The Whispering Dark – Comic Book Pinup 2020

Robert Sammelin made this comic book pinup, "The Whispering Dark," sometime in the 20th century, probably with digital tools. Its palette of fleshy purples against a solid yellow background grabs your attention right away. I find the way Sammelin combines classical imagery with comic book horror so compelling! It’s a strange process of transformation, really. I keep coming back to the texture of the figure. It's breaking apart, revealing something monstrous underneath, and those chunks flying off into the yellow void, each with its own shadow, feels viscerally unsettling. The purple, which isn't quite skin and not quite stone, suggests a state of becoming, like the figure is caught between worlds. This tension between beauty and decay, the sacred and the profane, it's all there. Sammelin, like Goya, isn't afraid to stare into the abyss, but he does it with a comic book twist. It feels like art is a conversation, an endless game of telephone across centuries.