HPLinks #7.

* With thanks to ‘Eastman’, fresh scans of “Lovecraft cultist” by J.C. Henneberger as published in Esquire magazine, March 1946. Also “The Ten-cent Ivory Tower” by John Wilstach in Esquire magazine, in the Christmas issue dated January 1946 (with a continuation on page 160). And an author’s rebuttal in Esquire, June 1946. I commented at length on these back in 2020, though the post’s images were later lost in the site-move.

* New from the HPLHS store, the book Night-Black Deeds, being an “enriched” edition of Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House”.

* A new Hannes Bok LORA, being an illustration-style add-on for Flux. Flux is the latest ‘hot thing’ in AI image-generators, and more stable than the wayward Stable Diffusion.

* Deep Cuts takes a lengthy look into Lovecraft collaborator Hazel Heald’s Letters To August Derleth.

* Insolita: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Interdisciplinares do Insolito, da Fantasia e do Imaginario (‘Insolita: Brazilian Journal of Studies of the Unusual, Fantastic and Imaginary’). In open-access, with seven issues all in Portuguese. Very much focused on horror and the weird, and with a strong tilt toward screen culture. Articles have included ‘Cyclopean Games: the Lovecraftian heritage in games’, and the latest issue has an article on the film adaptation of “The Colour Out of Space”.

* New on YouTube, Clark Ashton Smith Reads a Letter to H.P. Lovecraft (1930). Genuine letter? Who knows, but the voice is well done. I assume AI-generated + some kind of ‘olde time radio’ audio filters, but perhaps not.

* New from Psilowave Records, a 70-piece, 8-figure, “Colour out of Space” custom 8-inch figure set. Ordering now.

* 2024 illustrations and storyboarding roughs for the Lovecraft story “Cats of Ulthar”. By a student at the Academy of Applied Arts, University of Rijeka, Hungary. Also a short account of his making of an illustrated book. Freely available online, though not free to re-use.

* Another interactive game which adapts Lovecraft’s “Dagon” is due for release on 10th October 2024. Announcement Trailer on YouTube.

* A new free audiobook on LibriVox, an A-Z Bibliography of the Science-Fantasy Novel (1953). The focus of the tome was on American books, and each entry included a plot digest. On pursuing it on Archive.org one finds a whole lot of best-forgotten 1920s and 30s novels of lost races and ‘princesses in need of rescue’, but also some works that may interest. This is the format used for entries…

As you can see… plot spoilers.

* Horror comics have risen from the dead. The latest Comics Experience podcast peers nervously through the cemetery gates.

* Slightly misleading… the official George Kuchar (1942-2011) bibliography lists “Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft, Vol. 4, Eureka Productions, 2002. (2nd edition includes Kuchar’s bio of H.P. Lovecraft, originally published in Arcade in 1975, [and this 2nd edition was dated] 2007)”. But I see that the 2002 edition also had a reprint of the tendentious 1970s ‘underground comix’ bio-strip.

* A U.S. legal case has reportedly led to the… “U.S. Patent and Trademark Office cancelling Marvel and DC Comics’ joint trademark for the word ‘Super Hero'”. Superhero, super-hero, and variants were also covered, until now. Creators and publishers are now free to trade using the word(s) in the U.S. Springing to mind… “HPL: Supine-hero!”.

* The International Documentary Association has a review of the acclaimed art-house ‘Lovecraft meets Pessoa’ movie Telepathic Letters, reviewed by a fellow film-maker… “In the film, Lovecraft says, ‘The universe may be a dream, but it cannot be considered a human dream'”.

* The IMDb is listing The Shadow Out of Time (2025), a $500k low-budget movie from Weird Howard Films. Due for release October 2025.

* At the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York City, “Hell, Ink & Water: The Art Of Mike Mignola”. From 19th September – 26th October 2024. The gallery has an online one-page version of the ‘for sale’ items in the show, though it takes a while to load.

* At the Heath Robinson Museum on the western outskirts of London (UK), the large exhibition “The Art of Sidney H. Sime, Master of Fantasy”. From 28th September – 5th January 2025.

* And finally, I’ve ordered the volume of Lovecraft’s letters to Toldridge, which should arrive before mid October. I’ll hope to post some notes on these letters by late October and then into November. These letters are more cheery, by all accounts, than the Sully letters — and thus not such a show-stopper as those were.