Beard's handwritten script appears around the entire periphery of the central images and includes daily memoranda as well as statistics and history on the elephant deaths at Tsavo. Drawings by the Hog Ranch Art Department—African artists who often embellish his work—add layers of meaning and provide an injection of bright color. These illustrations fill the margins of Heart Attack City with human and animal figures whose frenzied antics recall Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.
This masterful piece demonstrates Beard's remarkable ability to locate beauty even in death. The tragic figure of Marilyn Monroe remains unassailably beautiful amidst the destruction that surrounds her. Beard's aerial studies transform the bleached bones of elephants into exquisite calligraphic abstractions.