I have a lot of social issues in my head and thought here I am with this Marvel image in my hand and Marvel is full of a rich inventory of images that I could use as a vehicle to play those concerns out. It’s my commentary riding on top of that imagery.

Columns share an author's personal perspective and are often based on facts in the newspaper's reporting.

Editor’s Note: Inspired by the “Beer with a Painter” feature in the Brooklyn-based online arts magazine Hyperallergic, Bart Chat (Beer+Art+Chat) features Art Beal columnist Don Wilkinson enjoying a beer and a conversation with a local artist.

Last autumn, sculptor John Magnan had an exhibition at the Narrows Center for the Arts that took inspiration from the characters and imagery of Marvel Comics and had a decidedly socio-political bend.

That show is presently on display at the Marion Art Center.

I met with Magnan at the Inn on Shipyard Park. He ordered a Lagunitas IPA, and I opted for a Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. The hostess was kind enough to seat us at a table far from the conversational din of the main bar in order to more easily record our conversation.

DW: Let’s talk about — to use comic book terminology — the “secret origins’ of your terrific exhibition that you call “Thor’s Hammer.”

JM: “Thor’s Hammer” came about almost by accident. I’d always loved the Thor movies and particularly liked the mythology of the hammer. For years, I had thought about making a hammer and finally I had a bit of time between projects.

I decided to do it, but it was going to be my own interpretation, not a reproduction of the one you see in the movies and the comics.

At the time I was working on it, it was during the Supreme Court hearings involving Brett Kavanaugh. I thought the hammer is really a gavel and it was really about the hammer of the justices. Not Thor, but the importance of the responsibility of picking judges and the impact it has.

I have a lot of social issues in my head and thought here I am with this Marvel image in my hand and Marvel is full of a rich inventory of images that I could use as a vehicle to play those concerns out. It’s my commentary riding on top of that imagery.

It’s kind of a visual hook to get viewers to realize it’s about something else.

DW: Beyond the exquisite craftsmanship and the social engagement your work demands, there is the simple pop culture esoterica of it. Everyone knows Thor and Spider-Man. But the Death Throws? And the Power Pack? That goes into the truly obscure, even for a comics nerd.

JM: Sometimes I had to go into the Marvel fandom data pages to find something that would work with my ideas. And I found the Death Throws and thought... wow... a perfect match for the hand grenades.

I was surprised to see the work (featuring Spider-Man and the Power Pack) Marvel had done 36 years ago about pedophilia. They were out front in trying to educate kids on what to do if they are inappropriately touched. They were taking a stance on a troubling issue.

It’s one of the things that gave me respect for Marvel Comics, and I wanted to honor that.

DW: One of the most politically loaded works in the exhibition is your version of Captain America's shield which changes its meaning rather drastically.

JM: I replaced the star in the middle of the shield with a dollar sign and I called it “Captains of America” as a recognition of the power of industry in the U.S. With their finances and resources, industry influences everything in our life through manipulative advertising, control of Congress, control of the president. If anyone steps on the toes of corporate interests today, they come down hard. I wanted to give that some attention and encourage my viewers to think about it, too.

DW: Tell me about Redwing.

JM: It’s about out of control military spending. In the movies, Redwing is a mechanical hawk that is a drone. My Redwing is based on a U.S. Navy-designed semi autonomous drone that cost $900 million dollars and it worked and then the Navy cancelled the program. It costs $900 million for one.

I made one and covered it with dollar bills, figuring if the Navy can waste $900 million, I can express my thoughts on it with 125 one dollar bills.

DW: “Doctor Doom’s Mask?” When I first saw it, I thought it was an indictment of the coal industry.

JM: Your interpretation is valid but it's not where I was coming from. I was looking at carbon. Coal is carbon personified, pure carbon. So I made a mask of carbon as a commentary about the damage we do to the environment.

DW: In the early issues of “The Fantastic Four” where Doctor Doom debuted, he wore the mask because he was horribly disfigured in an explosion. Later retellings suggest that Doom only suffered a minor scar but his vanity forces him to retreat behind the mask. Which oddly seems to play into the coal industry…

JM: You’re right. As I said in an artist statement, it is about the arrogance of Doctor Doom and I am echoing the arrogance of the coal industry and their power — which takes us back to the Captains of America. And the control wielded by the fossil fuel industry.

DW: The work that strikes me the most is the collection of five female figures. Any one of them alone is beautiful but the power of seeing them together is quite moving.

JM: You can thank Annie (Magnan’s wife, Annie Jonas) for that. I wanted to do a piece about female empowerment. I wanted to do a piece for the show that was positive amidst all the other work that was critical about our society. Something upbeat.

Female empowerment is starting to appear in the Marvel movies and I wanted to pay homage to that. Originally, I was going to do a gigantic figure of Captain Marvel... a huge powerful woman.

But my wife said “You don’t understand the female perspective. It’s not about a single powerful woman, it's about the power of women working together.”

She suggested I do many Marvel female figures and we worked together to select them. And then I sculpted them.

Annie arranges them in the gallery because it is about female perspective. What do I know about that? I can intellectualize it, but I can’t feel it.

It's a piece we really did together. And she does the wall layout as well and it’s important that the figures sit in front of the graphics that read “She’s not alone.” It gives me goosebumps just talking about it.

DW: Where do you go from here?

JM: I’m making a shovel.

DW: You’re making a shovel?

JM: I’m making a sculpture of a shovel. I need to do something that doesn’t mean a damned thing. It’s just a sculpture of a shovel.

DW: I suspect that’ll change.

JM: It’ll change. A year-and-a-half ago, I was only making a hammer.

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Take note: On Thursday, Feb. 27, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., at the Marion Art Center, 80 Pleasant Street, Marion, Magnan will be giving a free and open to the public artist’s presentation and Q&A session.

Don Wilkinson is a painter and art critic who lives in New Bedford. Contact him at Don.Wilkinson@gmail.com. His reviews run each week in Coastin’.