New things for April

Several disparate pieces of news worth mentioning recently, so here they are gathered together.

• Some of my Lovecraft art is to be featured in a lavish limited edition volume from Centipede Press.

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Artists Inspired by HP Lovecraft
Centipede Press is now accepting pre-orders.
A unique art book available in a cloth slipcase edition and leather deluxe edition.

• Cloth edition in slipcase—2,000 copies—400 pages, four color, sewn with cloth covers, enclosed in a cloth covered slipcase. Front cover image, black embossing, two ribbon markers, fold-outs, detail views.

• The first 300 orders will receive a numbered copy with a special slipcase and a hardcover folder with an extensive suite of unbound illustrations. $395 postpaid.

• Leather edition in traycase—50 copies—400 pages, four color, sewn with full leather binding, enclosed in a giant size traycase. Front cover image debossed on front, two ribbon markers, fold-outs, detail views, signed by most living contributors. $2,000 postpaid.

This huge tome features over forty artists including JK Potter, HR Giger, Raymond Bayless, Ian Miller, Virgil Finlay, Lee Brown Coye, Rowena Morrill, Bob Eggleton, Allen Koszowski, Mike Mignola, Howard V Brown, Michael Whelan, Tim White, John Coulthart, John Holmes, Harry O Morris, Murray Tinkelman, Gabriel, Don Punchatz, Helmut Wenske, John Stewart, and dozens of others.

The field has never seen an art book like this—indeed, it is an art anthology unlike anything ever published before. Many of these works have never before seen publication. Many are printed as special multi-page fold-outs, and several have detail views. The book is filled with four color artwork throughout, all of it printed full page on rich black backgrounds. A special thumbnail gallery allows you to overview the entire contents of this 400-page book at a glance, with notations on artist, work title, publication information, size, and location, when known.

HP Lovecraft fans will simply have to have this book. Because of its sheer size and scope, this book will never be reprinted and will sell out very quickly. Twenty years down the road people will be paying huge prices for this book because of its scope and the quality of reproductions. This is the HP Lovecraft fan’s dream come true. Don’t miss it!

Yes, it is indeed expensive but this is a book for serious collectors.

Bryan Talbot‘s new book, Alice in Sunderland, is finally out. Read a review of it here.

Arthur Magazine is being summoned back from Avalon, which is excellent news. To celebrate, Jay Babcock has posted Alan Moore‘s history of pornography in its entirety here.

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left to right: Donald Cammell, Dennis Hopper, Alejandro Jodorowsky & Kenneth Anger.

One of my favourite photographs of all time shows four directors at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, all dolled up in their wildest afghan-and-ascot, hairy-hippy finery, and all of them on the cusp of what should have been majestic, transformative, transgressive careers in cinema that by and large never came to fruition. It was not to be—if only it had been.

John Patterson tell you why we need Jodorowsky as much as we ever did.

Update: And while we’re at it, Eddie Campbell also has a new book out, The Black Diamond Detective Agency. Great playbill cover design.

New things for March

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The Mindscape of Alan Moore, Shadowsnake Films (2007).

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The Adventures of Little Lou, Savoy Books (2007).

Two very different works approaching fruition this month. The Alan Moore DVD I’ve been working on since November but the release date is finally approaching so I’ve added the artwork to the relevant pages on this site.

The Adventures of Little Lou is a work of transgressive fiction by Lucy Swan forthcoming from Savoy Books. I’m currently finishing the interior design and the book should be published later this year. This is the front cover layout; more to follow.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Of Moons and Serpents
Watchmen
Alan Moore interview, 1988

Cubist Cthulhu

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Well maybe it isn’t, but the phrase occurred to me a few days ago so I thought I’d try some sketching and see what emerged. In one interpretation of The Call of Cthulhu it’s conceivable that Lovecraft intended his abomination to look like this, given the description of R’lyeh in the story:

Without knowing what Futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality.

An alien monstrosity might be even more terrifying if it didn’t resemble anything organic or remotely earthly. For a more traditional impression of the Spawn from the Stars, my drawing from The Great Old Ones can be found here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The Lovecraft archive

Happy birthday { feuilleton }

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It was a year ago today that I sat down and wrote some words of Charles Fort’s, “One measures a circle beginning anywhere…”, as a headline for the first entry on this page. Some posts over the ensuing year have been more popular than others (and it should be pointed out that the “most popular” list in the sidebar has only registered hits since a new plugin was activated). Referral links and Del.icio.us adds are a good guide to popularity so here’s the top five:

Watchmen (June 24th). An old Fantasy Advertiser interview with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons about their graphic novel masterwork. I knew this would be popular, not least because it’s one of the best interviews I’ve read about Watchmen, and one conducted quite soon after the story had been completed. Good to be reminded that the book’s creation owed as much to the artist as it did to the writer. As Alan Moore’s popularity has grown there’s been a tendency on the part of critics to see him as the sole author of his comics, all of which are collaborations with different artists who invariably contribute to the work themselves. From Hell artist Eddie Campbell has recently been showing examples of these working methods on his excellent weblog, The Fate of the Artist.

Atomix by Nike Savvas (August 5th). A big surprise this. I spotted pictures of this installation in passing on a Yahoo! news page, thought it looked interesting so made a little entry about it. Many hits later people are still searching for pictures. Ms Savvas would be advised to tour this artwork, people love it.

Aldous Huxley on Piranesi’s Prisons (August 25th). Another scanned article and another surprise. I remember thinking ?no one will want to read a long-dead writer talking about a long-dead engraver.? The moral, then, is never underestimate your audience.

The boys (various dates). Despite the groaning tubes of the interweb being stuffed with every shade and variety of porn, some pictures of unclothed young men remain more popular than others. So people arrive here searching for Eugen Bauder (very popular indeed), Felipe Von Borstel, Brian Joubert and others. I often feel as though I should apologise for not having any exclusive material but surfers of the one-handed variety are probably only stopping by for a moment before flitting elsewhere.

Barney Bubbles: artist and designer (January 20th). Very gratifying that this has been received with enthusiasm as this is the kind of post I like best, something that makes up for gaps in the pool of web data. These entries take time to prepare so it’s good to know that people appreciate the effort; I’m hoping there’ll be more to come (work allowing) in 2007.

Thanks for reading!

John x

Tygers of Wrath

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ImageTexT is an excellent web publication produced by the English Department at the University of Florida whose objective “is to advance the academic study of comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons”. The subject of the latest edition is “William Blake and Visual Culture” and to this end includes my written and visual account of the Tate Gallery’s William Blake event from February 2001. That evening of song and performance featured Alan Moore and Tim Perkins’ piece about Blake’s life (with my video accompaniment), a work that was later released as the Angel Passage CD. ImageText 3-2 also includes an essay by Roger Whitson, Panelling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of William Blake and Alan Moore.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Of Moons and Serpents
Watchmen
Alan Moore interview, 1988