Captain Edward St. Miquel Tilden Bradshaw and his Crew Come to Grips with Bloodthirsty Foe Pirates by S. Clay Wilson, Zap Comix no. 3, 1968.
• RIP S. Clay Wilson, the wild man of American comics. The scene of mayhem above is typical in being barely coherent at a small size; click for a larger view. Patrick Rosenkranz at The Comics Journal describes Wilson as “the most influential artist of his generation…creating an extensive body of work that will defy authority and offend propriety until the end of days”. When Moebius was writing in the 1980s about the founding of Métal Hurlant he had this to say about the American undergrounds: “They were the first in the world to use comics as a means of communication, to express real emotions. Before, comics were used only to do stories, entertainment. They had some great moments but they were all very conventional. The American Underground showed us in Europe how to express true feelings, how to tell something to the reader through the comics. They blew the minds of the few professionals in Europe who saw them.” Also at TCJ, the S. Clay Wilson Interview. Wilson sent me a postcard once. I wish I knew what the hell I’d done with it.
• Michael Hoenig, synthesist for Agitation Free and (briefly) Tangerine Dream, plays one of the pieces from his debut album of electronic music, Departure From The Northern Wasteland, on a radio show in 1977. Hoenig’s album is long overdue a remastering and re-release.
• “My job, which the BBC has tasked me to do, is to provoke people and ask them, ‘Have you thought about looking at the world this way?'” Adam Curtis talks to Michael J. Brooks about his new TV series, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.
{ feuilleton } celebrates its 15th birthday today. Monsieur Chat, the mascot of this place, is happy about that but then Monsieur Chat is happy about most things.
• At Greydogtales: Opening The Book of Carnacki. A call for contributions to a collection of new stories about William Hope Hodgson’s occult detective. I’d be tempted if I didn’t already have more than enough to keep me occupied.
• “I’m being asked to talk about it a great deal at the moment, with the pandemic.” Roger Corman and Jane Asher on filming The Masque of the Red Death.
• New music: Cygnus Sutra by Mike Shannon, “a soundtrack to a fantasy/sci-fi epic not yet written”.
• A trailer for The Witch of King’s Cross, a documentary about occult artist Rosaleen Norton.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on…Hans Bellmer & Paul Eluard The Games of the Doll (1949).
• RIP also this week to Rowena Morrill, fantasy artist, and to Chick Corea.
• “Computers will never write good novels,” says Angus Fletcher.
• DJ Food on Zodiac posters by Funky Features, 1967.
• Mix of the week: Fact Mix 794 by Lutto Lento.
• Annie Nightingale’s favourite music.
• Zodiac (1984) by Boogie Boys | From The Zodiacal Light (2014) by Earth | Zodiac Black (2017) by Goldfrapp
Happy 15th! You remain my favorite bookmark and one of the great guides to all things fascinating, louche, beautiful and strange.
Thanks!
Thanks for the years John. I followed you here after you made a post over at Harlan Ellison’s old blog. How long ago was that?
I watched The Masque of the Red Death on YouTube this afternoon. Not Corman’s best perhaps but still very beautiful to watch.
Thanks, Stephen. That would be about 14 years ago now, when HE was still firing on all cylinders.
I have all the Corman Poe films on blu-ray. Masque has always been my favourite although the current BR disc needs upgrading to a better print like the ones that Arrow released. I like the way it’s more symbolic (Symbolist, even) than the other films in the cycle. There’s also a very tenuous connection to Svankmajer in the use the script makes of The Torture of Hope by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam; Svankmajer attached the same story to his version of The Pit and the Pendulum to subvert Poe’s deus ex machina.