The Murder of Moby Dick

Joseph Anthony Mugnaini

Joe Mugnaini collaborated with one of the greatest science fiction writers of the 20th century, Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) who authored such classics as "The Martian Chronicles", "The Illustrated Man", "Fahrenheit 451" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes." The writer and the artist met in Los Angeles in 1952 and Mugnaini went on to illustrate many of Bradbury's works, including "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles."

Bradbury and Mugnaini began collaborating on projects in 1952. Later that year Bradbury took on a project in Ireland for director John Huston to write the screenplay for the film "Moby Dick" which took him all of 1953 and half of 1954. Bradbury published his experiences in "Green Shadows, White Whale."

This image is a color mixed technique intaglio. It depicts a pair of colorful winged predatory mantis-like creatures swimming through the sea as the great white whale's bloodstained body drifts in the seaweed beneath them. A pair of porpoises are in attendance. A line of rainbow color winds upward, possibly to Ahab's entangled body.

"Moby Dick", Melville's story of obsessive revenge, has inspired artists around the world for over a century. The idea that the whale was vengefully "murdered" is a concept that continues to stir the imagination of the public, as do alien forces, both in space and beneath the sea. Bradbury and Huston's film, with Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, ranks among the best.