Two years in the making, the second issue of Cthulhu Commune will be available at NecronomiCon-Providence 2015 this weekend, August 20th- 23rd. It features interviews with authors Pete Rawlik, Jeffrey Thomas, Brian M. Sammons, Alex Houstoun, and Adam Joffrain, and artist Jason McKittrick. It is limited to 125 numbered copies for Lovecraft's 125th birthday and 15 numbered contributor copies. There is a small amount of unnumbered issues that may be available after the convention.
This issue can be found at the Dim Shores table in the convention's vendor hall.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
HPL Online: the Panel from NecronomiCon Providence 2013
On August 23, 2013, in the Hotel Providence's Thurber Ballroom, a panel was held at the NecronomiCon that was one of the most relevant for every fan in attendance- HPL Online. Whether you're using Facebook groups to stay in touch with other Lovecraftians, searching blogs for art and interviews, or buying old Arkham Houses on eBay, we've shaped the internet as a tool to met our needs and desires, but what would the Old Gent from Providence have thought of this technology? Where can fans find the latest mythos fiction and get involved, and what's on the horizon? These were some of the questions addressed by this panel, which included The Lovecraft eZine's Mike Davis, Leeman Kessler of the popular Ask Lovecraft videos, and Chad Fifer of the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, and was moderated by Alex Houstoun, the man behind the H.P. Lovecraft Facebook page.
Listen to the audio below for an entertaining and enlightening discussion.
Listen to the audio below for an entertaining and enlightening discussion.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Kickstarting the new year
Rewards from crowd-funded Mythos campaigns supported during 2014 have recently started to arrive at my doorstep, the first being World War Cthulhu: A Collection of Lovecraftian War Stories, edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass, and published by Dark Region Press. The book was officially released last August, but Dark Region took the time needed to make the limited hardcover edition something special...
A $50 pledge last April, while supporting the whole project come to fruition, bought me this campaign exclusive signed by editors Sammons and Barrass and artist M. Wayne Miller, with an additional two bonus interior illustrations not included in the retail edition of this book, bringing the total to 24 full color illustrations
It's nice to find the Indiegogo campaign supporters thanked at the end of the book, too- twelve pages of people who cared enough to help make this special book possible!
To discover the contents of this anthology and order a copy- available as eBook, trade paperback, or limited hardcover- visit Dark Region Press.
Also, keep an eye open for Dark Regions' upcoming Indiegogo campaign for a new weird fiction anthology, Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror, illustrated by award-winning artist Danielle Serra with stories by the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Nancy Kilpatrick, and Lois Gresh. According to the Dark Regions press team, "this Indiegogo campaign will be launching in late January or February of 2015."
Front cover by Vincent Chong, and Cthulhu cover design by Irina Summer |
Signature page and accompanying illustration, with sewn marker ribbon. |
To discover the contents of this anthology and order a copy- available as eBook, trade paperback, or limited hardcover- visit Dark Region Press.
Also, keep an eye open for Dark Regions' upcoming Indiegogo campaign for a new weird fiction anthology, Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror, illustrated by award-winning artist Danielle Serra with stories by the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Nancy Kilpatrick, and Lois Gresh. According to the Dark Regions press team, "this Indiegogo campaign will be launching in late January or February of 2015."
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Thinking of HPL Seventy-seven Years Later
The words above were penned by NecronomiCon's own brilliant The Joey Zone after he visited Lovecraft's grave this year, seventy-seven years after The Old Gent from Providence passed on into the Beyond. He graciously allowed me to draw a few panels to his words, making it a shared experience not only for me, but for any who reads this. If we can't join him at Swan Point Cemetary this year, we stand with him in kinship.
This isn't only a reflection upon the past, The Joey Zone explains; it embraces the present and reaches towards the future, for Providence's Brown University is currently celebrating its 250 anniversary, and next year is H.P. Lovecraft's 125th birthday, which will be duly celebrated at the recently announced NecronomiCon Providence 2015, which will feature Ramsey Campbell along with other honored guests of distinction. Below, catch a sneak peek at the event's poster in development by The Joey Zone himself.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Unnameable Horrors in Art- the NecronomiCon Panel.
On Saturday morning, August 24, 2013, several of Lovecraftian fandom's most respected artists gathered for a panel at NecronomiCon-Providence to discuss how they effectively portray aspects of horror in illustration and film. The panel consisted of illustrators Robert Knox, Bob Eggleton, Allen Koszowski, and Jason Eckhardt, and filmmakers Stuart Gordon, Andrew Leman, and Sean Branney. The first part of the conversation was transcribed from existing audio, while the conversation that follows was captured by a method of shorthand.
Knox: "We can all agree that there are many different ways to
depict the indescribable. My approach leans towards absurdity and surrealism.
Eyewitness accounts in Lovecraft’s fiction barely describe the horrors seen, which lets your imagination run wild. Most depictions of Cthulhu are based
on the statue Lovecraft described in detail, with batlike wings and cephapod
head. My take is that the statue is religious art- for the cult is a religion,
as blasphemous as it is- and religious art is only an interpretation, it can’t
be God. Just as we see in Michaelangelo’s paintings of God and know that can’t be Him, the statue can’t be Cthulhu. Remember what George Burns said in the
movie Oh, God! 'If I showed you my real form, you couldn’t handle it.'"
Leman: "Michaelangelo’s depiction of God is flattering to
humans. If the eidolon in “The Call of Cthulhu” is religious art, does it
flatter us or Cthulhu?"
Eckhardt: "The representation is an effort to make Cthulhu
understandable. You need something to focus on while you’re sacrificing humans
in the swamps!"
Gordon: "Lovecraft found everything disturbing, which lends
itself to weird sex scenes, fish, and a sense of otherness."
Eggleton: "I don’t set out to disturb; I draw monsters just
as I liked to as a kid… and sometimes it disturbs people."
Knox: "We’re jaded as artists and are probably tough to
disturb. But surefire elements are things people don’t like: creepy and slimy
things all over them, like bugs, slugs and worms."
Leman: "People like penguins because they’re anthropomorphic,
but this familiarity can also make things weird- something’s that familiar but
not quite right…"
Eckhardt: "Like fish people- what’s stranger than them? I’ve
seen people with the touch of the Innsmouth look... But as for strangeness,
there’s Machen’s idea of taking Heaven by storm, that fish talking and stones
singing would drive you mad."
Knox: "Growing up in New England, you know there’s certain
towns you don’t go to, and you never admit knowing someone from there, from the
town one does not mention in polite company. That idea found in Lovecraft is
quintessentially New England. But in depicting horror in art, is there a such
thing as going too far?"
Eckhardt: "Well, if it’s too absurd, you risk the danger of it
becoming ludicrous."
Branney: "As artists, we want to create a suspension of
disbelief, so it’s got to be a believable absurdity."
Leman: "We just did The Color Out of Space, and in that
story- with it’s otherworldly color- you run up against the limits of human
perception- you can’t depict a color that can’t be perceived."
Knox: "What is the single most important factor of portraying the
unnameable?"
Leman: "Leaving something up to the human imagination."
Eggleton: "That can be hard, because as an artist I want to
be in your face with the monster!"
Koszowski: (To Eggleton) "Lumley told me that you made him, your covers
made those books of his."
Gordon: "In movies, the thing left to the imagination is most
disturbing. For instance, in the movie Seven, they show you pieces to the
puzzle when portraying ‘lust,’ not the whole picture. You’re left to construct
the scene yourself and it becomes more terrible than it ever could’ve been on
the screen."
Norman Rockwell's "Murder in Mississippi" |
Branney: "There’s a balance between the implicit and the
explicit, and between the two is the sweet spot. The blank spots will linger in
your imagination as your mind chews on it for a long time."
Eckhardt: "The use of shadows can be particularly effective.
In the Norman Rockwell Museum, there’s an enormous canvas of three workers in
headlights and the shadows of the men that murdered them. The violence is
suggested, and it’s all the more powerful and terrifying."
Knox: "In my own work, I want to capture a sense of
absurdity. If the viewer can’t ask, 'what the hell is this?' it’s a failure.
Trying to depict the incomprehensible isn’t easy; I’ve spent my career on that.
For my painting 'The King in Yellow,' I originally wanted it all yellow, but I
had to darken it to become disturbing. What about the ways sight and sound are
used in film?"
"The King in Yellow" by Robert Knox |
Gordon: "Sound effects very much get your imagination going.
Have you seen the film Seconds by John Frankenheimer? The scene where they
drill into a guy’s head is all sound effects; as you can imagine it, your head
becomes the one being drilled! The film becomes dreamlike as the guy’s mind is
destroyed."
Branney: "We did 'The Call of Cthulhu' as both a silent film
and a radio adaptation, which makes for an interesting contrast. Image is
powerful and sound is powerful, but when they’re divorced from each other, the
audience needs to imagine what’s missing."
Leman: "Even the city’s name in that story is meant to be
unpronounceable!"
Knox: "My thought should’ve been that every character
pronounces the city and monster differently."
Gordon: "From Beyond had been rejected due to a brain being
sucked through eye sockets, but it was the sound that provoked that response,
because you don’t actually see it happen. We had to take it out to get an R
rating, then we got to put it back in for the bluray release. The most famous
and effective use of sound and image is Psycho- you never see the knife and
body at the same time- you make the connection by sound, which was actually
made by stabbing a melon… and the blood was chocolate syrup. I believe Psycho
was intentionally filmed in black and white to leave more to the imagination."
Branney: "In our The Whisperer in Darkness, we used a chicken leg being ripped apart every time Akeley moved- you can hear the skin and
tendons pop. Organic sounds, like breaking melons and tearing meat, seem to
push buttons."
Leman: "Also part of sound is the film’s soundtrack, which is
absolutely indispensible- music has the ability to appeal directly to the
emotion, bypassing the rational part of the brain."
Gordon: "Going back to Psycho, Bernard Hermann’s score could
even make peanut butter and jelly scary! I can’t imagine the bathroom scene
without the soundtrack."
Branney: "You can only accomplish so much with visuals; the
emotional life of any movie is being laid down by the music, particularly in
our genre."
Gordon: "Do you artists listen to music while painting?"
Koszowski: "I listen to soundtracks."
Eckhardt: "I do, but the music doesn’t necessarily have to
coincide with the feeling of the work."
Knox: "Lately I’ve been listening to Red Sox games while
drawing. As for music, it could be punk one day, a soundtrack the next. But
silence doesn’t work at all."
Koszowski: "I do my drawings dot by dot, and without music, I
couldn’t do it."
Knox: "This idea of an unnnameable horror- it could be an
inanimate object. Lovecraft gives us non-Euclidean geometry- geometry that
follows no logical patterned rows of blocks; however accurately drawn, they
cannot or should not exist. I get a sense of this distortion in Medieval
paintings. M.C. Escher is a great example, too, but most of us would go, “I
can’t do that!” Lee Brown Coye had the habit of including tied bundles of
sticks in his paintings. When he’d made a trip to upstate New York, he saw
these bundles of sticks thrust in the ground and wondered who’d put them there
and for what purpose… He found them disturbing and so he put them in his
paintings."
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" |
Leman: "They implied some motivation he couldn’t comprehend,
which made it frightening."
Knox: "What about inspiration? Who are your favorite artists?"
Koszowski: "Virgil Finlay."
Knox: "For me, it’s Hans Bok, Coye, E.C. Comics, and
Surrealism."
Gordon: "Do you know Ivan Albright, who painted 'The Picture
of Dorian Gray?' Everything is moldering, decomposing, including inanimate
objects. Another favorite of his was 'That Which I Should Have Done I did Not
Do.'"
Eggleton: "Arnold Bocklin’s 'The Isle of the Dead' is a disquieting
and disturbing painting of a dark figure that brings souls to the island. Bocklin painted
several versions and even the daylight version is creepy. There’s one in the
Met in New York City. He was a major influence on my work. Also, Tom Wright’s paintings in
Night Gallery are a favorite."
Arnold Bocklin's "The Isle of the Dead," third version, 1883 |
Knox: "Those paintings remind me of Roger Corman’s Poe films."
Leman: "Hieronymus Bosch and his hideous creatures, half
human, half fish. My first exposure to Lovecraft was through those Michael
Whelan paperbacks with their black and white and red color scheme."
Branney: "I’m a fan of Berni Wrightson’s pen and ink work.
His use of light and shadow evokes different time periods, which we try to do
in film, too."
Eckhardt: "I’m more a traditionalist, liking Howard Pyle. With his
demand for accuracy, you know how that pirate’s coat felt just by looking at
his painting. Are you familiar with Barry Moser? He did a staggering rendition of
Frankenstein."
Knox: "Wrightson’s style owes a great debt to Graham Ingles.
We see artists hundreds of years ago doing works of horror; how did they get
away with it?"
Branney: "They were seen as cautionary works- they depicted
what would happen to you if you don’t go to church!"
Gordon: "Eh, they seemed to show you’d have more fun in Hell
than in Heaven!"
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Describing the Indescribable: Depicting Lovecraft's Unnameable Horrors in Art
Whether it's haunting paperback covers or the latest horror film on screen, fans of weird fiction love to see their favorite stories brought to life, but for the artists responsible, there is always the question of how much to show and how far to go. One of the panels during Necronomicon-Providence 2013 wrestled with the problems of depicting the unnameable and unspeakable horrors encountered in Lovecraft's fiction, discussed by a panel of some of fandom's favorite image-makers: book cover artist Bob Eggleton; Stuart Gordon, director of Dagon and Reanimator; Andrew Leman and Sean Branney from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society; and three beloved illustrators from Necronomicon Press, Allen Koszowski, Jason Eckhardt, and Robert Knox, who also graciously moderated the discussion.
Below is a small audio clip of the panel's opening points recorded on Saturday, August 24, 2013, followed by some statements and observations made by the participants after the batteries in my digital recorder failed.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
HBO's True Detectives and the Mythos
A hybrid between my recent Medieval studies and The King in Yellow |
For the past two months, HBO's new series True Detectives had fans of weird fiction excited and abuzz about references to Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow stories, and while I doubt The King will emerge from Carcosa as the serial murderer in tonight's final episode, there are two things of certainty: this show has piqued viewers interest in reading source material (and provoking people to read is always a good thing) and it has moved artists and writers in the Lovecraftian community to create new works based on The King in Yellow.
Illustrator Mike Bukowski told me that Google searches for "The King in Yellow" have become the second popular avenue to his site Yog-Blogsoth as people look for visual representations, and Cryptocurium's recent offering was the largest artifact they've produced to date.
April's issue of The Lovecraft eZine will be a King in Yellow special issue appropriately guest-edited by Joe Pulver.
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