Doc Con XVII will be a Doc Savage fan convention in Glendale, Arizona. Apparently set for 17th-19th October 2015.

No news since last summer, it appears, about Sony’s mooted Doc Savage movie. And, given the Sony hack, there may not be for some time. The job might be done better by a lavish 1930s costumed TV mini series, showing 6 x two-parters of the very best 181 original Doc books (1933-1949). And ideally with no modernising tweaks. A quick scoot around the Web suggests The Man of Bronze and The Polar Treasure are two likely candidates… but it seems there’s no handy list to be had with a title like: “The Six Very Best Doc Savage Novels, for those who really don’t want to slog through all 181 titles”.

Though a handy slog-free taster of Doc can be had from the quarterly Doc Savage magazine (1975-1977), oversize b&w ‘mature’ comics with extra-long stories. I remember being very fond of these, pieced together as a collection of used copies picked up from comic shops. They are collected in a huge hardback reprint Doc Savage Archives Volume 1: The Curtis Magazine Era which is apparently set for release 3rd February 2015 (according to Amazon USA, Amazon UK says 20th January).

Oh, and about that time when H.P. Lovecraft let Dent use his settings and monsters? Doc Savage: Madness from the Sea, perhaps…

IlluXCon, a fantastic art convention, 21st–25th October 2015 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Should you be huddling in Huddersfield, England, this coming Friday…

Friday, January 9, brings something quite different to the Square Chapel audience – an atmospheric evening of horror and fantasy presented by Michael Sabbaton. His one-man show, The Temple, is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s undersea tale of possession and madness and tells the tale of what happens when a strange ivory, carved head comes into the possession of a submarine commander… The show starts at 8pm.”

If Lovecraft had been filmed in the 1960s… the “Arkham Angst” poster-collage series by weißweißweiß in Germany.

3dmotive has a new paid video tutorial course. Sculpting Cthulhu using the popular Zbrush 3d digital sculpting software…

Being widely hailed as one of the PC games of the year (warning: there’s a spoiler in the description at the end of that link), the videogame The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (26th Sept 2014) had until now escaped my attention. A weird murder-mystery adventure story, it appears to have sensibly avoided the use of the “Lovecraft, Lovecraft!! LOVECRAFT!!” marketing buzzword, and instead left that for reviewers to decide. The makers say rather that it is… “Inspired by the weird fiction stories and other tales of macabre of the early 20th century”. Be warned that the game is a short one, four-to-six hours apparently, though game geeks often don’t realise how fast they can buzz through games. Those less familiar with PC gaming and its numerous fiddly conventions may take a good few hours longer than that to play. Especially those flummoxed by a non-combat first-person detective puzzler story-game, which is said to offer little hand-holding in terms of game mechanics. As compensation for the relatively short length, it’s a walk-anywhere 3d ‘open world’ in a Vermont / New England -like autumnal landscape named Red Creek Valley…

“while not strictly a Lovecraft game [it] is one of the best examples of these themes for a long time” — Bleeding Cool.

“Somewhere in-between H.P. Lovecraft and Gone Home” — IGN.

“There’s a wonderful Lovecraftian pay-off for your toiling in the darkness [in one section of the game]” — Eurogamer.

[As with Lovecraft…] “most of that horror is derived from an eerie sense of dread created through [the slow revealing of] the presence of the alien and the weird in an otherwise familiar environment.” — PopMatters.

Delicious tentacular b&w 3d steampunkery from Danny van Ryswyk, via the Mark Ryden end of Pop Surrealism. Not safe for work…

Additions to the ‘Lovecraft audio before digital’ gallery post. Many thanks to Dennis Weiler of Fedogan, for sending me more cover art from Lovecraft audio cassettes. Dennis writes of them…

“Our “Fungi From Yuggoth” is on [picture] 01, initially released in 1987 on cassette alone. As far as I know, it was the first HPL poetry recording ever released for sale. All of these J-cards are from cassettes in my possession. The R.M. Price recording is marked 1997, but I’ve no idea whether digital-format was released. It was a Necronomicon Press production, I think.”