Bad Mama Jama

Brand spanking new: I recently revamped an older piece, pictured below, right.  

  The original piece was made for an end-of-the year graduation book, the idea was to create a picture that showed teetering on a dangerous precipice.  

Sharks!

Now I likes me some camp, so the farther I could push over the top the better.  I was looking at a lot of old comics, Pulp Art, and crime magazines trying to delve deep enough into the subject matter.

The whole kinky undertone of mainstream comics is fascinating to me, and that was an important factor here.  I wanted to play with the double-edged sword of the exploitation genres. 

Voyeurism, sex and sadism: Superhero stock and trade.

The key to this piece came in the form of 70s Blaxploitation culture: once I started taking cues from comics and movies from that period, I knew what I wanted this piece to look like.  

Friday Foster was the first syndicated comic strip starring a Black woman- the series was made into a movie starring Pam Grier, the Queen Mother of ass-kicking ladies.  The comic has some really lovely art, the loose brushwork reminds me of Barbarella or Love and Rockets.

 And if you dig cheesy, over-the top comics, "Luke Cage, Power Man" is amazing. With dialogue like "Sweet Sister! This Dude is for real!"how could it go awry?

Revamped Adventures

And Voila!  This is the finished piece as a silkscreen print.  I'm excited with the result of my foray into vintage Pulp Comics and even thinking of expanding this project somehow; maybe doing a series of "covers," or even doing a comic based on this character, who knows?  Something to ponder anyway.