The joey Zone
ALLEN KOSZOWSKI, Dreams From The Dark Side. Introduction by Ramsey Campbell. Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2023. 568 pp. $70 hc. ISBN: 9781613473207.
With it’s crimson-lit phantasmagorical dustjacket and matching top edge-painted signatures, this long overdue collection is a veritable visual Baedeker to the borderlands of horror and science fantasy, a fitting tribute to an artist who is a continual and vital inspiration to us all.
In 1986, one eye winked at me, the other was an empty socket. Out of the sentient stippled decay in the foreground of the cover to Joe Lansdale’s Dead in The West, this Old School Finlayesque approach by the illustrator, Allen Koszowski, definitely was not lazy art, being impressive in its myriad multi-dot universe.
I still have the tee shirt with a design by Allen that was also the cover of the Program Guide for the 2nd NecronomiCon in 1995, in those epochs held in Danvers, Massachusetts. Various monstrosities burrow through a copy of Alhazred’s holy writ and lurk behind the Revelations of Glaaki. There was an interior illustration by Koszowski for Guest of Honor Ramsey Campbell—they go way back. Meanwhile, yours truly got a Days Pass for working as a “go-fer” (some call that a “minion” nowadays) and had the “rough” assignment of hanging out and assisting at The Dealers’ Room—Eternal thanks to Marc Michaud for laying thet gease upon a humble scrivener!
Allen is one of The Three Musketeers of Necronomicon Press, which includes Jason Eckhardt and Robert Knox. Notable from that imprint was the cover he did for Josef Janzoon’s Final Diary Entry of Kees Huitgens (1995). It is a case of him successfully embracing The Surreal akin to his publishing mate Knox. Koszowski won The 2002 World Fantasy Award, the Gahan Wilson-designed Howard. A year later he himself was a GoH at World Fantasy and for that event did a notable portrait of Jack Williamson with his creations April Bell, Barbee in his true Smilodon form, and others, finally seeing print in this Centipede collection.
In 2013, as the Art Editor of The Program Guide for NecronomiCon Providence (The Next Generation), I had the honor of curating a new illustration of Wilbur Whateley by Allen Koszowski for publication.
*****
The first 25 pages of this book showcase portraits done for John Pelan’s single author collections he edited under the Midnight House and Darkside Press imprints. Thanks to Allen, this reviewer will be looking up work by Dick Donovan, Vivian Meik, and others. After these is the portrait of Lee Brown Coye we were proud to publish here first (Dead Reckonings No. 32). Wrapping up this section is the dustjacket for one of the works Koszowski justly rates among his best, for S. T. Joshi’s Sixty Years of Arkham House (Arkham House, 1999), depicting the many tomes billowing out of that seminal eerie edifice.
A back cover, superior to the fine front cover (also by Allen) in it’s striking simplicity, was that for James Van Hise’s Stephen King and Clive Barker: The Illustrated Guide 2 (1991): A fanged skull has each writer in an eye socket’s “reflection”—they being the eyes envisioning the macabre. Colored over in red upon publication, the detail shewn here is ever more evident. One of the standout pieces in this book is Koszowski’s illustration for “Queen of The Black Coast”, originally appearing in Van Hise’s Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard (1997). While the original printing of it in that volume was much larger, the range of greys done on coquille paper show up in greater detail here due to Centipede Press’ impeccable production values. A Howard fan should have this book on the shelf for this image alone!
Included in this volume is one of this writer’s favorite pieces by the artist, the cover for Hippocampus Press’ edition of Herbert S. Gorman’s 1927 novel A Place Called Dagon (2000). There is a whole series in Dreams featuring depictions of Cthulhu ITself (fitting)—the recent cover for Allen K.’s Inhuman #5 giving that Great Old One the true cyclopean dimensions.
*****
The early issues of the fanzine Midnight Marquee boasted some of Allen’s finest portraiture of film icons of fear and fantasti-film, such as that of Rondo Hatton from #37, its 25th Anniversary Issue. Another James Van Hise book was Serial Adventures (1990) presenting a superb wraparound cover featuring–In Glorious Black & White!—Lewis Wilson’s Batman, Victor Jory’s Shadow, The Spider, etc. Although the art is printed in this collection, I need to get the original book now as well—Koszowski Art is that good. Included in Dreams are a number of images seeing publication for the first time, a selling point if one was needed. Some feature depictions by Allen of the most interesting people with the most…worm eaten complexions. That said, this is not a fully annotated catalogue raisonne: A look at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (which in itself is incomplete!) proves that to be a production still many reproductions away from. An example of a piece missing in action is S. T. Joshi depicted in periwigged pastiche (May he always deport himself so!) of Virgil Finlay’s famous Lovecraft portrait on the cover of Classics and Contemporaries (Hippocampus Press, 2009). But anon for that. Thanks to The Artist himself for providing Credit Where Due on some of these pieces. “But I have been turning out a bunch of stuff…I can’t stop!”
More classics assuredly to come from someone who–may he long remain our contemporary!