Today we’re sharing a beautiful page from a book that’s been a true gift for us.

Prometheus Eternal is a 24-page comic (with, really, 28 pages of content – not even an inside cover goes unused!) that represents the first collaboration between the historic Philadelphia Museum of Art and little old Locust Moon. Just a few months ago now, the Museum called us in to see if we could conjure up some kind of project to tie into their fall exhibition, a collection of art that seemed to share deep connective tissue with the modern heroics of comic book superheroes. They didn’t even realize, at first, that comics re-exploring mythology and calling back to classic historical art were precisely our specialties.

And what followed was an exhilarating ride – we managed to (successfully!) wrangle some the best folks working in comics, including a few legends with whom we’d never had the chance to work before. By turning the project into a miniature anthology, we could make the turnaround time as feasible as possible (even if it was still dangerously tight), given that no creator would be on the hook for more than 5 pages of work. But we also, then, had to keep all that many more plates spinning at once, with no room for error. And, one way or another, we actually did it. The comics were delivered from the printer directly to the Museum just in time to go on display and into the gift shop. And they are beautiful.

The exhibition, “The Wrath of the Gods,” opened this past week. And displayed there, right alongside works by Michelangelo, Titian, and the centerpiece Prometheus Bound painting by Peter Paul Rubens, you’ll find a readable copy of Prometheus Eternal. (Of course there are copies for sale, too.)

The artists in this book all refer back to Rubens, to his mythical subject Prometheus, and to the grand tradition of using art to capture mortal defiance of and punishment by the gods. Grant Morrison & Farel Dalrymple, Dave McKean, Andrea Tsurumi, David Mack, Josh O’Neill & Lisk Feng, and James Comey all wove their own Promethean tales, while Paul Pope, Bill Sienkiewicz (with his front and back covers), and Yuko Shimizu contributed paintings and illustrations inspired by Prometheus and Bound.

So here is “A Portrait of Prometheus Sans Titan” from Yuko Shimizu: