Monday, February 02, 2009

Pep 5: The Enchantment Under the Sea Dance



Okay, at first I tried to believe that the action on this cover is supposed to take place underwater. Because I see, um, ship-ish looking things. And air bubbles.

Oh, the heck with it! This can only be interpreted as a fractured surrealist landscape colored with a variegated miasma of pastels. It looks like someone put the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and R. Crumb in a blender with some art chalk, and then dipped an issue of Captain America in it.

The Shield has a rudder up his butt, bringing new meaning to "hard to port!", and is blowing off his right foot with a torpedo, surrounded by negative-space-infused textual elements, and ambiguous shapes that could be salmon or submarines, propellers or women's hats, streams or banana leaves, pontoons or hot dog buns.


These illusions disillusioned me; how could our hero, The Shield, participate in such a patent and aggressive display of wicked Surrealism, the Enemy of All That is Good in Comics? And then it hit me, like a torpedo exploding on my shinbone:

The Shield is FIGHTING. The Shield is fighting back surrealism!

Phew! NOW I can sleep tonight!

6 comments:

  1. And after the Shield defeats Surrealism and its sneering sidekick Dadaism, perhaps he can take on Post-Modern Deconstructionist Metafiction!

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  2. And he's laughing as he does so.

    Is it me, or does the Shield have particularly meaty thighs?

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  3. Thanks, Steve. You've given me an idea.

    Watch for it.

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  4. A melty clock or two would've made it easier to tell.

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  5. Hey guys,
    Trying to email Absorbascon to let him know about my new venture that he/you might like, but cant find his email on the blog?

    Anyway...

    www.nerdoh.com
    or
    http://t-shirts.nerdoh.co.uk/2009/02/iron-man-new.html

    Cheers

    Phil

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  6. Question: Let's say that Heat Wave gets into a fight with Clock King at CK's lair. The lair is burning, clocks are melting left and right...is that surrealism, or just a really crappy story idea?

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