I originally the big gun for panel 4 on page 13 of my 2010 comic Martian Debut. The smaller guy on top was drawn for panel 6 on page 14. The bird in the background was a painting that I made in 1996 or ’97. I had photographed the painting and made this 2011 collage using a black and white print that I still had at the time.
The bird was inspired by Bill Sienkiewicz’s cover for issue 2 of his Stray Toasters. My thought behind the painting was that the bird was so melodramatic and desperate to feel something in its heart (love?) that it pierced the organ with its own beak.
Before I started making these collages, I used to regularly purge my studio of my old art. I believe this painting was given to my brother so that he could reuse the canvass. I think he made something abstract that built upon my composition, but completely obscured the original image.
I made this collage in 2011.
I added color in 2015.