Sneak Peek: The Book Of Genesis -- Illustrated By Robert Crumb. See some of it at ComicShop. (The New Yorker publishes the first three chapters, but the online version requires a subscription.)

'60s alt-comics illustrator Robert Crumb tackles the Bible this time.

Crumb discusses the work in a 2005 interview (R. Crumb Speaks) with Robert Hughes, longtime art critic at Time magazine who offered commentary for the 1994 film Crumb, calling him "the American Brueghel."

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.

Amazon is offering the $500 slipcase edition, which includes a signed print and is limited to 250 copies, at a pre-order price of $315. Basic hardcover is $16.47 there. Publication date is Oct. 19.

Background: In the beginning. Prague Post interviewed Crumb earlier this month at the Prague Writers' Festival.