Trenton Doyle Hancock

As a young boy in Paris, Texas, Trenton Doyle Hancock invented a Black superhero called Torpedo Boy. This character, the artist's avatar, would later join the Moundverse, a complex mythological universe of Hancock's creation. The story of the half-human, half-plant Mounds, their nemeses the Vegans, and the flawed protagonist Torpedo Boy, is interleaved with the artist's childhood influences--the Bible, comic books, and action figures--and his later admiration for artists like Philip Guston, particularly Guston's cartoonish paintings of hooded Ku Klux Klan figures. "Moundmeat Shower Unit" seems to show a Mound penetrated by a V, possibly denoting the Vegans, the Mounds' mortal enemies.