Suspended Elimination

What is it that makes Don Heck?s ?bullet in the head? cover of Horrific #3 so impressive as an image of horror? Obviously ?it?s a guy shot in the head?, but there are plenty of similar images that don?t appeal the way this one does. So how does this image work? Here are some thoughts. First off, some formal qualities. All the background has been erased to concentrate the eye entirely on the head of the shot man. The man?s hair, spiky and standing on end, is both a sign of the shock and a visual pointer to the bullet-hole, and, because it is drawn in red and yellow, stands in for the explosive force of the bullet entering the head. It also recalls the flames of Hell, which is probably where this fellow is headed as he's evidently a bad guy to judge from his unshaven jaw. His bulging, blood-shot eyes, raised eyebrows and open mouth signal his expression of horror, and that expression is amplified enormously by the way that the head appears as a dead skull and a living head simultaneously. Isn't it as if the living head is shrinking back onto the form of the skull as soon as the shot has penetrated his brain? So the jawline is sharp, the cheekbones stand out, the eyes are wide and round like cavities, and the forehead is large and dome-shaped. Also his face is pink and red, but inclining to green and yellow, which makes it stand out, but also mixes the colors of living and putrefying flesh. To me, this all suggests that we?re seeing the subject at a moment between life and death. We?re not seeing an act of torture, which threatens life, or a zombie or skeleton, where death is restored to life, but the actual moment between life and death. In real life I expect that we would all hope and expect that moment to only to be a moment, a split-second of sudden impact. But here the image captures the moment between life and death and freezes it, holding and sustaining it for as long as the image is confronted by the viewer. Only a picture could do that, you couldn't do it with a film, and I think this is what must be so disturbing and fascinating. Finally, there is no red blood around the bullet-hole, and red blood only appears on the title banner, dripping down over the letters of ?Horrific?. The bullet-hole is not bloody but black, suggesting a void, or death perhaps? The hole forms a triangle with the circular pupils of the eyes, which seem to be staring into this void. And the blood surrounding it is brown, as if it has dried, which adds to the sense that this is a head in suspended animation, or suspended elimination, which might be a more accurate term.