...Van Gogh’s Ear...

It was better than Van Gogh’s ear. 

Far better graphic art than 

any of that old impressionist stuff 

ever aspired to, and hell, 

the ear had nothing to do 

with art anyway. 

 

Yes, there was that one painting, 

but the head was all bandaged up. 

I mean… 

Where was the ear? 

Where was the gore? 

How could a guy get excited 

about that sort of art? 

 

Okay… Let’s back up. 

Maybe I should qualify my statement. 

This was more to do with 

rural, small town America,  

and less to do with 

the South of France. 

Sunflowers? Bah! 

High art was to be found on 

a comic book turn-style 

down at the local drug store. 

 

And what’s this got to do 

with Van Gogh’s severed ear? 

Well, these were not normal comics. 

These were E.C. comics. 

Because of their graphic content 

the Comic Book Code tried to 

censor them into oblivion. 

Ah, but as in the undead, 

they survived to walk the earth 

just like their decayed former self.  

 

In my young formative years, 

these high art periodicals declined 

and with them, I lost 

a lot of my moral values. 

In E.C. comic story lines 

you learned that if you were 

unfaithful to your wife, 

planning and carrying out 

her heinous murder, 

she would, without a doubt, 

come back from the grave, 

and jamming her bony rotting fingers 

   into your eye sockets, 

rip your head off and 

sling it like a bowling ball. 

 

Oh, and all of this was portrayed 

in gloriously rendered 

consecutive art panels. 

 

Man, I learned something from this art! 

When my mom gave me pocket money 

to walk to that drugstore and buy comics,

little did she know (and she didn’t know) 

what exquisite art I was experiencing. 

 

Van Gogh’s ear? 

Who ever learned anything from that? 

That man was just plain insane. 

I, on the other hand, 

am right as bloody rain. 

 

I own it all to the 

artists of E.C. Comics. 

 

God bless their severed heads. 

 

Ó03 Jack David Hubbell