This is work is by illustrator Gary Taxali. i had the pleasure of hearing him speak at ICON 6 last weekend and to be honest i was a little star struck when i would pass him in the hallways. I think his art is inventive and intelligent. he references vintage comics but in a satirical way, although his characters are whimsical and funny he uses them to communicate the ironies of now. very clever to use something old to say something new. At the conference he spoke mostly about speculative work. Some people treat illustrators differently than other types of businessmen. You would never ask your accountant to do your taxes and only if you liked the results he gave would you will pay him, so why do people ask illustrators to do speculative work. that is the basic idea behind the controversy with speculative work, and as you can see it makes illustrators a little upset.