R. Crumb: In The Beginning

R. Crumb, the irreverent and satirical American cartoonist who created the first X-rated animated cartoon (“Fritz The Cat”), along with Zap Comics, “Keep on Truckin’” and “Mr. Natural”, has turned his attention to the Biblical Book of Genesis. He’s illustrating it.
His French publisher (Crumb now lives in France) admitted he couldn’t imagine Crumb doing anything on the Bible that wasn’t blasphemous admits to surprise. Crumb hasn’t added a word to the text of Genesis—he just reads it and illustrates it.
Of course the book comes out with Crumb’s own take on it—naked and highly sexed ladies, cavemen- like males, dripping blood and drool. Crumb’s own surprise is evident when he talks about Genesis. He is astonished and more than a bit horrified at the sheer amount of raw sex and violence in the book. Obviously, at some point, someone told him to read it.
I’ve suggested the same to people who have no truck with religion myself. I’ve told them a few stories out of the book. Their eyes get very wide and they say, “I didn’t know THAT was in the Bible”. Good parts of Genesis are, with or without Crumb, a straight X-rate.
When my Sunday School teaching grandmother heard that my parents were reading it to me, she was horrified—considering it unfit for children. I admit there were some stories in Genesis that I didn’t read to my own kids until they were quite a bit older.
Most Christians I’ve met recently haven’t read the book either—at least not with any thoroughness. I remember teaching a religious education class a few years ago. A church-going young lady, intelligent and college bound, turned to me and asked, “Where is the story of Pandora’s Box found?” I had to tell her THAT story isn’t in there. Talk to the Greeks.
What Mr. Crumb is coming upon is the realization the Christianity isn’t a “nice” religion. It doesn’t offer 72 virgins if you blow yourself up for the glory of God—but it isn’t nice in an entirely different way. It is very blunt about the evil that is in—and comes out of—mankind right here on earth. No Biblical author would have been the least bit shocked by Nazi death camps, Rwandan genocide, serial killers or kidnappers who make their victims live for decades in backyard sheds.
Mankind, in Genesis, refuses to follow the directions that came on the package—and quickly sinks to an appalling level of barbarianism. Murder, incest, and fratricide are only a few of the human characteristics that Genesis delineates for the reader.
God himself is depicted as so horrified at what he had turned loose upon creation that he shortens the human life span by 90%, takes away enough of our ability to communicate so that we can no longer cooperate to do evil and, finally, wipes out most of humanity.
Genesis lays the groundwork for the rest of the Biblical message—why God will find no other way to alter human behavior than by sacrificing his very self in one of the most cruel death’s ever invented by mankind. That’s what Genesis is all about. The first promise that there really is a way out of this bloody mess we find ourselves in.
Church leaders are likely to be aghast at Crumb’s illustrations. But he won’t be off the mark. If they think about it rationally for a moment, they will be forced to realize R. Crumb is preaching their sermon for them.
Christianity holds to the belief that “while we were yet like the people depicted in Genesis,” God came seeking us. Some of the people who buy the book for the sake of R. Crumb are going to want to read on. St. Paul would have appreciated that.
Paul pointed out that even if the Gospel is preached out of spite or envy, it is still preached—and it will not return void. Go for it, Mr. Crumb. People who otherwise wouldn’t touch the book are going to pick up your illustrated work. It won’t return void.