Behold, Mary MacArthur’s best work yet. The deeper we delve into the Bovodar and the Bears project, the more she surprises me. I’ve already shown a black and white of this full-page spread elsewhere, but it’s so vivid once we see it in color.
Just a bit of a recap of what I said previously about this page:
This year, Mary MacArthur and I are working on Issue #3 of the Bovodar and the Bears comic. And it is VERY relevant to this ongoing battle within Hollywood. It is in this very part of the story that Bovodar and his friends are captured by the evil Deer Queen.
This adversary, fashioned in the same league as the Ice Queen of Narnia, is no benevolent ruler. A tyrant, this disordered doe has usurped a stag’s role, crowning herself with a golden, artificial crown of antlers, and surrounding herself with sycophantic followers. The image above is some of the most fantastic work I’ve seen yet from MacArthur, and I was shocked when she first presented it to me this weekend. I absolutely had to show you guys.
A little commentary about this art. Perhaps you’ll notice the seating position and posture of the Deer Queen. Brownie points if any of you guys can name what she looks like in the comments box. I absolutely love how Mary portrayed the “gay orbiter” effeminate lions on the right. These pathetic predators have sacrificed their natural, virile nature to become subdued subjects to an animal who’d normally be their prey in the natural world. I like the locks of their manes—they look like band members from Queen on their 70s album, News of the World. And the censure in the front, with the smoke pouring out and intertwining up the page, with the court filled with deer like that—it’s positively Dionysian. Fun fact: I said to Mary “Maybe you should play Venus in Furs by Velvet Underground when you draw this thing.” The overall effect is what you see above. Yes, I’m gushing, guys, but this panel deserves it.”
Not a few people have correctly guessed that the evil Deer Queen, here, is meant to resemble the infamous Baphomet statue that’s been trotted out these recent years. And, really, the entire setting is meant to look like some kind of a satanic enclave. Were someone out there to deify Nature and flesh out just what a pagan paradise would look like, the Deer Queen’s court is one such example.
The Deer Queen is one of the first villains Bovodar and his friends come across. She is local, being only a few days walk away from his home. She has a domain within which she rules, and there are many clues that she was utterly undeserving of inheriting it. Her existence is a complete reversal of the natural order. There is absolutely nothing normal on any level with how things are conducted under her rule. If her court seems to resemble some sort of a twisted, self-indulgent, King-Herod bazaar, it’s supposed to.
In her city, the first thing Bovodar and his friends should be thinking is: “How do we get out of here?”
