Skinner, a self-taught artist who has created murals and exhibited his work in galleries all over the world, recently returned from the Philippines, where he showed 10 new paintings inspired by—among other things—the Silver Age comics of Jack Kirby.
Skinner explains his thinking at length in the blog on his official site, but here’s some of the important stuff:
I realized that a lot of what I was commenting on in these paintings were very Americanized themes and concepts.. Some emotional and some political.. … I thought of Fredric Wertham who wrote a book called ” Seduction of the innocent” in 1954, which all but destroyed the comic book industry in the late 50’s.. It put EC comics out of business, and the book claimed that comic books were influencing children with horrific themes and violence to be terrible, twisted future criminals.. … Comic books don’t make for a shitty world. People doing the same dumb shit for generations and continuing the stupidity and lazy minded selfishness because we are addicted to things that work for us as an individual but put others back, make a shitty world.
Awesome!