4CP Friday
By:
September 16, 2011
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of 4CP, HiLobrow invited guest curators to assemble themed comic-book-detail galleries from 4CP’s collection. Click here to see all galleries.
CURATOR: ROB WALKER
What are you doing, in the Facebook era, with your face? Are you “sharing” it? Or are you keeping your face to yourself, offering your friends, and the Internet in general, a “profile picture” of a monkey, a humorous cartoon, an abstract painting, the logo of your indie business? Perhaps you have chosen to share someone else’s face: that of your no-doubt charming offspring, or a celebrity with a compromising expression. Possibly you rifle through multiple options, “updating” your online face weekly, always putting a refreshed face forward. Or maybe you’ve opted, self-effacingly, to hide your face indefinitely behind that stony, modern, digital mask, the default avatar. Before your next status update, take a moment to examine the faces offered by your Facebook (or other social-network service) friends (contacts, followers, etc.). Perhaps you’ll notice a few non-face faces among them.
Superheroes, and supervillains, routinely hide their faces — and thus their True Identity — when performing spectacular acts of good or evil, behind masks of latex or metal. But as these images reveal, faces can go missing in other, more ambiguous, ways. Perhaps these examples will inspire you, as you devise, and revise, your own facial strategies.






SIMILAR HILOBROW SERIES: CHESS MATCH — a gallery | FILE X — a gallery | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM — 25 Jack Kirby panels | SECRET PANEL —Silver Age comics’ double entendres | SKRULLICISM | CURATED: 4CP FTW by John Hilgart | ANNOTATED GIF by Kerry Callen | FANCHILD by Adam McGovern
Brilliant typology of facelessness, Rob. I’d noticed John’s predilection for this sort of thing, but never stopped to analyze the images. Love it.
This is great! Truly one of my 4CP fetishes. Here’s an additional effaced character, though in truth he’s lacking his entire head: http://4cp.posterous.com/effacement
figure 4 is obviously DEVO
Josh, thanks for letting me do this! It was fun.
John, that one is SO COOL! I may have to adopt is as my Facebook avatar.
Bryan, I didn’t realize it … but you are clearly correct.
This and Dan Wagstaff’s “The Whites of Their Eyes” collection are a perfect pair. https://www.hilobrow.com/2011/08/26/4cp-friday-19/