Comix Friday: R. Crumb gets biblical

Bar none, the Bible contains the greatest superhero stories of all time. People live to 900, come back from the dead, miraculously heal, split great bodies of water, and on and on. Plus, everything's described in such rich detail that it seems like a cinch to turn it into graphic form.

Last week the Jewish Daily Forward had an interesting story about biblical comix, which I won't talk too much about, because you should just read it. The big news, of course, is that Robert Crumb's long-awaited "The Book of Genesis" is coming out in the fall. (Crumb isn't Jewish, but his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, is. You can read about that in an interview Aline - a brilliant cartoonist in her own right - did with Heeb.)

R. Crumb's God

I'm really excited for "Genesis," and I'm not even a big fan of Crumb. The cover image on Amazon.com (shown above) has a very old-school, pulpy, Prince Valiant-esque look that I love. A 2005 interview with Time magazine has Crumb explaining a bit about creating the book, especially how to draw God: "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."

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Santa Rosa cartoonist Vanessa Davis does a monthly comic for Nextbook (now called Tablet Magazine), and her June comic is now online. It's called "All About My Mother's Day" and it's one of my favorites of her Nextbook comics!  Check it out! It's loaded with Jewish-mother-guilt ("It's okay...I'm being honored in the service - but we'd be late now anyway!"), sibling squabbles and lots of lovely Florida colors.

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Coming up next month? Neil Kleid's "The Big Kahn," the story of a Jewish family shaken to its core by a major revelation after its patriarch's death, will be published at the end of July. I read the book in one sitting...stay tuned for a Q&A with its author in an upcoming edition of Comix Friday!

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Comix Friday is published in the Art Scene blog every Friday, and focuses on Jewish comic artists and Jewish-themed comix. If you know of anything I should be blogging about in Comix Friday, let me know!

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