ABSTRACT
The first murder in the Bible takes places between Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve (Gen 4:1–16). In a fit of rage, Cain murders Abel in retribution because God preferred Abel’s offering of lamb over Cain’s offering of vegetables. He hides the body from God, who ‘hears’ the blood of Abel cry out from the soil and consequently punishes Cain to become a restless wanderer on earth, hidden from God forever. The language of Genesis 4 is terse and sketchy; hardly any detail is given, no scene is set and no reactions are recorded in the murder narrative. Yet many traditional interpretations of the passage posit the story as a reflection of the traditional culture-founding story of conflict between the farmer and nomad; others read it as the first of many stories in Genesis of sibling rivalry rooted in ultimogeniture.
Adapting such a sparse text into a comic book requires the writer/artist to, first, apply their own exegesis to the text, filling in gaps and inconsistencies, and, second, to turn their interpretation into a cohesive text-image narrative. Resulting adaptations are varied, often changing the reader’s perception of who the victim is, why the murder was committed and what the consequences were for Cain as well as God’s role in the narrative. As such, reader’s reception of the biblical narrative is also potentially affected.
This chapter explores three comic book adaptations of the Genesis 4, Jason Aaron’s The Goddamned, R. Crumb’s version in his Genesis, Illustrated and Siku’s Manga Bible, with regards to how the underpinning text of the Bible and the literary event of murder in Genesis are portrayed by each artist. Applying such a perspective reflects cultural notions of murder and fratricide, and societal attitudes regarding how the stories of victims and perpetrators are presented, and has wider implications for how comic book adaptations of violence in the Bible are received overall.
