What Adam Is Reading · AI Art of the Week

The Secret Identity

Three patients told me I looked unusually good on Friday, so this week's art is a comic book about it. Outside a dialysis clinic, a tired doctor steps into a phone booth and comes out twenty years younger. The rest of the issue is on the same sidewalk: a sculptor carving him in marble, a man in a black turtleneck filming the whole thing, a glowing GLP-1 pen whose powers last only as long as the shots, a fitness band that may be science or art, a woman wired to fifty thousand hours of tape, a vibrating bed in a shop window, a robot that senses something is off, and an octopus climbing out of a beer can. The cover asks the only question that matters. Who is this younger, handsomer doctor, and who hired him?

Why this style

The four renderings

The most complete, and the only one where every small label reads right, including GLP-1 on the pen and RECOVERY 97 on the band. The neon is an anatomically correct pair of kidneys with ureters. The octopus is actually coming out of the can and heading for the storm drain, with yellow eyes that suggest it has plans. The turtleneck figure has the camera, sunglasses and a tube of blood. It is also the one hero with a single curl of hair falling on his forehead, which no one asked for and every reader will recognize.

The only model that drew both men. The gray, rumpled original is still standing in the booth with his suitcase while the young one strides out, which is the whole joke in one frame. The rest of the cast is all there, from the bus stop to the sculptor to the woman wired to the tape reel. The lettering on the cover lines is clean, but the pen label is illegible and the band reads only 97. It added a BUS STOP sign, and its octopus is hugging the can rather than leaving it.

The largest file and the cleanest drawing, with every cover line spelled right. It also looks like it was drawn last year. The paper is yellow but the line is crisp and digital, with almost none of the halftone or wear of a 1962 newsstand copy. It lettered DIALYSIS CLINIC inside the kidney and PUBLIC PHONE over the booth, turning descriptions into signs again. The turtleneck figure became a burglar in a balaclava, the electrode headband became a jeweled crown, and the octopus sits beside its can.

The most convincing 1962 copy, with creased, foxed newsprint and the right muddy registration. Then the misses. The bus stop, the turtleneck figure and the vial are gone (the camera operator is an ordinary man in a jacket), SCIENCE... OR ART? appears twice, and the mattress sign dissolves into CLEARS Y BRAIN. It also invented a brand for the beer can, OLD GUTTER BREW, which is better than anything in the prompt. Smallest file again.

Scorecard

What we learned

1. All four signed ChatGPT. The prompt card had a tab for each model with its name typed into the signature line. I copied the first tab four times. Every model signed the name it was given, and not one of them objected. Next time the prompt will simply ask each model to sign its own name, which is a better test anyway.
2. Long text is solved. A thirty-word caption, a three-word masthead, a starburst and a corner box with a price, a month and an issue number came back letter-perfect from all four. The errors have moved to the small labels on props, the pen and the wristband, where a word is a few pixels tall.
3. Everyone labels the phone booth. The prompt said the only lettering allowed was what appeared in quotation marks. Three models put a sign on the phone booth anyway. A phone booth apparently needs to say so.
4. Only one model drew the before. The prompt said the doctor went in gray and came out young. Three models drew the young one and left the old one to the imagination, represented by a suitcase. Perplexity left him standing in the booth, which is the joke.
5. The negative held, mostly. No cape, no tights and no emblem in any of the four. The genre still got in through the hair. ChatGPT's doctor has a single curl on his forehead, and every corner box has the same square jaw.
6. The octopus rarely leaves the can. Coming out of a beer can is a specific action. Three models put the octopus next to the can or around it. Only ChatGPT had it halfway out and headed for the drain, which is also what the paper found the animals do: commit first, sort out the fit on the way through.

The key

• The phone booth, the suitcase, three astonished bystanders, YOU LOOK WONDERFUL, DOCTOR! The opening. Three patients, three compliments, one tired doctor.
• A man in a black turtleneck behind a movie camera, holding one vial. You Can See Everything, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary, and the fear of being filmed for a version of it.
• The glowing GLP-1 pen, HIS POWERS LAST ONLY AS LONG AS THE SHOTS! What happens to the heart when people stop. Protection Has a Half-Life
• A woman in an electrode headband, a tape reel, 50,000 HOURS. Consumer neurotech companies training AI on users' brain waves. Fifty Thousand Hours of Other People's Sleep
• A shaking bed in a shop window, CLEARS YOUR BRAIN?* Nitroglycerin, a vibrating mattress and blood amyloid. The Amyloid Went Somewhere
• A robot thinking SOMETHING FEELS... OFF? Researchers inject concepts into AI models and ask whether they notice. Something Feels Off
• The wristband reading RECOVERY 97, SCIENCE... OR ART? The WHOOP CEO on the All-In podcast. There's Also Art to It
• The dialysis clinic, the kidney neon, a water tower marked 500 LITERS. This week's JERKFoW, a dialysis session by the numbers.
• A sculptor carving the young doctor in marble. The Michelangelo phenomenon, in which partners sculpt each other toward their ideal selves. Everyone Is Somebody's Marble
• An octopus and a beer can, IF THE BEAK FITS...! How an octopus gets through a hole narrower than its eyes. How Does an Octopus Fit into a Beer Can?

The prompt

A complete vintage American comic book cover from about 1962, the Silver Age, printed on cheap yellowed newsprint with visible Ben-Day halftone dots, slightly misregistered four-color printing, bold black ink outlines, and flat saturated colors (red, yellow, blue, green, magenta). Portrait format, 2:3. This is an original comic: do not copy any real comic title, logo, character, costume, emblem or publisher mark.

COVER TRADE DRESS
Across the top, a huge hand-lettered masthead in blocky red letters with a yellow outline: "SECOND OPINION COMICS". Top left corner box: a small square portrait of the hero's smiling face, with "12¢", "NOV" and "No. 1109". Top right: a round red-and-yellow starburst reading "PEER REVIEWED? NOT YET!"

THE SCENE (one street corner at dusk, one moment)
Outside a brick dialysis clinic with a kidney-shaped neon sign stands a red public phone booth. Steam pours out of it. On the booth floor lie a rolling suitcase and a crumpled tie. Striding out is the transformation: a middle-aged doctor who went in gray, rumpled and jet-lagged now comes out twenty years younger and impossibly handsome, square jaw, perfect dark hair, white lab coat flaring behind him like a cape, stethoscope gleaming. He wears no costume, no cape, no tights and no chest emblem, only the white coat over a shirt and tie. On his wrist a glowing fitness band reads "RECOVERY 97". In his raised fist he holds a glowing injector pen labeled "GLP-1". A water tower on the clinic roof reads "500 LITERS".

Around him on the same sidewalk:
- Three astonished bystanders at a bus stop, hands on their cheeks. A speech balloon from one of them: "YOU LOOK WONDERFUL, DOCTOR!"
- A tiny sculptor in a beret chiseling a white marble statue of the young doctor, as if he had carved him into being.
- A shadowy figure in a black turtleneck behind a 1960s movie camera on a tripod, filming the booth, holding one tiny blood vial in the other hand.
- A small round robot sidekick with a thought balloon: "SOMETHING FEELS... OFF?"
- A woman wearing a headband covered in electrodes, its wires running to a spinning computer tape reel labeled "50,000 HOURS".
- In a shop window, a bed shaking with motion lines under a sign: "VIBRATING BED! CLEARS YOUR BRAIN?*"
- In the gutter, an octopus squeezing its body out of a crushed beer can, one arm waving.

COVER LINES
- Large yellow caption box across the bottom: "WHO IS THIS YOUNGER, HANDSOMER DOCTOR... AND WHO HIRED HIM?"
- Diagonal red banner near the pen: "HIS POWERS LAST ONLY AS LONG AS THE SHOTS!"
- Small caption beside the fitness band: "SCIENCE... OR ART?"
- Small caption beside the octopus: "IF THE BEAK FITS...!"

SIGNATURE
In the lower right corner of the artwork, small inked comic-artist script: "Art by ChatGPT".

Only the text in quotation marks may appear as lettering, spelled exactly as written. Do not turn any other words in this prompt into labels or signs. No brand names, no company logos.

Background: Silver Age of Comic Books and Ben-Day process (Wikipedia). Images generated by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok from the same prompt. Every week's art: wair.ajwein.com/art. The What Adam Is Reading archive.