Drooker grew up in Manhattan's
Stuyvesant Town, adjacent to the
Lower East Side, which was then a working-class immigrant neighborhood with a tradition of left-wing political activism. He attended the
Downtown Community School in Manhattan's East Village. Drooker developed an early interest in graphic arts and cartoons, particularly the woodcut novels of
Frans Masereel and
Lynd Ward and the underground comics of
Robert Crumb. After studying sculpture at
Cooper Union,
Flood won an
American Book Award. Portions of his
Flood! artwork were used for album covers for the bands
Faith No More and
Rage Against the Machine. In 2006, the
Library of Congress acquired the original art for
Flood! A Novel in Pictures, including preliminary drawings, sketches, and cover paintings. The complete
Flood! Archive is housed in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, which is open to the public. In the 1990s, Drooker broadened his scope from graphic arts to painting, creating several covers for
The New Yorker and a book of illustrations of
Allen Ginsberg's poetry,
Illuminated Poems. His third book,
Street Posters & Ballads, is a compilation of graphics, poems and songs about the
Lower East Side. The book won the 1999
Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel. He designed the animation for the 2010 film,
Howl, a movie based on the epic poem by Allen Ginsberg, who collaborated with Drooker on the book
Illuminated Poems. His best-selling book,
Howl: A Graphic Novel, visualizes the poem with animation art Drooker designed for the film. ==Cultural references==