Michael Zulli Red (a study of Salome)

As some of you may know, I have a fascination with the story of Salome and John the Baptist. In addition to the fantastical imagery involved (such as the scandalous dance of the veils and the beheading of the Baptist), the story evokes many themes that resonate with me personally such as the paradoxical entanglement of desire and destruction, the sacred and the profane, and all the suffering that arises due to our human condition. Just the image in itself is a paradox of something so horrible but so beautifully portrayed.



Mr. Zulli is a very talented and thoughtful artist whose work is much underappreciated. I remember seeing and enjoying his work in the 80's in the comics Puma Blues and TMNT, and some of you read his work with Neil Gaiman on Sandman, but I think his best art is yet to come. Like Barry Windsor-Smith, his work also reaches beyond sequential art, and he is talented in both areas of sequential/comics and "non-sequential" art.



Thank you to my friend Steve Davis who pointed this piece out to me, and thank you to the artist Michael Zulli for creating it and offering it. I went on so long because it took this long to fit it all in... :)