Primarily, Xog is an Homunculus. His exaggerated features give an idea of the power within him and where it is situated strongest. The round eyes, nose and mouth -- all as big if not bigger than our poor, dear Captain’s head – are indicative of appetite, a ruling feature of his character. A great appetite further exaggerated by his ridiculous teeth and most of all, his protruding, red tongue. A shade darker than the red of Capt Midnight’s costume, that tongue implies a deeper, quicker temper than our hero’s, indicated as well by the erupting smoke.
Xog’s appetite feeds his anger. No room for a stomach, not that we can see, all that he takes in goes to his head, a mind quite literally on fire, the seat of irrationality. His output is great, his appetite for anger the reason he’s king, since we can assume from his minion that only Xog was great enough to blow his top.
He is not ravenous, however. His tongue does not slather, he is grotesque in many ways save that. It is a tongue for speech. Clearly he’s gesturing, casting some order as to the fate of Captain Midnight. But such is his anger that we can well imagine most of his words are lost to rage. So much more savage to lose the command of language than to have never had it all and retain a clear, predatory mind.
Xog is further diminished by his teeth. Instead of incisors or fangs, canid sabers, they’re rodent-like, casting him among classes of vermin rather than more severe threats. He also looks like a sickly potato, a clod of dirt or clod of something else if you’re inclined towards such imagery. It seems the good old Captain could just roll him off his seat and down the hill, if not for those muscles in Xog’s legs or those claws meant for nothing but ripping and slicing.
The colour scheme, if not for this being Captain Midnight’s book and no one else’s, points towards the captain’s eventual victory and salvation. Xog is constantly venting. The brightest colour on him comes from his eyes, tongue, crowning ring and trailing smoke. The eyes are mostly black, only highlighted in yellow; his tongue is enslaved to his teeth and the void of his mouth; the ring is an affectation; and the smoke, most importantly, forever leaves him. He is as drab as the earth, lifeless or nearly so, and must force vibrancy to offset this, further seen in his throne. An ultimately weak creature despite his form.
Captain Midnight, on the other hand, is completely self-contained. He keeps a cool head under that blue cowl, and a golden heart encased in fiery pride (look at him, thrusting his chest out). His hands are equally as cool, and also quick, blue a sign of swiftness as much as reserved strength. His legs, evolutionarily fundamental to our survival and prosperity, have a mixture of the virtues found in both the red and the blue.
His boots are a comic cliché. They’re jack-boots or riding boots. Both heroes and villains wear calf-length black boots, but here they add a solidness, balancing out the flightiness or aggression of the blues and reds in an effort to make him seem well-grounded.
Starkly different than Xog and his minion. They are naked, a colonial put-down to deny them the virtues of civilization. We can only assume the action of the cover, if not the story itself, takes place on Saturn. To where Captain Midnight is a visitor and the ultimate colonialist, being a master of technology. All Xog can make is his chair and possibly his silly ring. Even the possibility of clothes is beyond him because of his anatomy. He and his people, in this light, cannot overcome their native hostility.
All that Captain Midnight bares is his face. (He too is an homunculus but less so because of his truer-to-life proportions.) This sets a theme: the truth goes bare-faced. He can take in the universe without any filter or shield. Any opposite of that is deception. Xog and his minion, despite their nakedness, mask truer identities. Less human and less alive, they make the captain more human, more alive ergo more virtuous. Xog looks fake not despite his nakedness but because of it. If Xog were able to wear clothing that bared his face, there would be parity between him and the captain, making the division between hero and villain less obvious. Why else make him such a complete monster? Villains of other sci-fi books are human but no less alien.
Of course, they are both facades, being illustrations, Captain Midnight lacking human failure as much as Xog lacks human restraint. All human failure has been removed to the villain, leaving the captain’s face stony and less detailed. We project ourselves into it for pride at the cost of arrogance, significant in 1948 considering the costs of the post-war years.
Overall, though, a fun cover with great banner art. Bold colours with bold printing and good straight lines rising from left to right, well-attuned to Western modes of right and wrong, topped off by a speeding, single-prop airplane, a symbol of pride during and after WWII.
Childish in its absurdity, a certain maturity is offered in marrying the silly with the savage, the garish maturity of the grotesque. We have to laugh and that's the point. Incidentally, this was a Fawcett publication, also the publisher of Captain Marvel, a company that had, bar none, the highest standards for cover art, start to finish.
Hi DT Kelly - this is great reading!
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