Flex Mentallo

I am an artist, if not a very successful one. My work deals with themes of alienation, identity and redemption, as a reflection of my own experiences, insights and observations.

The Search "On my way to school, I stepped out of a mist and I knew I am. I am what I am. And then I thought, 'But what have I been before?' And then I found that I had been in a mist, not knowing to differentiate myself from things; I was just one thing among many things."Carl Jung, 1959

My favorite Schomburg cover. I'd take this over Suspense #3 any day. Of course if I could afford a Suspense #3 I might change my mind!

Another artist who did so many great covers, so it's nearly impossible to choose a single cover as his best. His St John romance covers, the best of them at any rate, which are the ones he inked as well as drew, are surely the clearest demonstration of his mastery.

Please post the cover you regard as a given artist's magnum opus, preferably from your own collection. Emphasis on Golden/Atomic Age but any era allowed, plus magazines, pulps and paperbacks as well as comics, and of course OA if you have it. Try to restrict yourself to just one per artist, but of course, cheating is expected and secretly admired. To get us started, here are a couple I really like: My favorite artist, hands down, and this may just about be his best cover, with many other really great ones to choose from. But this would remain my favorite even if I owned the other ones I really love. Hopefully we'll see a few of those posted here.

Easily the best known copy - dazzling!

Do you have a nice one adamstrange?

It seems an age since I posted anything new. This has always been one of my favorite Whitman covers, and seems to be surprisingly difficult to come by in higher grade. So I was delighted to pick up this copy from Rick Starr.

"We don't fight abduction; we simply try to recover our memories, all the while aware that they could be false, that in our very recovery we participate in an alien plan."

"To fight colonization, we take control."

Abduction, however, recognizes the futility of resistance even as it points to other possible freedoms. Colonization implies an on-going process with systematic limitations. Yet abduction involves the sense that things are happening behind our backs.

Dean adds that colonization moreover brings with it the possibility of struggle, of emancipation and independence.

"Unlike metaphors of colonization that presupposes borders to be penetrated and resources to be exploited," Dean notes, "abduction operates with an understanding of the world, of reality, as amorphous and permeable."

The symbolism of alien abduction is very different than the old one of colonization dominating much of the nineteenth century.

As Dean says, "We have too much data, but not enough to make any decisions because we are uncertain about the contexts and networks into which we might integrate this information. Enabled by technology we become aliens, connected outside the state." And, just as often, "we're abducted by the same technology."

But in the end, aliens are really modern Americans and our feelings of alienation.

"Assimilation has been discredited as an ideal, and multiculturalism hasn't become much more than a marketing strategy...Better to forget the neighbors, go inside, and enjoy cyber-citizenship on the World Wide Web." And alien abduction, notes Dean, "narrates the predominant experience of the familiarity of strangeness in the techno-global information age."

Dean notes that our neighbors are aliens.

Dean sees aliens as repositories for our fears and phobias. These fears center around the inability to distinguish truth from fiction.

UFOs and aliens have moved into the mainstream of popular culture.

The UFO events of the 50s have gone a long way towards creating and boosting the literary/film/television genre of science fiction, as well as creating a huge marketing empire.

Alienation Nation "The claim to truth and its challenges to our practices for establishing it are what enable the alien to function as an icon of postmodern anxieties." Aliens in America Jodi Dean

Producer Denise David Williams, is developing a motion picture based on Mack’s life, which was set at one point to star Robert Redford before Williams parted company with Wildwood citing artistic differences. http://www.makemagicproductions.com/johnmack/index.html

Psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Rediger knew Mack at the end of his life. “By the time I knew him, he believed that he had been misunderstood by the public and by Harvard,” Rediger says. “The culture focused on the exterior manifestations — the flying saucers, and so on. His private beliefs were much more sophisticated. It was like he was exploring a new terrain but lacked a map. It was confusing for him and confusing for many who knew him.”