"Hold that Gorilla!"

[jack_babalon]

Possibly one of the best comic book covers of all time in my opinion.

Why?

Because what we see here is a snapshot from the collective unconscious of Atomic Age America. A four color Jungian acid trip coming at you off the comic book racks of Mom & Pop's Shops across the U.S. The red cover frames the caped crusader power lifting an unconscious Gorilla who happens to be strapped with a belt full of phallic rockets to symbolize the "bombs"! We're tapping into the raw root of Cold War anxiety here: A sleeping Gorilla is going to kill us all any moment and the only thing keeping us from going up in a fiery ball of death is a very exhausted and strained masked detective! The Apollonian principle is buckling under the weight of the dormant dionysian. The moment the Gorilla touches the ground it will awaken and bring with it complete and utter anihilation!

"Hold that Gorilla Batman!" Robin screams but we know he what he's really saying: "Holy Shit Batman ... we're all going to die!" And we also know that deep down inside Batman is asking himself the eternal question all men must ask: "What the fuck now?"

"What the fuck now?" The mantra-riddle of Joe Average America. Heard on the factory floors, in the break rooms, the offices, the kitchens, the traffic jams, the construction sites, the dinner tables, the drunk tanks and the jail cells, the bars, the baseball fields, the strip joints, the wrong turn streets, the greasy spoons, the broken homes, the trailer parks, the Whitehouse, the banks, the ghettos, the sides of dirt roads.

"What the fuck now?" asked, demanded, blamed and objected. "What the fuck now?" Sighed, muttered, whispered and wept. "What the fuck now?" shouted, barked, screamed and demanded. "What the fuck now?" a question torch passed generation to generation on a long marathon to nowhere. "What the fuck now?" the riddle of a forgotten sphinx.

In fact it's possible that one day, future astro-archaeologists will come across a copy of Detective Comics #339, the last relic of a race once known as the mighty "Uh-Merican Peep-Pole". They will look at this cover and infer an entire religion from it. They will debate each detail. From the crown of skyline that seems at some parts to be a mountain to the significance of the Caped Crusaders pelvic man-thrust pose. They will devise an entire mythology from this one image and will finally come to the conclusion that the great God Batman grew tired one day and laid down his burden. The 'Bomb Beast' awoken and wiped out this strange and noble civilization.

Comments

[ninsun.livejournal.com]

do you have any of those to blow up for tomorrow?

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

The originals? Sadly no. But you can find them (and every comic book cover ever) at www.comics.org

[ninsun.livejournal.com]

are they high enough rez to be blown up?

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I can't say a hundred percent for sure.

However if I may offer a humble opinion here, this might be a good thing. The effect of a blown up comic book page, panel or cover is that it produces a pixilated dotting effect (this is how they used to color in the comics back in the day). The result is a wonderful kind of Roy Lichtensteinor 'Pop Art' feel (you can check him out at http://www.artchive.com/artchive/L/lichtenstein.html)

Hope that helps some:)

[ninsun.livejournal.com]

thanks! we will probably do that then.