb has toned down his obsession with large breasts, which are apt to be much, much larger in his other works than they are here. show less

Part illustrated biography, part comics adaptation, R. Crumb's Kafka is a vibrant biography that examines this Czech writer and his works in a way that a bland textbook never could! R. Crumb's Kafka is a work of art in its own right, a very rare example of what happens when one very idiosyncratic artist absorbs another into his world view without obliterating the individuality of the absorbed one. Crumb's art is filled with Kafka's insurmountable neuroses. They are all there: Gregor Samsa's show more sister, the luscious Milena Jesenska, the Advocate's 'nurse' Leni, Olda and Frieda, and the ravishing Dora Diamant drawn in that mixture of self-command, tantalizing knowingness and sly sexuality that Amazonian randiness and thick-limbed physicality that is Crumb." show less