R. Crumb is coming to town.

Posted by: Tony – Sep 09, 2009

October 27 the underground comic icon is coming to Richmond Centerstage to promote his newest work Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis, a project sure to generate strong opinions and discussion. For more information about this event click here.

Dont know who Robert Crumb is? Read the following from wikipedia.com.
Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943), often credited simply as R. Crumb, is an American artist and illustrator recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream. He currently lives in Southern France with his wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb.

Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded as its most prominent figure. Though one of the most celebrated of comic book artists, Crumb's entire career has unfolded outside the mainstream comic book publishing industry. One of his most recognized works is the "Keep on Truckin'" comic, which became a widely distributed fixture of pop culture in the 1970s. Others are the characters Devil Girl, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural.

The following excerpt is from an interview between R. Crumb and Time Magazine's art critic for more than 30 years Robert Hughes about the Genesis Project. To read the whole conversation click here.

HUGHES: I want to talk about Robert Crumb's Genesis. It's something that every ex-Catholic boy might entertain nightmares about doing.

CRUMB: [jokingly] I've gotta get it off my chest.

HUGHES: What's it doing on your chest?

CRUMB: I was fooling around with Adam and Eve one day. Doodling about Adam and Eve. At first I did this satirical take off on Adam and Eve — lots of jokey asides and Jewish slang because they're Jewish right? God is Jewish.

HUGHES: Now you're going to get it for anti-Semitism.

CRUMB: Finally I got over fooling around and I realized I just had to tell it straight.

HUGHES: Is God going to look like Mr. Natural?

CRUMB: Nah. He has a white beard but he actually ended up looking more like my father. He has a very masculine face like my father. My problem was, how am I going to draw God? Should I just draw him as a light in the sky that has dialogue balloons coming out from it? Then I had this dream. God came to me in this dream, only for a split second, but I saw very clearly what he looked like. And I thought, ok, there it is, I've got God.

HUGHES: And what did she look like?

CRUMB: 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. It's a lot of fun doing Genesis, actually. It's very visual. It's lurid. Full of all kinds of crazy, weird things that will really surprise people.

From boingboing.net :
"The long-awaited publication of Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis, an adaptation of the Bible story, which Norton will be publishing in Fall 2009. I had the privilege of seeing some of the pages in France two years ago, and the scope of the work has haunted me ever since. I’m sure the religious right will be all up in arms with cliché horror that a quote unquote “cartoonist” has defamed their sacred cow, but Crumb is taking this work very seriously, and Genesis is some of his best work."

According to The Guardian, the book will be published simultaneously in the US and the UK on 19 October.