Mike Hoffman, Rogue Beastmonster Attack

When I was young, I used to make a distinction between "great music" and music that I liked because it was campy or so bad it was good.  As I've gotten older, all I care about is whether I like a song or not, without feeling the need to justify or excuse it.  In any case, this nutty drawing tickled me.  

Hoffman has enviable dexterity, a superb compositional sense, and an eye for the dramatic, but I doubt he could offer a credible or coherent scenario that might produce such a tableau.  Why is this bare lady crawling up the hill to offer her rump to be scratched by an equally starkers 15 foot hobgoblin, who seems to have more of a hard-on for the Frazetta-esque “hero” frugging in the foreground than the female? 

Typically, in these sorts of fantasy scenes, the hero fights to rescue the maiden from the monster’s clutches, or he stands between the damsel and the dragon.  It’s rare to see the hero cowering, the damsel distracted, and the monster appearing more offended than enraged. 

I love how Hoffman spots his blacks here, and the swordsman’s stance reminds me of the warrior in Frazetta’s painted cover to The Moon Men, with a nod to the reaching, awestruck figure in Frazetta’s interior illustration of the two warriors facing a massive lizard in the Doubleday edition of A Fighting Man of Mars.

Thanks for taking a look!