{horror} – Page 144 – { feuilleton }

Stamps of horror

The Royal Mail continues to rifle popular culture for suitable anniversary subjects, this week following its series of James Bond postage stamps with stamp sets celebrating the 50th anniversaries of Hammer’s first run of horror films and the Carry On series. I don’t think I’d use the word “celebration” in the case of the latter, I seem to be in the minority in always having regarded the Carry On films with considerable loathing, despite the best efforts of Kenneth Williams (who hated them) and company; give me some wit, please, not the laboured double entrendres of Talbot Rothwell.

Grievances aside, it’s gratifying to see the original posters used for these stamp designs, the Dracula one is especially good, suitably so seeing as it’s the best film of the lot. “Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough,” says Noah Cross in Chinatown; based on this evidence the same could also be said of cheap cinema.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Horror comics
• Endangered insects postage stamps
• James Bond postage stamps
• Please Mr. Postman
• Hail, horrors! hail, infernal world!

Horror comics

More horror…. It’s been a while since I posted anything work-related here, not because I haven’t been busy but because much of the work this year is still waiting to see the light of day as a result of protracted schedules.

The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics is an anthology from Running Press (US) that really is mammoth—over 540 pages—and includes a reprinting of my Dunwich Horror pages from The Haunter of the Dark. You can see the selections in the Sprout widget below. (Not any more you can’t. Sprout decided to make everyone pay for their previously free service. Bye bye, Sprout.) It feels a bit fraudulent being in there since my drawings are more illustrations than a comics adaptation but I imagine most people buying the book will be happy to see poor old Wilbur Whateley’s demise receive another airing. Many of the featured strips are in the hokey EC mould which is often more comic than horror (one reason I was never very taken with EC) but the material gets better as it goes along and it’s a pleasure to be in anything with an artist as good as Mike Kaluta.

The Dunwich Horror, title page (1988).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive

The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA

Among the legions of Poe adaptations for film and television, IMDB lists 21 versions of The Tell-Tale Heart. The UPA version from 1953 is a rare moment of seriousness from a company more well-known for its Mr Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoons. This has long been one of my favourite Poe adaptations, not least for James Mason’s pitch-perfect narration. (A quote from this was later sampled by Scorn on the track Night Tide from their Evanescence album.) The animation avoids being too cartoony by adopting an allusive blend of Hollywood-style Surrealism and Expressionist design of the kind more usually seen in live action dream sequences of the period. Paul Julian was the designer, Pat Matthews the animator and Ted Parmelee the director.

Animator Michael Sporn has two pages of frame grabs, including some composites which show the full extent of scenes panned over during the film.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Harpya by Raoul Servais
• William Heath Robinson’s illustrated Poe
• The art of Harry Clarke, 1889–1931

Harpya by Raoul Servais

Classic animated short from 1979 which is funny and creepy in equal measure. Harpya won the Palme d’Or for best short film at Cannes that year and in its own small way could be seen as continuing the Belgian taste for Symbolism and Surrealism.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bruges-la-Morte
• Short films by Walerian Borowczyk
• Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux

The art of Ian Miller

From the Hollywood Gothic series (1984).

Jeff VanderMeer has a great post about artist/illustrator Ian Miller at io9 which prompts me to write a few words about his work myself, something I’ve intended for a while.

Miller is indelibly linked for me with HP Lovecraft on account of his covers for the Panther Horror editions of the 1970s, the first Lovecraft volumes I bought. His sinister and minutely detailed ink drawings were a big inspiration when I started to draw seriously myself, unsurprisingly when my own drawings possessed a similar quantity of detail and macabre atmosphere. I still think his cover for William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland (below) is one of the most successful anyone has produced for that novel. His Mountains of Madness cover, while not being a direct illustration, perfectly encapsulates the feel of much of Lovecraft’s later fiction.

Jeff’s post has a wide range of work which I’ve avoided duplicating. The items shown here are all scans from my own library. More of Miller’s Lovecraft illustration will appear in the forthcoming Artists Inspired by HP Lovecraft from Centipede Press, along with several pieces by yours truly.

The House on the Borderland (1972).

Continue reading “The art of Ian Miller”