An article proposing a close, conjoint reading of three recently released comic books that address God.

The Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb (Fantagraphics)
Dieu en personne by Marc-Antoine Mathieu (Delcourt) and
Caminhando com Samuel by Tommi Musturi (Huuda Hudda/5ème Couche/Optimal Press/Mmmnnnrrrg)

Although I have identified Crumb’s work as the most “literal”, this does not mean that his work is just that. Actually there is a basic level of commentary that he makes just by existing, a level of commentary that is already complex. That level stems from the fact that this is a comic book that is to say, an interpretation with/through images. As far as I know Crumb is not Jewish but he is the closest of these three to having a Midrashist attitude, for he is dealing directly with the written matter of the Bible. As Robert Alter points out in his introduction to his modern translation of Genesis (used by Crumb for this project), the common practice of Israelite literature was that of “composite artistry, of literary composition through a collage of textual materials” (Norton: 1996, pg. xlii). The sheer diversity and apparent contradiction of the texts reflect that composite nature. Crumb is not looking to smoothing this out, but he embraces all contradictions, all the violent dimensions, the selfishness of God-as-character, the virulent stances of many of the Biblical personages, engaging with that which Slavoj Žižek called a “God’s perverse strategy” in The Puppet and the Dwarf. Yet another critic, Harold Bloom in his The Book of J, called Yahweh (or more accurately the character in the purportedly first strand of the Book of Genesis, the so-called J-strand), “an extraordinarily wayward and uncanny literary character”, moreover, “the uncanniest of all Western metaphors”. It is in this nature that is presented in the first book of the Bible, which becomes clear throughout Crumb’s work.
But let’s go back to this image business. As we all know a formal prohibition is found in Exodus 20: 4-6: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, etc.”. This is reinforced in several other moments throughout the Holy Writ but the most known substantiation of this order is, of course, the Second Commandment, one of the clauses of the contract between this jealous God – who happens to acknowledge the existence of other gods – and his chosen people. Consequently comics are out too!
This proscription of creating images extends also to the “lifting any tool upon” the stones that could be used for an altar, lest one would pollute it. This fact makes us zero in on the beautiful consecutive images (which I’ve put together here) of Jacob, the great, lifting with his bare hands the pillars of stone as a sign of his Covenant with God (even the episode in which he defeats and at the same time is defeated by the angel of the Lord – or perhaps the Lord Himself – seems to mimic that gesture). But the problem lies in the very fact that we are seeing this, via the images created by Crumb. So in a way Crumb is breaking this law – as all the great names throughout the history of Western art based or not on Biblical themes – with this very book, trading the “pure word of the Lord” for his little panels and scribbly dolls pacing about its pages. And he does so with flamboyance.
However on the other hand, Crumb is dealing with the beginning of the world, with Genesis, and the law we have mentioned, is yet to come, historically speaking, or better still, chronologically within these narratives. God himself appeared “in the flesh”, so to speak, before his servants (Adam, Abraham, Jacob). It would take some time until he would resort to theatrical appearances in the shape of floating fingers or burning bushes… So actually coming face to face with God meant to speak to a direct image, and these comics return to such a moment.
To provide an image from something that exists solely in the text (despite the many images that it has elicited through the ages) will always entail some degree of interpretation, a swerve in relation to the “original” meaning. Let’s take an example: in Gustave Doré’s illustrations of the Bible. We find a very compelling one for the episode of the Flood. In it we see a boulder amidst the crashing, uprising waves, atop of which we find a tigress with her cubs, and a couple apparently sacrificing themselves to assure the survival of their children. Three babes are piled on the boulder. In other parts of the picture we see a man desperately trying to stay afloat with his child while another seems to have lost his strength, and giving us an image of his grasping hands and failing arms sinking... The Deluge comes and the text is very clear (Genesis 7:22, KJV): “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died”. Doré does not take a stance in which way we see the iniquitous and the corrupted perishing before the wrath of a righteous God, but desperate people showing some kind of affection in their fraught attempt in saving their progeny. Doré, slyly, wishes to draw out sympathy, pity, and forgiveness. In my book it is as strong commentary on God’s violence as any verbose invective against his actions.
Crumb brings forth the same strategy with his apparently simple approach of the literal translation of the Biblical text into images (he himself says that he tried to alter the texts as little as possible). Take just one example, in the epically famous episode of God discovering that Man and Woman have eaten from the Tree of Life, Crumb searches no comical or ironic effect, but he does something quite interesting. When Adam tells God that it was Eve’s fault, that she was the one who gave him the fruit from the tree, take a look at their expressions! Adam seems terrified like a baby, sweating, his shoulders down, his mouth quivering... and we notice for the first time his “Adam’s apple”, as if this was the precise moment when he swallowed in fear for the first time of the apple species! As for Eve, her brow speaks volumes. Crumb is really a master of naturalistic expression. Eve’s face reveals a mixture of surprise, disgust and scorn for this little creature in whom she confided in. She expected more than this trembling fool and she shows it. There are no traces of this reaction in the written text, or in the many other official commentaries (the Midrash and so on). This fiction of images is quite powerful.
Even Crumb’s calligraphy is graphically expressive. One single, eloquent example will suffice: when God addresses Isaac (ch. 26), in order to prevent him from “going down to Egypt”, he repeats the blessings he had promised Abraham. The possessive noun is repeated five times (“my”), and it’s drawn with thicker lines, as if stressing an inflection of God’s speech. As if presenting the utter need to get his point across to his servants: he is in control. Once again, Isaac’s awestruck face seems to show us that he got the message.
But Crumb’s creative interpretation goes further. One of my favourite aspects of his whole enterprise is the way he fills the “blanks”, as it were, in words with what one could call the “National Geographic shots”. For instance, in the “begats”, the huge genealogies of the great fathers, which some could call “dead moments in the narrative”, Crumb utilizes the space allowed by the monotonous text to shows us snippets of what life could have been in those ancestral times. He may show battles now and then, but most of them render small episodes of their lives, the elder playing with the young, short haggles at a crossroads market, a simple meal during a weary journey, music and dance, laughter and tears. Life. More to the point are the moments when he shows whole families, the faces of each of the mentioned sons and daughters of these plentiful fathers, showing features straight out of an encyclopaedia of human diversity, more often than not of specific ethnic backgrounds related to the extended Middle Eastern cultures and peoples, as if proposing a truer and more integrated look into what unites us as humans than the supposed divisions that still follow us today in religious-tinted discussions.
This is not to say that Crumb does not remain once in a while, in familiar territory. There are many examples of the comely, bulky, strong-boned women he is so fond of having in his stories. His daughters of Lot, for instance, are much closer to his own Devil Girl character than the soft-spoken yet scheming virgins that other versions might have us believe.
It’s rather interesting to see a somewhat controlled Crumb subduing his tirades, his leeriness towards so-called good intentions, his indefatigable ability to destroy all hope in humankind’s redemption (‘cause we’re really nasty, aren’t we, and Crumb rubs that in our faces), but not relenting at all his graphic capacity and verve to bring forth all kinds of passions and stations of life present in the biblical text, but also the incredible margin within those texts, which he explores masterfully, critical distances and emotional commitment. All in all despite the fact that we may see this as a literal approach, he is in fact undertaking a very personal interpretation, sometimes more radical and engaging than blunt, virulent versions or deconstructions of the Bible.