The AI Art Weekly newsletter ‘$50 challenge’, themed as “Twilight Zone”. Submission via Twitter only.

The latest Illustrators #42 magazine (October 2023) leads with a Richard Corben feature.

The Halloween comics are also flying freely through the mists here in the UK, from the new This Comic Is Haunted British horror comic, to a set of Halloween themed Commando releases.

A clever stylised Kitbashed Cthulhu, via Propnomicon…

This is a bag of sea creatures from Target [a big U.S. discount store], a dollar-store bag of Halloween skeleton warriors, and a Vampire bat from the “Todd McFarlane’s monsters” playset from the 90’s

The exhibition Tales of Terra: A Lee Brown Coye Retrospective. Running until 2nd March 2024 in Hamilton, New York, at the Picker Art Gallery / Dana Arts Center.

Lee Brown Coye (1907–1981), recognized mostly for his unsettling illustrations in horror anthologies and pulp magazines. His creations for popular pulps such as Weird Tales and stories by the likes of H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, and Manly Wade Wellman earned him a place in American illustration history. Featuring examples from Picker Art Gallery’s vast collection of artwork by Coye, along with loans from other regional museums and private collections, Tales of Terra brings into focus the less gruesome side of Coye’s artistic output and puts these works in dialogue with his published illustrations. This retrospective exhibition includes artworks that span Coye’s lifetime, examining his regionalist roots, his fascination with architecture, and his relationship to the places he lived, all of which found a place in his unique takes on the grotesque.

I found two quotes from Those Who Were There…

“In the middle and late forties, Weird Tales had one superior artist, Lee Brown Coye. Coye’s best work featured degenerate and warped humans, who fitted well with the weird inhabitants of Dunwich and Arkham. His illustrations for “The Whippoorwills in the Hills” by Derleth and “The Will of Claude Ashur” by Thompson were masterpieces.” (Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos, 1973).

“Karl Edward Wagner’s masterful tale “Sticks” (Whispers, March 1974) was an homage to the artist Lee Brown Coye, who illustrated several Lovecraft editions from Arkham House in the 1960s. Making use of the stick-lattice figures that Coye made his signature, “Sticks” speaks of these figures as glyphs designed to summon the Great Old Ones.” (Icons of Horror and the Supernatural, Joshi).

Coye’s depiction of Lovecraft writing…

The venue for this (probably one-time) retrospective looks rather remote, and potentially wintery from now on. A glance at the map suggest you’d go from New York City up the Hudson Valley to Albany, then strike west for about 100 miles.

Currently up for sale at honest Abe’s site, Favorite Haunts: A Journey Thro’ H.P. Lovecraft’s Providence (video cassette from Darkhive Associates, 1990). Not sure I’ve ever heard of this one…

Reviewed in Lovecraft Studies No. 24, but that’s not one of the online issues.

No sign of Favorite Haunts on YouTube or Archive.org.

A pleasing Lovecraftian analogue collage at The Sinister Science…

An homage to H. P. Lovecraft by way of Dr. Who and the 1970s.

See also the collage tag posts at The Sinister Science, for more retro-sci-fi collages. Large images, so it may take a while for all of them to load.

Acclaimed graphic novelist Gou Tanabe is set to publish the first episodes of his latest Lovecraft graphic novel. He’s tackling the “Short Stories from the Dreamlands”. First as a series which will be published as usual in Kadokawa’s Monthly Comic Beam magazine, which seems to be sort of Japanese version of the old Heavy Metal magazine. His first episode will be in Japanese in the November 2023 edition, and then the series will be ongoing.

Fairly soon after series completion there should be a fat Japanese trade paperback (his graphic novels are long). If past form is anything to go by, it will then appear in French, then Italian, and (after a grindingly long wait, likely of two years) finally in English. Which raises the perennial question… why is English publication of desirable Japanese or French/Belgian graphic novels so slow? And very often, not done at all?

Anyway, Tanabe’s earlier “Shadow Over Innsmouth” completed its serial run in March 2021. It should be officially published in English at the end of November 2023 and is pre-ordering now.

Tanabe’s “The Dunwich Horror” was completed in May 2023, so I guess we can expect that book in English perhaps at Halloween 2025. The new “Dreamlands” will perhaps complete in May 2024, for an English single-volume publication at Halloween 2026?