Lovecraft and tentacles in racial propaganda

06 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Historical context

≈ Leave a comment

Grady Hendrix has a couple of interesting examples that point to one way in which the young Lovecraft’s fear of the Asiatic races might have become intertwined (literally) with tentacles…

The first is said to be from 1881, the second is undated but looks like it might be early 1920s? One wonders if this specific type of tentacular depiction was more widespread between the 1880s and the 1920s?

Lovecraft infestation spreads through comics

05 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

A serious Lovecraft infestation spreads its tentacles through comics in early 2012. Infestation 2…

“is a 2012 multi-property crossover event that includes most of IDW Publishing’s licensed [comics] properties at time of publishing” […]

The first manifestation is an interesting concept… steampunk-era Transformers “strive against the incomprehensible evil of H.P. Lovecraft’s Elder Gods” during America’s Industrial Revolution, with the aid of Telsa…

This gripping [comic book] issue sets the stage for Lovecraft’s “Old Ones” to break through time and space and invade many titles, including TRANSFORMERS, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and a special fifth-week one-shot, INFESTATION: TEAM-UP, featuring Bat Boy and GROOM LAKE’s grey alien Archibald in February. Then in March, the Infestation spreads even further, infecting TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and G.I. JOE. In April, vampires battle zombies in 30 DAYS OF NIGHT: INFESTATION, followed by the stunning closing issue, INFESTATION 2 #2.

I’m not sure if the plots of all these get interlinked, but it sounds like they do. I somehow doubt I’ll be reading these to find out, but I love to observe the clever combinations of talent, conceptualisation, and marketing that goes into time-limited storytelling campaigns like this. There are even special temporary tattoos in each issue, thus kicking back against digital piracy. Perhaps the more staid book publishing world has something to learn from this sort of advanced combination of marketing and interlinked talent, focused into a three month period and harnessed to brands?

Sensualising Deformity

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

Another conference to add to the list of those taking place in 2012 on monsters and the monstrous. Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Conception of Monstrous Embodiment is on 15th June 2012 to 16th June 2012, at the University of Edinburgh (in the far north of the UK)…

“It will direct an interdisciplinary gaze towards the spaces where the experience and representation of the deformed or monstrous body meet, not only in medical or scientific accounts, but also in literature, film, and the visual arts. We hope to explore these representations specifically with regards to the deformed body’s sensuality and sexuality, aspects of being which it has traditionally been denied.”

Russian quasicrystal has origin in outer space

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

A deliciously Lovecraftian news item today. ‘Russian quasicrystal rock came from space‘…

A mysterious Russian rock made of a type of crystal never before seen outside a laboratory is most likely a meteorite from the early days of the solar system, geologists say. The first naturally occurring quasicrystals on Earth have been found among rock samples gathered from the remote Koryak Mountains in the far-east of Siberia. Researcher Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University describes such a bizarre arrangement as “a disharmony in space. Any symmetry thought to be forbidden is possible for quasicrystals,” he told Space.com.

Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom

02 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

≈ 1 Comment

Coming in early 2012. Part two of a graphic novel, Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom (Arcana Studio) by Dwight MacPherson and Thomas Boatwright. Imagining Lovecraft’s adventures as a young child. Amazon has it as being published today, but that could be a database bot doing some wishful thinking? Since Amazon UK has a more precise date of 3rd April 2012. [Update: 3rd April is the actual date, confirmed]

The first part is reviewed here…

The Hindu newspaper profiles S.T. Joshi

31 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

India’s The Hindu newspaper (their equivalent of the London Times or the New York Times) has a profile of S.T. Joshi…

“Meet S.T. Joshi, prolific scholar and authority on horror and weird fiction. I think it is just fantastic that the greatest and most prolific scholar and bibliographer of horror fiction in the world is an Indian. (I mean, how refreshing to find an Indian scholar working on something other than post-colonial/subaltern studies.)”