The Electric Sublime

Anyone who romanticizes the intersection of art and pain should meet the villain of The Electric Sublime, a comic by W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo. In this preview of the third issue, we find him at work, painting with the blood of a man he's holding prisoner and torturing. And he's doing it while wearing an Andy Warhol wig, no less. What he's painting is the winky-face icon we've been seeing since the first issue, and doing it human blood has to be a clue to how the magical stuff that's been going on has been accomplished.

Art crime strikes in The Electric Sublime, a new comic due out this fall from writer W. Maxwell Prince, artist Martín Morazzo, and colorist Mat Lopes. At the center of the story are Margot Breslin, head of the Bureau of Artistic Integrity, and Arthur Brut, a mentally unstable consultant who interacts with art in ways nobody else can. Together they're investigating an escalating series of events involving famous works of art inexplicably changing, and people reacting even more inexplicably. We talked to Prince and Morazzo about art, mental illness, and what we can expect from The Electric Sublime.