Crumb’s Genesis, Part 2

Having said all this, even if only fans — all 300,000 million of them — buy The Book of Genesis Illustrated, they’ll be well rewarded. As Jessica Abel, co-author of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and writer-illustrator of La Perdida, noted when she was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, this past November, Robert Crumb is a genius with every art medium he touches. Genesis Illustrated, which Crumb contends took five painful years to complete, is packed with his distinctive lettering, perfect composition of image as well as panels to the page, and, of course, his magnificent drawings themselves.

The characters are wild-eyed, lusty and rough. But they’d have to be, wouldn’t they, given the adventures and travails they undergo in these stories?

And if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t Eve look a lot like Crumb’s wife Aline? Crumb’s made no secret of his interests in strong women ….

You can listen to Crumb interviewed on the book on NPR’s Talk of the Nation here.