{comics} – Page 70 – { feuilleton }

In print

Battling through the Xmas post, two new volumes arrived here this week, from Black Velvet and Black Dog Publishing respectively. First up was Serpenti & Scale, the Italian edition of Snakes & Ladders by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. This has been available for some time in English, of course. The translated version features some of my artwork for the Moon and Serpent CDs by Alan and Tim Perkins in the lengthy interview section that precedes Eddie’s comic strip. Thanks to Smoky Man for that.

Inevitably overshadowing this was 100 Years of Magazine Covers which author Steve Taylor very graciously had sent to me. A heavyweight book in all senses of the word, with a solid cover, thick paper stock and tremendous design by Neville Brody. Taylor navigates the overcrowded field of 20th-century magazine design with great skill, managing to cover all the principal areas of magazine as news medium, fashion journal, literary forum and vehicle of cultural transgression, whether that be the Sixties’ underground, Seventies’ punk or the disparate worlds of gay life and feminism. Illustrations range from the elegance of early Collier’s and Vogue to the garish incoherence of today’s celebrity rags such as Heat. Given such a broad field of study there are bound to be omissions; I would have liked to have seen something from the New Worlds of the late-Sixties, for example, and maybe one of the Non-Format covers for The Wire. But they got Lilliput in there which is pretty impressive considering that magazine now seems to be largely forgotten. Essential stuff.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• It’s a pulp, pulp, pulp world
• A few thousand science fiction covers
• Vintage magazine art II
• Neville Brody and Fetish Records
• View: The Modern Magazine
• Vintage magazine art
• Oz magazine, 1967–73

Druillet meets Hodgson

French comic artist and illustrator, Philippe Druillet, illustrates British horror novelist William Hope Hodgson. As anyone familiar with Hodgson’s work knows, this kind of imagery predates Pirates of the Caribbean by nearly a century. More pictures here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• War of the Worlds book covers
• The music of Igor Wakhévitch
• Le horreur cosmique
• Davy Jones

The art of Andreas Martens

Andreas Martens, artist of Rork.

A native of Germany, Andreas (Andreas Martens (1951- ) studied at the St. Luc comics school in Belgium, assisting Eddy Paape on Udolfo, before relocating to France. His genre series include Arq, Cromwell Stone, Cyrrus, Rork and its spin-off, Capricorne, as well as a number of single works such as La Caverne du Souvenir (The Cave of Memory), Coutoo, Dérives (Adrift), Aztèques, and Révélations Posthumes (Posthumous Revelations).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Harry Clarke, 1889–1931

Reverbstorm

My discipline here has rather collapsed since returning from Paris. Lots of things that required sorting out and the distraction of a new computer is the excuse. Time for a new announcement, however. Now that The Haunter of the Dark is back in print, work has begun at the Savoy HQ on the eventual reprinting of my comics magnum opus, Reverbstorm. This was the 8-part Lord Horror series I was producing for Savoy with David Britton that sprang directly out of my Lovecraft comics work and is, in some small way, a continuation of it (hence the inclusion of some pages in the final part of HOTD).

Reverbstorm was an attempt by Dave and I to produce a graphic novel (wretched term, but if the boot fits…) that was truly adult, at a time—the early Nineties—when much there was much discussion of “adult comics” but little worthy of the name being produced. Reverbstorm is adult in terms of its often aggressive and challenging content; so are many mainstream comics now. But it’s also adult in terms of style and technique, being laden with quotation and literary and artistic allusion that requires an understanding of some of the key works of the Modernist movement to fully appreciate. Being a Lord Horror work, there’s also plenty of reference to the fascist philosophy that Dave’s character (based on William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw) subscribes to. Mix all this with a great deal of violence and you have a very dark work indeed, one that most readers and reviewers of the time were happy to ignore.

Well Reverbstorm is returning to the world in a definitive form. All the artwork is being scanned and cleaned (and in some cases, amended slightly); the eighth and final part will see its first publication in this new edition and there’ll be some previously unseen or unpublished material also. The series as a whole contains 270 pages of some of my best ever black and white artwork (and some great additional work from Kris Guidio) so I’m very pleased that this volume is set to appear in a form that will do justice to the years we spent creating it. Publication will probably be in autumn 2007 but watch this space for further details.

For more on the Reverbstorm series, read my short essay about its genesis here.

The Haunter of the Dark

Today sees the publication of my collection of Lovecraft adaptations and illustrations, The Haunter of the Dark and other Grotesque Visions (Creation Oneiros) in the US, although I’ve no idea what’s out there right now. Confusion reigns on the online front with Amazon.com saying the book isn’t out yet while Barnes & Noble says it’s a new title that’s out of stock. Presumably things will settle down in the next week or two, in the meantime you can order copies, of course. UK release has been put back a few more weeks but the book should be available in October: Amazon.co.uk.

Sample pages and previous book news can be seen here.

“At its far edge, horror shades into beauty, and it is far beyond
that edge that Coulthart takes us, into terrible magnificence.”
Alan Moore, in the book’s introduction

“A terrific book, haunting and beautiful.
That writer from Providence would have been proud…”
Neil Gaiman