A few weeks ago I caught a hankering to submit a drawing to Robert Goodin’s Covered blog, which posts various cartoonist’s takes on whatever other cartoonist’s comic-book cover they may choose.

It was an unintentionally educational experience. For my redraw, I chose the cover of the eleventh issue of Arak: Son of Thunder, one of the only comic books I remember owning (and loving) as a child:

Arak #11 cover by Ernie Colón (July 1982)

I think I must have gotten it in the Foodland as a reward for not being too much of a shit while my mom was shopping. I’m not sure why this particular character interested me as a kid– my four issues of Arak constituted the majority of my comic-book “collection” — probably because stories about “indians” tended to rule even more than Nightcrawler, especially when they were fighting white-skinned gladiators in an underground coliseum or messing around with downright bearish naked centaurs. (The latter of which, upon a more mature inspection, has me all but scandalized at the quite purple Tom of Finland-type undertones of Mr. Colón’s art! Seduction of the Innocent indeed!)

For this particular issue I remember the story inside was actually pretty engrossing, with a sort of early-Frank-Miller darkness to it that suited my tastes at the time. But I remember enjoying the cover in particular. Although I probably didn’t realize it at the time, there is such an oedipal analogy lurking under the surface of this picture. I mean, come on — “into the valley of death”? The whole cover is basically one big vagina! It so plainly evokes every true-believer fanboy’s fear of and attraction to the powerful, castrating Female; the sharp-toothed, fit and iconically feminine harpy mother who locks the hero in an almost desperately sexual embrace, carrying him up to the same dizzying heights (so many bad metaphors) which force him into a dependence upon her for his survival — even as she threatens to overwhelm him with her strange, fearsome passions. His response — hatchet the bitch! — captures the latent patriarchal death-cult superhero archetype in all its self-defeating Snoop Doggian misogyny. As I look at this cover now, the message snaps out clear as a pealing bell. Comics is an ugly town. (And don’t even get me started about women in manga.)

Anyway I tried to emphasize these facets in my version:

(Also note I gave Arak a bigger sack.)

To be completely honest, I’m a little disappointed with the result. For one thing, before I really started looking hard at this Ernie Colón drawing I was too dumb to see how well drawn it is. This guy really had a handle on anatomy, perspective and composition, and he wasn’t shy about demonstrating all this simultaneously in one drawing. To be frank I was a bit humbled by it. I could say I even felt unworthy of copying this work. It’s true that I’ve never been the biggest fan of the superhero comic genre’s hackneyed, bombastic tropes, its tight circles of influence, its posturing sound & fury. But this was just good drawing — drawing that seems to yearn to transcend the puerile trappings of its lowbrow, just-for-kids assembly-line exploitotainment format. It’s like if Barney the dinosaur suddenly dropped some lines of T.S. Eliot. One minute you’re vegging out on your prepubescent testosterone fix and the next you’re navigating the darker caverns of how youths are given gender cues in our society.

Obviously I should have had my way some other cheaper, less-ambitious comic cover — by the time I got elbows-deep into redrawing this one, I’d become too stricken with reverence to make any worthwhile improvements, mockeries or mutations on the original. Plus it turns out that my watercolor set sucks epic balls. I guess that’s what I get for using the playskool-colored plastic set I found in the basement. It’s got fluorescent orange though!

I type all of this only by way of proof that this old dog can still learn a good lesson from his own folly and hubris; can chew on a wad of his own pride when need be; and can at least attempt to mill up that grist into an ever finer, richer perception of the fantastical inner workings of Art and human experience.

Barring that, I’d like to make a little rent money. This drawing is officially for sale.