Babi, Baby!

24x30 Colored Pencil/Acrylic

Babi is the Egyptian god of baboons, rage, sexual lust, and bloodthirst, and those are his good sides. Here he's seen groovin' his way to the Duwat, or Egyptian underworld to continue being horrible. He's a bad dude, but super slick. His hobbies include gorging on entrails and long walks in the gloom.

Story

The transformation from ancient terror to disco menace happened sometime around 1974, when Babi discovered that his natural talents for chaos and manipulation translated beautifully to the hedonistic excess of the decade. While other Egyptian deities were struggling to adapt to modern times, Babi found that the '70s had essentially created the perfect environment for his particular brand of mayhem. Studio 54's anything-goes atmosphere, the pharmaceutical experimentation, the sexual revolution – it was like the mortal world had finally caught up to his vision of how life should be lived. The orange silk shirt became his signature because it matched both his baboon fur and his flaming personality, while the psychedelic bell-bottoms served a practical purpose: the swirling patterns hypnotized victims just long enough for him to work his ancient magic of corruption.

His reputation in the New York underground scene grew quickly, though nobody could quite put their finger on why parties got so much more intense whenever "that groovy cat with the weird hair" showed up. Babi had perfected the art of being simultaneously the life of the party and its most dangerous element. He'd arrive at clubs with his signature finger guns and that predatory grin, spreading chaos through carefully planted suggestions, strategic drug deals, and an uncanny ability to identify people's deepest insecurities and exploit them for maximum drama. The golden chains weren't just jewelry – they were consecrated in ancient rituals and helped channel his power through the disco lights and pounding bass. Other supernatural beings started avoiding venues where he was known to frequent, because his presence turned ordinary nights out into psychological warfare zones disguised as dance parties.

By 1978, Babi had become the cautionary tale whispered in occult circles from CBGBs to the Rainbow Room: the baboon god who'd figured out how to weaponize the disco era. His "long walks in the gloom" now took him through the seediest parts of the city at 4 AM, when the drugs were wearing off and people were making the kinds of desperate decisions that fed his ancient hunger for human suffering. The finger guns weren't just a pose – they were his way of marking targets, souls he'd claim for the Duwat through a thousand small betrayals and moral compromises. As one surviving member of his inner circle later testified to a very confused police detective, "He made self-destruction look so damn cool that we all wanted in. The man could make damnation sound like the hottest party in town, and somehow, we believed him." The orange shirt and wild hair had become his hunting costume, and the dance floor his altar where modern souls were sacrificed to ancient appetites.