Zack, you get a pass because you like Crumb. I used to like his work too, but I feel that he's gone downhill since Pete the Plumber. Or maybe R. Crumb is that great rarity, an early enthusiasm I've outgrown.
That's fair enough. I tend to agree, but I think that you can make that argument about most creative types after they've hit the high water marks in their careers. I often feel that way about Frank Miller, though I still devour most anything he produces.
Crumb's Genesis raises a question: Are comics as a genre more literature than they are graphics? Do the words perhaps matter a lot more than the drawing? I ask because the whole Genesis venture flops for me because the text is so tedious. Yes, it's ridiculous too, but I can't see Crumb doing more than solemnly illustrating it, and the comedy is just plain absent.
I don't think so. I mean, I think comics certainly are a brand of literature. But the uniqueness of comics is that, when done right, the art and the words get equal billing. Without sequential art, words are just prose. You need both working simultaneously, and together, to make comics. When one dominates the other (usually words) the work tends to suffer.
I can definitely see your point about the text and the tedium. I felt that quite a bit, too. What made up for it, for me, was the art. When I found the text to be too ridiculous or heavy or tedious or whatever other negative adjective, I found myself focusing more on Crumb's art.
It was the art in the Noah myth that helped bring me back in when I started to slip away. There are parts during the Noah myth where I found some of his panels to be particularly haunting--especially with the bits that talk about the wickedness of man.
Scholar he may not be, but where I thought the book shined was his depiction of the bleak moments. I got a real feeling of desperation from the his figures and their expressions during scenes of warfare, rape, circumcision, and sacrifice. In some cases there is a feeling of out right insanity of the moment (wholly, justified, of course.)
Where I think the book suffered is the story telling. The book itself is poorly written and sort of a cobbled together mess of myths and legends, as a result a verbatim comic book version brings that same baggage. This is where I think Crumb can and should have taken some creative liberties. There is rarely a flow to the story at all. Every now and then he sneaks in some sequential story telling, but for the most part it's several panels drawn on a page frantically hopping from one moment to the next and the reader has to really rely on the gutters and their familiarity with the source material to piece together a cogent story. Again, that's not entirely Crumb's fault--sort of a garbage in, garbage out situation.
I think for Crumb the comedy is the overall story and it's insanity. It's a sort of a black humor. It's obvious the joke is not in the dialog and in the text. But Crumb does go out of his way to put his typical spin on the character designs and, in a lot of cases, I think really captures the bizarreness and insanity of the stories being told. As I read it, the joke, as it were, is on the believer or the individual who reads this to get warm and fuzzy feelings. The comedy is meta-textual instead of the style of, say,
Mr. Natural.
Robert C. is no scholar -- hell, he's not an intellectual of any kind -- and I fear that in this case he just doesn't bring much of anything to the table.
Yeah, a scholar and intellectual, he is not. At least he doesn't give that impression in any interview or documentary that I've seen.
For me, the good definitely outweighed the bad and I enjoyed it. But, like I said, I can absolutely see why it would not work for everyone. Particularly with a verbatim translation of already tedious source material.
Sorry for the rather long-winded response.
