Focus on Torpedo...Los! and analyze the Description.
Measuring 68 by 80 inches (172.7 cm × 203.2 cm), Torpedo...Los! is an oil on canvas painting. By enlarging the face of the captain relative to the entire field, Lichtenstein makes him more prominent than in the source. He retained the source's "clumsiness" in how the secondary figure is presented and replaced the dialogue with a much shorter "cryptic command". The original source had dialog related to the repeated torpedoing of the same ship, but Lichtenstein cut the entire speech balloon down to two words. He moved the captain's scar from his nose to his cheek and he made the captain appear more aggressive by depicting him with his mouth wide open, also opting to leave the eye which was not looking through the periscope open. He also made the ship appear to be more technologically sophisticated with a variety of changes. The scar was actually most readily apparent in panels other than the source from the same story.This work exemplifies Lichtenstein's theme relating to vision. Lichtenstein uses a "mechanical viewing device" to present his depiction of technically aided vision. The depicted mechanical device, a periscope in this case, forces the vision into a monocular format. In some of his works such as this, monocularity is a strong theme that is directly embodied although only by allusion. Michael Lobel notes that "...his work proposes a dialectical tension between monocular and binocular modes of vision, a tension that operates on the level of gender as well." The work is regarded as one in which Lichtenstein exaggerated comic book sound effects in common pop art style.
Michael Lobel speech balloon comic book periscope pop art