The iceman draweth

Banks's numerous illustrations for the Phoenix -- 42 section covers in 1995 alone, including a first-prize winner at the New England Press Association for a piece entitled "Pocamyass" -- are his most mainstream outlet. But outside of his Phoenix duties (he's also employed in the operations department) he's cultivated a reputation over the past five years as one of the foremost talents in local underground publishing, making his mark on a progression of 'zine covers, band flyers, and (rumor has it) even a little of the city's architecture.

A Needham native and 1990 graduate of the School of Visual Arts (alma mater of both Keith Haring and Madonna), Banks first gained exposure in the early '90s, as cheap & easy desktop publishing led to a renaissance of DIY 'zines. That mini-revolution in turn led to an exponential growth in opportunities for illustration -- and created outlets for the tight-knit Boston arts scene that had coalesced around low-budget venues like Allston's Starving Artist Gallery, where bands like Letters to Cleo and small factory played at parties, and where unknown artists like Banks could make a quick buck by liquidating their college portfolios. Inspired by Mikhail Schmenkin, a Russian illustrator who was torture-burned by the KGB for his cartoons depicting Soviet prison horrors, and the work of local cartoon legend Scott Getchell, Banks began illustrating for the California-based cyberpunk 'zine Boing-Boing (then edited by current Wired on-line editor Mark Frauenfelder). A run-in with a landlord over back rent sent him on a two-month slacker retreat to Paris, but he soon returned to Boston with a string of nefarious covers for the likes of Core, Lollipop, and Endangered Species, plus CD covers for local upstarts High Defiance and the Hollywood Squares.

"Hanging around so many bands, being in a city with a serious music scene, and seeing how bands accelerate by developing name recognition," he says, "I figured I'd market myself the same way bands do: get recognized among your friends, within one publication locally, then regionally, and build from there. You don't burn bridges because the art scene is so tiny. And it's really to your advantage to bend over backward to do free things for people -- a lot of times Lollipop pays me in pizza or Captain Morgan's."

The offbeat corners of the music scene, dives and cocktail bars, figure prominently in the noir-ish environs of "The Anti-Lounge." "If you have a party at your place," he says, "and you look at a cross-section at the end of the night, the debris -- the aftermath of a party, of people getting fucked-up, maybe there'd be condoms down the end somewhere -- it's a great skyline."

Alongside even his most irreverent Phoenix and Lollipop covers (which include a tattoo'd and nipple-ringed cherub impaled on a ground-to-air missile; Stevie Wonder, a camera around his neck, getting carded at the Rat; and a six-fingered Uncle Sam with the fires of Hell refracted in his eyes), works like "Last Call at the Suicide Lounge" betray a sinister, maudlin outlook -- in this case, a circle of greenish heads, a red dot on each forehead, float half-submerged in a martini glass. In the background, an insect-sized figure chases an aspirin across the table.

"The red dots are actually bullet holes," he says. "They did the Kurt Cobain, y'know? Someone who shoots themselves in the front of the head and dies -- turns green, blue, whatever -- ends up looking like an olive. What happens at last call? Everything ends. And at the suicide lounge? Last call must be the most dreaded thing in the world. When that bell rings, everyone dies. It's not a friendly piece."

Neither is "Citgo Bleeding," with the infamous Kenmore Square blemish surrounded by gray, wintry skies -- a mundane setting till you notice the slim trickle of red seeping from the triangle, running along the base of the sign, and collecting in a murderous pool on the roof below.

"Last winter just sucked for me, and you walk down Brookline Avenue at night after a shitty day, and you just see that bright Citgo sign flashing, `Hi! Hi! Hi! Buy some gas! Hi!' It's just begging to be fucked with. I've dulled out the T and C [in the sign's lettering], so now it says, 'I Go.' I just wanted it to be dead."