24 Friday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
The French edition of Rodolphe & Marcele’s One Night with Lovecraft graphic novel, newly reviewed in French. As I’ve previously noted here, this fine graphic novel is free online in French, and in English translation on LibGen.
22 Wednesday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
This week’s The SFFaudio Podcast #526 is a full two-hour unabridged audiobook reading of “Herbert West: Reanimator” by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Jim Moon. Apparently it’s a re-run of a Hypnogoria podcast that I can’t immediately find and may no longer be available. “Herbert West” was of course the serial ‘shocker’ that Lovecraft wrote for Home Brew.
Looking for the Hypnogoria original of this audio reading, I was pleased to discover Hypnogoria: Microgoria #65 – Shiver and Shake and the Creepy Creations of Ken Reid. 33 minutes of podcast surveying a British master of fun cartoon monster-creation.
Ken Reid has a series of handsome book re-issues, Creepy Creations Vol 1., Faceache Vol 1: The First Hundred Scrunges, and Ken Reid’s World Wide Weirdies Vol. 1. His work will be fondly remembered by those of a certain generation.
I wonder if anyone still has that old cardboard “dial-a-monster” picture-frame from that time, which one could get through the mail and I for one had a copy of (long lost, now). It was an early generative work, as millions of unique combinations were possible, there being circular dials which would swing a variety of eyes, hair, chins, noses etc into the picture-frame portrait. They were designed so they would all more or less seamlessly blend together.
22 Wednesday May 2019
An interesting sounding new book of cultural history from Kendall R. Phillips, A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema (Spring 2018). It steps beyond the movie industry’s early history and surveys the wider currents which each distinct cultural milieu both drew on and drew around itself…
“He shows how early cinema [1890s onward] linked monsters, ghosts, witches, and magicians with Old World superstitions and beliefs, in contrast to an American way of thinking that was pragmatic, reasonable, scientific, and progressive. Throughout the teens and twenties [1910s and 20s], Phillips finds, supernatural elements were almost always explained away as some hysterical mistake, humorous prank, or nefarious plot. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, constituted a substantial upheaval in the system of American certainty and opened a space for the reemergence of Old World gothic within American popular discourse in the form of the horror genre [the famous Universal monster movies, 1931 onwards], which has terrified and thrilled fans ever since.”
It’s being well reviewed. Sublime Horror has a sturdy review, and also a free one-hour podcast interview with the author.
21 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
New on Archive.org, Book And Magazine Collector #193 (2004) with a good short potted introduction to Lovecraft’s genuine rarities and his basic publication history. Also the (then) not-so-rare. Oh, to have had Selected Letters Vol. 1 for just £15!
21 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
Newly published, albeit with a pug-ugly cover, Mud and Starlight: The Alan Moore Interviews 2008—2016. 372 pages of rare interviews, many apparently no longer available (defunct blogs) or difficult to obtain (obscure fanzines).
The Amazon UK “Look Inside” won’t let me see the contents page, but Amazon USA will…
20 Monday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
It’s interesting to see that the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society / Dark Adventure Radio Theatre are branching out into new HPL-alike audio adventures. Their The White Tree runs 72 minutes with their usual full-cast and full-FX approach, and the story sees…
The police inspector who once probed the mysteries of the Cthulhu cult on a case that leads him once again into the foreboding bayous of Louisana.
It’s © 2016 and on release seems to have been CD-only with a prop-pack. But I’ve now noticed it because it’s been released to Audible for download, dated “26th March 2019”.
20 Monday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books, REH
Nearly published, Songs of Giants is a sumptuously illustrated…
“collection of some of the very best poetry written by three giants of pulp literature; Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. P. Lovecraft.”
Available here and set to ship in June 2019.
16 Thursday May 2019
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts
Whitman Bailey (1884-1954) was the son of the Providence naturalist William Whitman Bailey (1843-1914) of Brown University. The younger Whitman grew up in Providence and then attended the art school of Howard Pyle in Delaware. Presumably the same Pyle who famously did pirate and medieval adventure-story illustrations. From there he went to work as a jobbing portraitist on the streets of Brooklyn, and took a one-year finishing course at the Pratt Institute.
He returned to Providence in 1914 and spent nine years working as an illustrator for Rhode Island newspapers and magazines. The selection presented in the ebook below is drawn from the 1914-1919 war years and a single magazine, and as such the pictures probably represent only a small part of his Rhode Island output. Nevertheless, those familiar with the life and places of H.P. Lovecraft will recognise many scenes.
He moved away in 1924 and the bulk of his life’s work was dedicated instead to depicting Stamford, where he submitted weekly drawings to the local newspaper for some thirty years.
It is to be hoped that this small insight into his Providence work, created because he depicted many scenes and places known by H.P. Lovecraft, may help to spur local historians to seek out and properly publish more of his work. His Stamford pictures are now held as an archive by the Marcus Research Library at Stamford. From which some of the above biographical details were found. It’s not known if the Providence pictures might also be in that same archive.
16 Thursday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Popping up on eBay, pictures of two portraits of Lovecraft from the fan publications of the 1970s.
The now-superseded Bibliotheca H. P. Lovecraft has this very fine portrait in stipple and line by B.J. Frost.
No sign of this on Archive.org yet, from which a better and bigger scan might be extracted. Who was B. J. Frost, I wonder? In 1976 he produced Book of the Werewolf for Sphere paperbacks. He went on to produce a series of overview books for the University of Wisconsin Press, The Monster with a Thousand Faces: Guises of the Vampire in Myth and Literature, The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature, and The Essential Guide to Mummy Literature. But I can’t find more about his art, other than that he once did a tribute portrait of Virgil Finlay.
The World of H.P. Lovecraft has a different but equally pleasing use of pen and ink, to devise a clever use of Lovecraft’s silhouette which combines it with “The Outsider”.
15 Wednesday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
A new 90-second tour of the Folio Society’s “The Call of Cthulhu” (2017), in pleasing Ken Burns-ish steadycam-o-vision…
14 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Wendy’s awesome Ulthar kittee pictures, in 5k under Creative Commons Attribution. Credit Kaptiv8 / Wendy Sloboda of Canada. Just in case you were wanting an ‘Ulthar tales’ book cover, album cover, or similar. I’ve given one of them a quick fix and crop…
09 Thursday May 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
How to make a medieval manuscript. A new set of seven practical how-to videos from the British Library, showing how to use quills, oak-gall ink, paints, shiny embellishments and more.
