The Heel

Wood Panel, Mixed Media, Photo Transfer

9"x 12" x 1.5"

2024

"The primary footwear for women in mid-century comics were heels. The Heel uses a title, panels and narratives pulled from 12 different comic books to demonstrate their utility.

This is part of my "Pulp Fission: Classic Comics Reconstructed" series. Each piece in the series is created from a library of over 20,000 titles, panels and narratives curated from thousands of public domain Mid-century comic books.  

In 1952, US comic book circulation exceeded one billion. While many were just good fun, the crime, mystery, horror and romance categories contained depictions of violence and misogyny that exerted extraordinary influence over American society. Congress, alarmed by a dramatic rise in juvenile delinquency, determined that comic books could be to blame. In 1954, publishers chose to act before Congress could and formed the Comics Magazine Association of America. From that point forward comics deemed “safe” would be marked with the stamp of the Comics Code Authority.

The racy, offensive comics that predated the crackdown languished, their copyright renewal dates ignored, finally relegating them to the public domain. 

"Pulp Fission: Classic Comics Reconstructed" excavates the treasures hidden in these pre-code comics. Over the course of several months, thousands of panels, titles and narrative paragraphs were clipped, sorted and arranged into categories, then utilized to generate new storylines and associations. The patterns of misogyny, violence, sexuality and terror re-emerged unobscured by the false moralizing written into the originals.