{comics} – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 698

Contained Maze (1966) by Michael Ayrton.

• At Public Domain Review: Skeletons (1692) by Ikkyu, a Japanese monk, whose book is “a mixture of poetry and prose that comes down to us in printed editions supposedly replicating a manuscript, now lost, by the monk’s own hand. The text describes a series of visions of animated skeletons that Ikkyu had when he visited an abandoned temple. The lively illustrations testify to their maker’s sardonic sense of humour: he images skeletons dancing, drumming, drinking sake, having sex.”

• At The Daily Heller: Victor Moscoso’s Psychedelic Valedictory Exhibit. The exhibition will be at the Instituto Cervantes in New York City which has an accompanying 224-page catalogue of Moscoso’s posters and other designs.

• More Moscoso: Color (1971) and Moscoso Comix (1989), free to download at the Internet Archive. Moscoso’s underground comics experimented with the form in a manner that still looks radical today.

Drone and ambient metal is often invoked in elemental terms. There is something antediluvian and beyond about it. Pierce the earth’s crust, and there is liquid fire, ever so slowly shifting the tectonic plates we inhabit. Such music is envisaged as massive and totally beyond our control. It infuses the foundations of civilization. As Attila Csihar intones on Sunn O))) track ‘Aghartha’, named for a legendary subterranean kingdom: “Into the memories of the consciousness of ancient rocks/ Nature’s answer to eternal question”.

Stripped of the trappings of modern pop and rock, ambient metal invites a search for answers to the bigger questions. Ancient musical modes are resurfaced to get us closer to a putative godhead.

Dan Franklin on Earth 2, the deceptively-titled debut album by Earth. The album’s 30th anniversary has prompted a collection of remixes, Earth 2.23, by various artists

• At Spoon & Tamago: Download over 30 butterfly designs by Meiji-era artist Yuho Tanaka.

• New music: HYbr:ID II by Alva Noto, and The View From Vega by Benge.

• The winners of the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2023.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Guy Maddin Day (restored/expanded).

• A happy 20th birthday to Swan River Press.

• Industrial Landscape (1980) by Marc Barreca | Desolate Landscape (2012) by John Zorn | Primordial Landscape (2013) by Patrick Cowley

Weekend links 693

Imaginary (no date) by Sidney Sime.

• Victor Rees was in touch this week to alert me to a one-off screening of The Gourmet (previously), a cult TV drama from 1986 written by Kazuo Ishiguro and directed by Michael Whyte. The screening, which will take place at Swedenborg House, London, on 16th October, is one of a series of retrospective events based around an exhibition from 1974, Albion Island Vortex, by Brian Catling and Iain Sinclair. The film, which is connected to Sinclair’s oeuvre by its use of one of the Hawksmoor churches, will be followed by a Q&A session with Sinclair and Michael Whyte. The screening is free but places are limited so prior booking is required.

• “Alongside his thieves and vagabonds, Hotten includes religious slang, public schoolboy slang, pirate slang, equine stable slang, phrases coined by Dr. Johnson, the slang of softened oaths, workmen’s slang, stagehand slang, shopkeeper’s slang, and dozens of other argots.” Hunter Dukes on A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (1860) by John Camden Hotten.

• The Night Land, William Hope Hodgson’s “Dying Earth” doorstop, is republished in an abridged version as part of MIT Press’s Radium Age series, “proto–science fiction stories from the underappreciated era between 1900 and 1935”. All the reprints come with new introductions, the one for Hodgson being by Erik Davis.

• “My partner wanted me to stop buying lava lamps. It was an expensive hobby, and we were running out of room in our apartment.” Nora Claire Miller on the lure of the lava lamp. I only own a single one but I appreciate the obsessive attraction.

• Rambalac takes his roaming camera for a walk through teamLab Planets, Tokyo, a labyrinthine exhibition featuring plenty of water (and wet feet), and a moss garden filled with large silver eggs.

• At Strange Flowers: An examination of the connections between the self-mythologising Marie Corelli and her fictional counterparts in the Mapp and Lucia novels of EF Benson.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: Cabarets of Death, a book about the otherworldly cabarets of Montmartre by Mel Gordon, edited by Joanna Ebenstein.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Secret Glory by Arthur Machen.

• 10 essential Japanese reggae releases selected by Kay Suzuki.

• Mix of the week: A Fact Mix by Venus Ex Machina.

• Modern Art in Mid-Century Comics.

• RIP Michael Gambon.

• Planet Caravan (1970) by Black Sabbath | Planet Queen (1971) by T. Rex | Oszillator Planet Concert (1971) by Tangerine Dream

Worlds Beyond Time

Or yesterday’s tomorrow today. Adam Rowe’s book arrived in the post this weekend, a little bumped at the corners (art books often suffer at the hands of the postal services) but very welcome all the same.

In the 1970s, mass-produced, cheaply printed science-fiction novels were thriving. The paper was rough, the titles outrageous, and the cover art astounding. Over the course of the decade, a stable of talented painters, comic-book artists, and designers produced thousands of the most eye-catching book covers to ever grace bookstore shelves (or spinner racks). Curiously, the pieces commissioned for these covers often had very little to do with the contents of the books they were selling, but by leaning heavily on psychedelic imagery, far-out landscapes, and trippy surrealism, the art was able to satisfy the same space race–fuelled appetite for the big ideas and brave new worlds that sci-fi writers were boldly pushing forward.

In Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s, Adam Rowe—who has been curating, championing, and resurrecting the best and most obscure art that 1970s sci-fi has to offer on his blog 70s Sci-Fi Art—introduces readers to the biggest names in the genre, including Chris Foss, Peter Elson, Tim White, Jack Gaughan, and Virgil Finlay, as well as their influences.

One of my own formative influences was Visions of the Future (1976), a large-format book edited by Janet Sacks that recycled material from NEL’s Science Fiction Monthly magazine to present a guide to British SF art in the 1970s. In many ways the book was a rather poor collection—the reproductions aren’t good, not all the artists are first-rate, and a few have nothing to do with SF or “the future” at all—but it was important to me for the many artist interviews which confirmed that you could make some kind of living producing this type of art. Adam Rowe’s book is like a superior sequel to Visions of the Future, with miniature biographies for many of the artists, plus a look at the recurrent themes he’s explored on his 70s Sci-fi Art Tumblr. There’s a lot in here I hadn’t seen before. I’m grateful he’s found space for Paul Kirchner’s Dope Rider, a typically Surrealist Kirchner comic strip, and one I never got to see when it was running in the pages of High Times. Kirchner’s The Bus was a favourite, however, being a regular in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. Kirchner has never been very science fictional either but Worlds Beyond Time is a more flexible title than Visions of the Future, one that can embrace imaginative possibilities that aren’t limited to spaceships, planets and futuristic cities.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Corgi SF Collector’s Library
• Foss, Jodorowsky and low-flying spacecraft
• Crank book covers
• Do You Have The Force?
• The artists of Future Life
• Science Fiction Monthly
• The fantastic and apocalyptic art of Bruce Pennington
• Roger Dean: artist and designer

Toytown psychedelia

The Teletrips of Alala (1970).

The imaginative landscapes of childhood were always close at hand in the psychedelic culture of the 1960s, more so in Britain than the USA, and especially where music was concerned. Grace Slick may have given the world White Rabbit but there’s a whole sub-genre of British psychedelic song-writing devoted to children’s games, children’s dreams, sweetshops, fairy tales and the like. Rob Chapman in his essential study of the form, Psychedelia and Other Colours, refers to this tendency as “infantasia”. With psychedelic art being so vivid and playful it’s a small step from lysergic wonderlands to children’s books styled in a quasi-psychedelic manner, which is what we have here. There was a lot of this around in the early 1970s, not all of it very memorable. Some of the best examples were published by Harlin Quist, a US/French imprint who specialised in beautiful books illustrated by exceptional talents. A few of these may be seen at The Peculiar Manicule.

Gertrude and the Mermaid (1968)
by Richard Hughes, illustrated by Nicole Claveloux.

“This is the story a little girl, her doll named Gertrude, and a mysterious mermaid-child.” The first of several books by Nicole Claveloux for Harlin Quist.

Help, Help, the Globolinks! (1970)
by Gian Carlo Menotti, translated and adapted by Leigh Dean, illustrated by Milton Glaser.

“Recounts the events following the landing of the outer-space Globolinks on Earth.” A German comic opera from 1968 in which a group of children encounter an alien invasion.

The Teletrips of Alala (1970)
by Guy Monreal, illustrated by Nicole Claveloux.

“With her unique power to enter the television set and change the course of the programs, Alala creates havoc in the world.” Nicole Claveloux puts her own twist on the Yellow Submarine art style. A few years after this she was creating comic strips for Métal Hurlant. Her more recent work includes erotic retellings of fairy tales. (more pages)

Andromedar SR1 (1971)
by Martin Ripkens & Hans Stempel, illustrated by Heinz Edelmann.

“Two astronauts under the spell of an evil octopus are ordered to steal the cobalt-blue flowers from the Martian Mice.” Ripkens and Stempel were better known for their work as cinema critics and film-makers. (more pages)

Cartulino: El asombroso doctor Zas (1971)
by Miguel Agustí, illustrated by Alberto Solsona.

A comic strip from a Spanish title, Strong. Alberto Solsona also drew Agar-Agar, the grooviest strip in the short-lived Dracula comic. Cartulino had a number of different adventures but online examples are scarce.

Los Doce Trabajos de Hércules (1973)
by Miguel Calatayud.

“Serie de episodios sobre la penitencia llevada a cabo por Hércules el mayor de los héroes griegos.” A comic adaptation rather than a story book but the art style is a good example of the general trend.

Update: Added Alberto Solsona.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Glaser goes POP
• Return to Pepperland
• The groovy look
• The psychedelic art of Nicole Claveloux
• Psychedelia and Other Colours by Rob Chapman
• David Chestnutt’s psychedelic fairy tales

X-ray visions

Cover art by George Wilson.

Cosmic weirdness isn’t something you expect to find in the tie-in comics published by Gold Key in the 1960s, but this adaptation of Roger Corman’s film contains a few such traces, as does the film itself. Having watched X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes again recently I was curious to know how artist Frank Thorne would manage with the scenes where Dr Xavier’s vision is showing him more of the world than he wants to see. Despite the general sketchiness of the drawing, in some of the panels these visions are more fully realised than they are in the film, it being easier to draw an unusual effect than capture it on celluloid. Roger Corman had a great idea, a talented co-writer in Ray Russell, and an authentically tormented performance from Ray Milland, but the film is hampered by the limitations of AIP’s budgets. When Xavier complains about the oppressive sight of people above him on the floors of his tenement building only the comic shows us what he sees.

So too with the later scenes, by which time all of Corman’s point-of-view shots are the same combination of a diffracted lens (Spectarama!) and Les Baxter’s wailing theremin. Xavier’s description of a great watching eye “at the centre of the Universe” isn’t conjured so well by Corman’s visuals. The comic gives us an all-too-human eyeball floating in space, but before this there’s a panel of ragged shapes flapping through the interstellar void, as well as something never seen in the film when Xavier looks down into the Earth’s core.

The comic was written by Paul Newman (not that one), and was evidently adapted from a script rather than a print of the film. None of the characters or scenes resemble their cinematic equivalents, while Xavier’s eyes in the comic hardly change appearance. But the additions to the finale make me wonder whether there was a little more in the script than ended up in the film.

Corman made The Man with the X-ray Eyes in 1963, immediately after The Haunted Palace—the first film to adapt HP Lovecraft—and a few years before The Trip—the first feature film devoted solely to the psychedelic experience. Xavier’s journey into nightmare is a curious hybrid of Lovecraft and psychedelia: the titles are set against a swirling violet spiral, while the doctor’s Spectarama visions are precursors of the delirium experienced by Peter Fonda’s Paul in The Trip. (Corman’s initial idea for The Man with the X-ray Eyes had a jazz musician taking too many drugs.) At one stage in his LSD trip Paul looks in a mirror and announces that he can see inside his own brain, but in the earlier film we get to see inside Xavier’s brain for ourselves when he takes his eye drops for the first time, after which the camera passes through the back of the doctor’s head until we’re looking out of his eyes. This is so close to a moment in Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void that I’ve been wondering whether Corman’s film is another of Noé’s cult titles like those you see named at the beginning of Climax.

As for the Lovecraftian quality, The Man with the X-ray Eyes misses an opportunity to do more with the scope of its central concept. Stephen King famously reported a rumour that the film had a suppressed line of dialogue from the very end, when Xavier tears out his eyes then screams “I can still see!” Corman denied that this was the case but admitted it was a good idea. King mentions this in Danse Macabre, in a description of the film which also interprets the story as being far more Lovecraftian—he uses that word—than it actually is. His suggestion (or mis-remembering) is that all the Spectarama effects are Xavier’s growing perception of the Eye at the centre of the Universe, even though Xavier only mentions this presence in the last few minutes.

The implications of this remain unexplored but Xavier’s final vision of cosmic horror is still truer to Lovecraft’s Mythos philosophy—a warning that the human race peers into the void at its peril—than almost anything else in cinema, and the revelation is made all the more disturbing by the appearance of Xavier’s eyes which by this point are solid black orbs. As King suggests, there’s another film altogether lurking under the surface of this one, a horror film with a cosmic reach. Hollywood still struggles to do anything substantial with Lovecraft’s fiction, but you know the way things are today we’ll be lucky to get anything weirder than more CGI monsters and lumbering kaiju. I wouldn’t want to suggest that Gaspar Noé remake The Man with the X-ray Eyes but if he ever wanted to create a psychedelic horror story then the cosmic route is the way to go.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Undead visions
• Trip texts revisited
• More trip texts
• Enter the Void