Yes, eagle-eyed readers, that is Ernie Colon's artwork gracing the cover of this book. In fact, though it is a text novel, Colon's art is on pretty much every page. It is a short book, however. Less than 50 pages of text.
If you're too young to be familiar with Ernie Colon's work as an artist and editor, he began his career back in the 60s, working at Harvey, Gold Key and Warren before moving to DC to work as both artist & editor. That didn't stop him from working with Marvel, too. The man's work was everywhere, and he introduced characters like Amethyst and edited titles like Flash, Green Lantern, & Wonder Woman.
In more recent times he's drawn the 9/11 Commission Report graphic novel and other more politically important work.
As you can tell looking at the cover, this was the 1970s.
Ernie was approached to illustrate the book for Bleep, but didn't really want to do that sort of thing and turned them down. But, they wanted him and kept pushing more money at him until he felt it would be just stupid to refuse it. It was the 70s - sex was on the upswing, The Exorcist was huge. And Jaws gave us that cello Da-Dum echoing in our heads...
Hey, look! Jack Kirby wasn't the only one experimenting with collage work in his comics back in 1974:
Unfortunately, the printing on this page is terribly muddy. I'd love to see this artwork clean:
It's not a great book, but it's certainly unique and a look at a side of Ernie Colon's work we don't often see.
The author goes uncredited on the book. In fact, the only credit is Ernie's signature on his work.
Even the publisher's name gets BLEEPed.
illustrations for The Sexorcist by Ernie Colon for Bleep Publications (1974)
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