ERIC DROOKER's MOLOCH

 I love this powerful cover to The New Yorker by Eric Drooker.

The ancient demon god Moloch sits astride the city
for the New Yorker's annual "Money" issue. 

In ancient legend, people hurled their own children into the flames as sacrifices to Moloch.  By the time of the Hebrew bible, the book of Leviticus prohibited making such sacrifices, but the dark god continued to find true believers and lives on in allegory.  He can be found in the works of William Blake, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and Fritz Lang's Metropolis.  More recently, Moloch played a prominent role in Allen Ginsberg's famous poem, Howl.  ("What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?")

When Drooker first conceived of this image, he captured it quickly with a ballpoint pen:

In the next version he shed that full moon, choosing instead to illuminate the city from below, under a dark sky-- a masterful touch in my opinion.  He then worked out the perspectives in pencil:

He drew the final version in ink, before adding color:

The New Yorker employs many excellent writers who've contributed strong articles about economics and plutocracy, about venal politicians and rapacious investment bankers.  But no linear assemblage of nouns, verbs and adjectives, policed by punctuation, can possibly deliver a message the way Drooker's cover does.  

Here we see the value of good illustration: an immediate visual impact that grabs you by the lapels, combined with a haunting presence that lingers long after paragraphs of statistics and adverbs have faded. In an instant, the belching smokestacks and steaming nuclear reactor towers are tied to the fiery furnaces of Nebuchadnezzar II, and modern profiteers and collaborators are shown to serve the same dark gods as our primordial ancestors.  No written article could get away with such a message.  

Drooker never dreamed that the New Yorker would accept such an image for its cover.  He didn't draw it for The New Yorker and only submitted it at the urging of a friend.  But I'd like to see the New Yorker run more covers like this, covers that recognize today's peril.  Some of the essays inside, including those by editor David Remnick, employ stern language suitable to the high stakes for liberal democracy,  Yet most of the cover illustrations continue to offer light hearted moments and political jokes.  I would love to see more cover art that corresponds to the seriousness of the time.