2023

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 2^nd 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 25^th 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!

The joey Zone

SAX ROHMER, The Whispering Mummy and Others. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2023. 295 pp. $20 tpk. ISBN: 9781614983798.

You know how dusk falls in Egypt? At one moment the sky is a brilliant canvas, glorious with every color known to art, at the next the curtain—the wonderful veil of deepest violet–has fallen: the stars break through it like diamonds through the finest gauze…

It has been a decade since these words were in legitimate print and they still shine like diamonds.

In 2013 Centipede Press published Brood of the Witch-Queen, a collection of fifteen short stories and Rohmer’s novel, Brood of the Witch-Queen. This collection, the twelfth title in Hippocampus Press’ Classics of Gothic Horror series, features the same stories as that volume lacking only the titular novel. The cover by Aeron Alfrey is a three-dimensional fever dream bearing a slight resemblance to W. T. Benda’s iconic design of The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932).

Sax Rohmer (pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward, 1883-1959) has resided for decades on this reviewer’s shelf alongside such writers as M. P. Shiel, Sapper, and Dennis Wheatley. Famous as the chronicler of That Most Honorable Eastern Physician, Rohmer neither originated “The Yellow Peril” trope (perhaps Shiel) or over extended stereotypes beyond their cultural shelf life (as much as Wheatley). Moriarty is more than matched by Holmes but Nayland Smith is a mere cypher compared to the charismatic Doctor. As with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan books however, this series is only a small part of the author’s total output.

Of the supernaturally infused novels S. T. Joshi mentions in his introduction, we should add Grey Face (1924) as worthy of revival, definitely using its original jacket depicting the title anti-hero’s hypnotic visage. What we have in this present volume are stories culled from Tales of Secret Egypt (1918), The Haunting of Low Fennel (1920), and Tales of Chinatown (1922). Sax is, geographically, all over the place, whether in London, Limehouse, the English countryside, or Burma. But his main port of call is Cairo. Saville Granger in the story “The Curse of a Thousand Kisses” is really just a stand-in for Rohmer. And the rest of us:

      I had for many years cherished a secret ambition to pay a protracted visit to Egypt, but the ties of an arduous profession hitherto had rendered its realisation impossible. Now, a stranger in a strange land, I found myself at home…the only real happiness I ever knew—indeed, as I soon began to realize, had ever known—I found among the discordant cries and mingled smells of perfume and decay in the native city…it was the people, the shops, the shuttered houses, the noises and smells of the Eastern streets which gripped my heart.

Tales of Secret Egypt highlights the hubris of The Occidental which merits a role in comedy, more ofttimes, tragedy. Neither hero or villain, the self-appointed majordomo of this locale is one Abû Tabâh, “black robed, white turbaned, and urbane, his delicate ivory hands resting upon the head of an ebony came…a veritable presence…his eyes…like the eyes of a gazelle”. “The Whispering Mummy” has Tabâh and a negligible narrator help uncover the sleight of hand that is neither benevolent nor the sweet nothings murmured by a desert lich. Two outright weird tales, “In the Valley of the Sorceress” and “Lord of the Jackals” result in comedy and tragedy respectively, the first favoring Bast while the second engenders sympathy—certainly not for the main “protagonist” but the Lord of its title—Hayil Anubis!

Of the three Rohmer collections from which this material has been sourced, of most interest to readers is The Haunting of Low Fennel. Besides the aforementioned “Curse of a Thousand Kisses” (with its namedrop of William Beckford’s  classic Vathek (1786)), is “The Master of Hollow Grange”. There is a great buildup of suspense in this story, only to have the author feint with the weak hand-off “That there were horrors—monstrosities that may not be described, whose names may not be written”! Although Joshi says “it’s supernaturalism is unconvincingly accounted for” this writer thinks the title story “The Haunting of Low Fennel” is a prime example of the writer at his most entertaining.

The employment of the stereotype of a blustering ex-military man is a characterization used in several Rohmer tales, in this case in the person of one Major Dale —“If Low Fennel is not haunted, I’m a Dutchman, by the Lord Harry!” Such comic interjections in these stories leaven the literal miasma of fear, as opposed to just annoying by juxtaposition. This miasma:

      had the form of a man, but the face [was] not of a man, but a ghoul!…The chin and lower lip of this awful face seemed to be drawn up so as almost to meet the nose, entirely covering the upper lip and the nostrils were distended to an incredible degree, whilst the skin had a sort of purple tinge…

The dustjacket of the Pearson first edition of Low Fennel features this ifrit, albeit with less Pickmanesque physiognomy. The narrator deduces that the haunting is

      something older than the house, older perhaps, than the very hills…something as old as the root of all evil, and it dwells in the Ancient British tumulus…Barrows and tumuli of the stone and bronze age, and also Roman shrines, seem frequently to be productive of such emanations.

Major Dale will have none of this folk horror:

      Then is the place haunted by the spirit of some uneasy Ancient Briton or something of that sort, Addison? Hang it all! You can’t tell me a fairy tale like that! A ghost going back to pre-Roman days is a bit too ancient for me, my boy—too hoary, by the Lord Harry!

Tales of Chinatown’s 1949 Popular Library edition boasts a superb Rudolph Belarski cover depicting “The Hand of the Mandarin Quong”. This book also contains Rohmer’s finest short story, “Tcheriapin” with its fatalistic narrative of revenge employing “magic” somewhat prefiguring that in A. Merritt’s Burn, Witch, Burn! (1933). Reprinted many times – Virgil Finlay’s illustration for its appearance in Famous Fantastic Mysteries of July 1951 being notable – the plot of this tale need not be elaborated upon, suffice to say the dark beauty of its telling has a denouement as “hard as a diamond”. If there is one reason to add this Hippocampus collection of Sax Rohmer to your bookshelf, this and accompanying arrangements in adamantine are requisite to full celebration of The Black Mass that is classic horror.

Kathedral Event Center. June 2-3, 2023

The Nightlands Festival was one of the most singular events ever attended – an artistic quest through darkened sonic spheres only navigated by that surest vehicle — which is the single human voice. The dream of Jonathan Dennison, this “Celebration of Literary Nightmares” ran just one weekend this past summer. Dennison is the founder of Cadabra Records, an imprint of Spoken Art founded in 2015, an amalgam incorporating soundscapes with art and scholarship to complete each vinyl artifact. Held at The Kathedral Event Center—which operated as a Catholic church in a previous incarnation—the mid-century architecture was witness to a truly different sort of religious experience…

An Artists Alley reminiscent of the best pre-2013 NecronomiCons included Dave Felton, Matthew Jaffe, Jeremy Hush (purveying copies of Ekphrastic Beasts, a creature compendium for gamers which he contributed to), Paul Romano and Josh Yelle. Also vending was Matt Bartlett (whose work was performed in a pre-show reading midweek) and Mike “My Middle Name is HORROR” Hunchback (editor of Pulp Macabre). There were festival exclusives available from Cadabra and its publishing extension Chiroptera Press. Fittingly, a chapbook was created to mark the proceedings by Felton – “The Festival” – which was put into hands gratis of that inestimable illuminator.

The introduction of S. T. Joshi to the crowd opened the festivities. His presence alone was reason to attend this weekend as it has been far too long since he was a listed participant in any convention on The East Coast. Joshi gave a verbal foreword to the first spoken word performance, that being M. R. James “Count Magnus”. With a projection of Matt Jaffe’s painting for the Cadabra release (CADABR-91 [2022]) behind him, Robert Lloyd Parry, arguably THE James impersonator, gave a nuanced reading of “Magnus”, with any pauses and occasional silences in his delivery only adding to a perfect whole.

Next up was Jon Padgett delivering Thomas Ligotti’s “The Clown Puppet”, to these eyes apparently from memory (CADABR-86 [2022]). Jon (aka Dr. Locrian), a veritable Ligottian Evangelist, was a revelation himself. If you ever have a chance to attend one of his initially hilarious cum insidiously harrowing interpretations, do so with no hesitation. British character actor Lawrence R. Harvey followed with his fine rendition of Edogawa Rampo’s (A Japanese writer whose name is a takeoff from Poe) “The Human Chair” (CADABR-20 [2018]) accompanied by Slasher Film Strategy. His voice cut through the shadowed rafters of Kathedral like a knife out of a sheath.

After that was the first of the two panels scheduled in the Festival, this initial conversation being on “The Craft Behind Cadabra”. This writer did cameo interviews with Padgett, Harvey, Jonathan Dennison, and the next performer on deck, Andrew Leman of The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. They all described the process involved in creating each Cadabra product, starting with Dennison and how he chooses which particular voice to go with each record followed by the other panelists describing their initiation to the label.

Andrew concluded Friday’s schedule with a presentation of “The Lurking Fear” (CADABR-005 [2016]), giving a haunted account from the very first paragraphs. Even after the end of the first day, this reviewer remained gripped, enraptured, yet

I was not alone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of the grotesque and the
terrible which has made my career a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and in

life.

Mention must be made of Chris Bozzone, a soundtrack composer who started working with Cadabra in 2017. His contributions to our group pilgrimage provided the cohesiveness to the entire weekend’s aesthetic.
A repeat of Friday’s lineup doing equally strong material was the only way Day Two of the Festival could compare. Our love of horror and literature did not go unrequited! In some cases, performances even surpassed in intensity. Lloyd Parry’s reading of Cadabra’s upcoming release of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” held one increasingly spellbound up to that last cadence of “turning over and over on the waves like an otter”. Jon Padgett effortlessly managed another star turn with “Mrs. Rinaldi’s Angel” (CADABR-97 [2022]). Laurence Harvey previewed an upcoming label release which includes Baudelaire’s “Litanies to Satan” (one of the high points of the Festival). Credit Where Due was paid in the second panel “The Art of Cadabra Records” including Felton, Jaffe, Yelle, Hush and Romano with additional teasers for a Cadabra release of “The Rats In The Walls” (a 4-lp boxset!) and Chiroptera Press publications of Thomas Ligotti’s Noctuary and Crampton, with art by Paul Romano and Dave Felton respectively. Andrew Leman brought us all home at the end of the night – to Dunwich that is.

If the idea of sitting through two days of Spoken Word is still hard for you to visualize, let me accentuate: it just sang. This choir in the Kathedral – voices in performance and the response of attendees, all testifying to The Weird Aesthetic as one – made visible that dream that we will hopefully wake to again somewhere in years to come.