The Howard Stern Mythos

Howard stern wearing the…Forty images of Howard Stern in costume. Doctor Doom. Spider-Man. Superman. A figure helping Don Rickles climb into a building. A figure listening to mini-discs while floating in space. The cycle is the smallest of the named collections and one of the most personal: a private superhero-card series in which a specific cultural figure has been adopted as patron saint.Howard stern as doctor doom…

Howard stern as doctor doom…The dominant prompt — howard stern as doctor doom (sixteen runs) — is the cycle's load-bearing image. Why Doom? Doom is the Marvel villain who is also a monarch, ruler of his own small nation, a man who built his persona out of armor and grievance. Stern, the radio broadcaster, has spent fifty years building a persona out of confession and grievance. The match is more apt than the joke suggests. Both are men in masks. Both rule small countries. Both insist on being addressed by their titles.Howard stern as doctor doom…

Howard stern as doctor doom --v 3

The howard stern dressed as spider-man fighting with don rickles and howard stern helping don rickles climb into a building runs (four iterations each) are doing different work. Don Rickles, the late insult comic, was one of Stern's mentors and an authority figure of the New York broadcast generation. Thomas is putting them in the same frame because the lineage matters to him. The images are visual fan-fiction in the strictest sense: scenes that the broadcast canon never produced but that should have.

street style photo of Howard S…Street style photo of howard stern dressed as superman (four iterations) is the cycle's quietest image. No villain, no battle, no co-star. Stern on a sidewalk, in costume, ordinary background. The lighting is documentary. The costume is the point. The image asks the question every superhero comic eventually asks: what does a costumed person look like before anything happens? The answer in this image is embarrassed and dignified at once. It is a real portrait.

Howard stern as doctor doom…The cycle's argument is that Stern is, in Thomas's personal pantheon, the figure who invented the persona he himself works in. Mad Bitcoins is a radio-style broadcaster operating in YouTube space. Stern is a radio-style broadcaster who survived three decades of regulatory war and became a billionaire by sheer endurance. The reverence here is not ironic. Thomas does not make a costume series for figures he is making fun of.Howard stern as doctor doom…

Howard stern helping Don Rickles climb into a buil

It is worth comparing this cycle to the absent cycles: there is no Dan Rather series, no Ed Murrow series, no Walter Cronkite. Thomas is not interested in the serious-journalist lineage. He has chosen the shock-jock lineage, and the choice is meaningful. The shock-jock works by saying things the establishment will not say. He builds his audience by being the one voice in the room willing to break protocol. This is how Mad Bitcoins describes his own role on the bitcoin beat. The Stern Mythos cycle is, read this way, an artist drawing his own job description as a costume.

Howard stern helping Don…A wrinkle: there is no fly-goggles Stern. The recurring uniform that runs through the Mad Hatter, James Bond, and Mad Bitcoins himself is not extended to Stern. The cycle keeps Stern in his own Marvel costumes. Doom's mask. Spider-Man's. The reason is structural — Stern is not being recruited into the Mad Hatter's order; he is the predecessor to it. The order owes him its existence but does not need him to wear its uniform. He has his own.Howard stern as doctor doom…

Howard stern dressed as…The cycle is small because Thomas, having drawn the figure he needed to draw, did not need to elaborate further. Forty iterations and the work is done. The Stern Mythos closes quickly and is not revisited. The figure has been honored. The archive moves on.Howard stern listening to…

Howard stern listening to mini discs while floatin

What remains is the inclusion itself. Of all the cultural figures Thomas could have drawn — and the archive is generous with celebrities, from Mark Twain to Donald Trump — Howard Stern is the only one given a full personal cycle. The collection's most important property is therefore its selection criterion. It is the artist's pantheon, in miniature, of one.