{horror} – Page 143 – { feuilleton }

New things for August

Arriving in the post today was Steps of Descent, the new CD from American band Cyaegha featuring my design and illustration. The name Cyäegha (sic) belongs originally to a Cthulhu Mythos entity invented by Eddie C Bertin, author of The Whispering Horror, my favourite story from the Pan Book of Horror anthologies of the Seventies. The cover illustration is based on a scene from HP Lovecraft’s The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and the cover and inner pages feature some photographic material from one of my Paris trips. I was very pleased with the way this turned out and I believe the band are too. Steps of Descent is officially released by Canonical Hours on the 8th of August.

Another recent piece of work is this Steampunk design suggested by writer Jeff VanderMeer who wanted a suitable layout for his semi-serious Steampunk formula. Jeff and wife Ann edited the recent Steampunk anthology from Tachyon so he knows whereof he speaks. This was going to be a T-shirt design but it seems now it may have a different outlet; more about that if and when it happens. The growing popularity of Steampunk as a sub-culture has raised some hackles recently but I like it even though I’ve not read many of the latest literary contributions. Anything which puts more brass, dirigibles and florid Victoriana into the world gets my vote.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls
• Wanna see something really scary?

Berni Wrightson in The Mist

It’s not giving too much away to let enthusiasts of tentacular horror know that Frank Darabont’s film of The Mist, currently fogging up UK cinema screens, contains these questing things among its torments. The Mist is based on a 1980 novella by Stephen King and the film has a decent King pedigree for once, with the director having previously made The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile while the creature designs are partly the work of Berni Wrightson, one of King’s artist collaborators. Wrightson’s web gallery has a number of his sketches on display although if you haven’t seen the film you should be warned that they spoil some of the surprises.

My good friend Mark Pilkington—weirdness wrangler, editor of Strange Attractor and all-round ubiquitous presence—reviews the film in this month’s Sight and Sound where he points out some of the Lovecraftian resonances. Tentacles aside, there’s a lumbering monstrosity near the end which manages to be far more Lovecraftian than the Cloverfield creature and I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of the larger presences than the lesser beasties. The film’s lead character is a movie poster artist and the opening scene nods to an earlier film with an equally Lovecraftian atmosphere by having Drew Struzan’s art for John Carpenter’s The Thing on the wall in the background. The film’s siege situation is more the kind of story you’d get from an earlier writer, William Hope Hodgson, another purveyor of the malevolent tentacle.

Berni Wrightson and your not-so-humble narrator appeared together recently in Centipede Press’s A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (yes, I am going to keep going on about this book for the next few months…sue me). Wrightson is represented there by his comic strip adaptation of Cool Air but his Mist drawings would have made equally worthwhile additions. If nothing else, 2008 is turning out to be a good year for horror enthusiasts.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The monstrous tome
• Octopulps
• Druillet meets Hodgson

New things for July

The Flapper by Frank X Leyendecker, Life magazine (1922).

• 2008 is turning out to be a great year for Lovecraft aficionados. As well as the stupendous Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by HP Lovecraft, we’re also awaiting Frank Woodford’s feature length documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. I’m lucky to have my work included in Frank’s film which is easily the best documentary to date concerning the life and work of HPL. Among the interviewees are Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Caitlin R Kiernan, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell and Lovecraft scholar ST Joshi. The film will receive its first (?) public screening later this month at the San Diego Comic Con:

Thursday, July 24
8:00–9:45pm
Room 26AB

• Over the weekend Arthur Magazine cleared the $20,000 it needed to keep running before the three-day deadline elapsed. A stunning piece of fund-raising which shows how much people value Jay and company’s efforts.

• The gorgeous cover above is the work of Frank X Leyendecker (1876–1924), brother of the more well-known (and gay) Joseph C Leyendecker. Makes me think I should make a post of Butterfly Women if only as an excuse to track down more pictures of Loie Fuller.

• Last but not least: happy birthday Lorraine!

The monstrous tome

So it arrived at last, yesterday in fact, the colossal volume that is A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by HP Lovecraft from Centipede Press. Calling this a book is like calling the Great Pyramid of Cheops a pile of stones, technically accurate but the words somewhat fail to convey the existential reality. This is the heaviest book I’ve ever come across, 400 pages of heavy-duty art paper at BIG size. (Amazon gives the dimensions as 16.1 x 12.6 x 2.3 inches or 409 x 320 x 580 mm.) The photo above shows the scale beside an old Mountains of Madness paperback (Ian Miller‘s cover art appears in full in the new book) and my own Haunter of the Dark collection. The cover art is by Michael Whelan, a detail from his wonderful 1981 HPL panoramas.

The Virgil Finlay section showing The Colour Out of Space and his definitive Lovecraft portrait.

The range of contributors past and present includes JK Potter, HR Giger, Raymond Bayless, Ian Miller, Virgil Finlay, Lee Brown Coye, Hannes Bok, Rowena Morrill, Bob Eggleton, Allen Koszowski, Mike Mignola, Howard V. Brown, Michael Whelan, Tim White, Frank Frazetta, John Holmes, Harry O. Morris, Murray Tinkelman, Gabriel, Don Punchatz, Helmut Wenske, John Stewart, Thomas Ligotti and John Jude Palencar. The introduction is by Harlan Ellison and there’s an afterword by Thomas Ligotti. Many pages fold out to reveal spreads like the Giger ones below. Print quality is exceptional, of course, but then ladling the superlatives is pointless when it’s obvious this is a sui generis masterpiece of Lovecraftian art. Naturally I’m very happy indeed to be a part of it.

Continue reading “The monstrous tome”

Rabbit by Run Wrake

Rabbit (2007), a short animated film by Run Wrake based on drawings by Enid Blyton illustrator Geoffrey Higham. “When a boy and girl find an idol in the stomach of a rabbit, great riches follow, but for how long?” Find out at AtomFilms. The director talks about his film here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA
• Harpya by Raoul Servais