Big surprise: Robert Crumb has produced another comic that’s misogynistic, bizarrely funny, and filled with sex, violence, wrath and pettiness. But the big surprise this time is that it’s not his own woman-hating, petty, smutty, repressed story he’s drawing: it’s the Bible! Crumb has adapted the first book of the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis, into glorious illustrated form. Think what you will about the text itself, Crumb is illustrating at the best standard in his career. His adaptation is a near-perfect work of art, and it’s the kind of illustration that makes you angry to study: solidly formed, effortlessly detailed – just about every panel in the 200-odd page book a flawless composition. The stories from the otherwise dry and often impenetrable text are given freshness through Crumb’s hand – from creation, to Adam and Eve, to Sodom and Gomorrah, right up to Joseph (and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat). His explanatory footnotes also help to decode the text’s wordplay, and clarify what sometimes appear to be strangely irrelevant interludes in the narrative. Also, mad props for bothering to illustrate the endless ‘begots’ (ie, “and Seth begot Enosh, and Enosh begot Kenan, and Kenan begot Mahalalel…” x a trillion).  - Owen