Of The Three Musketeers wielding art duties for Necronomicon Press (The remaining duo being Jason Eckhardt and Allen Koszowski), Robert H. Knox rightfully crowns himself—by virtue of this volume alone—with the million-colored sun of worlds incredible: The Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith.
This imprint’s earlier series in square chapbook format, The Unexpurgated Clark Ashton Smith, utilized Knox’s talents which yielded an apogee design wise for the small weird press. Amberlithic artisanally separated colors were inherent in all their paper wraps, an exemplar being The Dweller in The Gulf (1987), the eyeless Martian ophidian of the title delineated in brilliant scarlet and verdigris over a xanthic field.
In a sense, Knox has collaborated with Smith before by way of color adaptations of CAS’ illustrations for H. P. Lovecraft’s Home Brewn “The Lurking Fear.” Inadvertently not credited in the recent New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham (2019: Norton), credit where due was given when these illustrations were first published in the stand-alone edition of the tale by Necronomicon Press.
It has been my gease to exhibit Robert Knox’s work in my stint as curator for the Ars Necronomica art exhibitions running 2013 through 2019. These included one of his supreme works, a definitive depiction of “The Tomb Spawn,” that bifurcated, beaked entity waiting beneath the sands of Zothique.
Not so much an influence on Knox’s oeuvre as hand in synchronicity over epochs would be the work of Max Ernst, esp. his series depicting the dreamscape La Ville Entière (1933-1937) or typified by collage work done in Une Semaine De Bonté (1935). Indeed, as Franklin Booth rendered his pen and ink illustrations according to the detail of wood engraving, so has Robert Knox taken Ernst’s collage/cut-up method and drawn his own juxtapositions by hand, an example being the plate “Bow down…” for the title poem in this present collection. He brings form, weight, and dimension even to the merest patterned hem of CAS’ sleeve. Another precursor, Richard Powers, with his paintings for Ballantine paperbacks in the early 1960s (such as the cover for the anthology Things With Claws) is an ancestral inhabitant of Knox’s painting The Ghooric Zone (2015) or, more recently, the cover for Robert Waugh’s The Tragic Thread in Science Fiction (2019: Hippocampus).
Visions of the outré in this expanded edition of The Hashish Eater list a startlingly correct interpretation of Smith’s “Surrealist Sonnet”; “Nero”—the physiognomy reminiscent of Clark Ashton Smith’s carvings or even the profile of his mentor George Sterling; and a depiction of “The sacred flower…of some red Antarean garden-world.” Knox’s livid floral arrangements for Klarkash-Ton in particular render him a worthy groundsman for Maâl Dweb—one waits for the burgeoning maturity of his own “Flower Women”…
Clark Ashton Smith once expressed the desire to focus on painting (as opposed to writing for financial concerns) to H. P. Lovecraft on January 9th, 1930, to enjoy “nothing better than to fare forth in a debauch of form and color.” Robert H. Knox carries on these revelries, illuminating them for The Auburn Magus radiantly.
–The joey Zone
ANN and JEFF VANDERMEER, The Big Book of Modern Fantasy. New York: Vintage Books, 2020. 876 pp. $25.00 tpb. ISBN: 978-0-525-56386-0
“The Ultimate Collection” presented here is “the last anthology together” from The Vandermeers. Supposedly.* Ninety-one stories include not only “A Mexican Fairy Tale” (1988) by Leonora Carrington but the gossamer-winged surreality of Carrington’s“Myth of 1,000 Eyes” (1950) scampering across the front wraps. For giving Carrington’s distinctive visual voice current mass market exposure, the editors should be commended alone.
In The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019) and earlier anthologies such as The Weird (2011) The Vandermeers “tried to be objective about classic authors…for example, Robert E. Howard” and, heaven forfend, that “problematic” H. P. Lovecraft. For this Big Book, they seem to not be holding their editorial noses as much and are better for it. They are on surer footing among their contemporaries. They are not trying to define examples of “steampunk”, “The New Weird”, etc. or retrofit older works to support a thesis. Although there is a reiteration in this book’s introduction that “Fantasy becomes something of use to a writer to make a political or social statement. It’s not just a mode…” that seems to apply a lot less to a fair amount in this collection. There is no “agenda”, for example, to Garth Nix’s yarn “Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Sarsköe” (2008) featuring the swashbuckling Sir Hereward and his superior, Mr. Fitz, a three and a half foot tall sorcerer—who also happens to be an animated puppet with a painted face on a papier–mâché head the size of a pumpkin. No agenda save fun.
Three writers appeared previously in this volume’s Classic Fantasy companion. Two other stories, (by Margaret St. Clair and Elizabeth Hand,) were already in The Weird. However, selections by J. G. Ballard, Paul Bowles and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are finally offered here due to publication rights clearing.
The Marquez tale of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is a perfect example of what some might call Magic Realism with an over abundance of magic pleasing this reader. Written in 1955, it is contemporary with similar work stateside by Ray Bradbury–especially his collection, The October Country which was also published in 1955–who is inexplicably not represented in this collection despite a mention in the introduction to the Greg Bear story in this volume. According to an Entertainment Weekly interview with the Vandermeers, Stephen King “really wanted to be in this anthology”. And is—it is a shame Bradbury is still not around to lobby for himself.
In that same May 4th interview, Anne Vandermeer speaks of “this huge world of influence, back and forth” among fantasy writers. Jack Vance’s “Liane The Wayfarer” (1950) included here is a mordant travelogue through The Dying Earth, that series long acknowledged as a worthy successor to Clark Ashton Smith’s tales of Zothique. M. John Harrison’s “The Luck in the Head” (1984) is a tale of Viriconium following that. And Jeff Vandermeer’s own tales of Ambergris—a new edition to be published December 2020—rests on those foundations (Far from suis generis, Vandermeer’s Borne (2017) has an ursine ancestor in Richard Adams’ Shardik (1974)—a writer also surprisingly absent in this book). Anne was an editor for Weird Tales from 2007-2011. She includes writers from that tenure: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Ramsey Shehadeh and Erik Amundsen, the last whose “Bufo Rex” (2007) is a carbuncle of poisonous black humor.
Fred Chappell’s “Linnaeus Forgets” (1977) is A Day In The Life of Carolus Linnaeus spent in his greenhouse, while “Alice in Prague or The Curious Room” (1990) by Angela Carter is—well, you should just read everything by this woman—dedicated to Jan Švankmajer and his film Alice (1988) but stars John Dee and his assistant—not Ed Kelley—but Ned Kelly the highwayman. “What is the use of books without pictures?” Dodgson’s Dreamchild would ask. Tove Jannson’s “Last Dragon in the World” (1962) has text and Jannson’s illustrations from this Tale of Moominvalley. The introduction to this Big Book mentioned “a preponderance of dragons.” This is the only one you’ll ever need. Utterly charming.
“The Fey” is depicted from both sides of The Fields We Know: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “Winged Creatures” (1974) and Caitlin Kiernan’s “La Peau Verte” 2005). Victor LaValle fights a troll! Well, in his modern folktale “I Left My Heart in Skaftafell” (2004) he does, while Maurice Richardson’s Engelbrecht goes “Ten Rounds with Grandfather Clock” (1946). Crazy stuff but it all works.
These are all just highlights, but I must list at least one more. Rosario Ferré’s “The Youngest Doll” (1972) could have fit the editors’ criteria for The Weird. Women’s rights and income inequality are factors in this story, but it is foremost definitely one of the creepiest stories, you, Dead Reckonings reader, will ever come across. After all the anthologies Ann and Jeff Vandermeer have done, there are still stories we will be lucky(?) to get behind our eyelids. The legerdemain of this last collection being The Charm.
*The editors mention in this book’s introduction (as well as in some recent interviews) the idea to assemble an anthology of Latin American women fantasy writers. Given some pleasures proved in this Big Book, may bright doubts be cast on resolutions otherwise…
LEAH BODINE DRAKE, The Song of The Sun: Collected Writings. Edited by David E. Schultz. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2020. 767 pp. $30.00 (tpb: ISBN: 978-1-61498-267-8), $60.00 (hardcover: 978-1-61498-266-1).
1.
Besides its importance as a publisher of classic weird fiction and its attending scholarship, Hippocampus Press can not be lauded enough for its fealty to the muse of Verse. Keeping alive the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith, George Sterling, lesser-known lights including Park Barnitz and, even more importantly, contemporary voices such as Donald Sidney-Fryer (long may that troubadour write his songs!) is raison d’être alone for this press. On the horn of The Autumnal Equinox this collection finally appeared after being announced three years ago: An impressive volume in its physicality, with a 2-inch thick spine and the author’s signature in gold on the cloth under the front wraps. What August Derleth and Donald Wandrei did for H. P. Lovecraft’s legacy with the publication of The Outsider and Others in 1939, David Schultz does for Leah Bodine Drake now.
Drake’s A Hornbook for Witches (1950) was the first collection of poetry published by Arkham House, incorporating 47 poems. The Song of The Sun contains these and the rest of her 360 poems, 100 never previously published.
Besides appearing in the small press, Leah Bodine Drake had cracked the market of “the slicks”, including The Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker. Above and beyond the biggest names in the Arkham House line (Lovecraft, Howard, etc.), she also garnered a positive review upon her first book’s release in The New York Times. Her 1939 verse “They Run Again” (Is there a better lycanthropic ode anywhere?) was quoted in full.
The Song also contains Drake’s short stories, 2 or which originally appeared in Weird Tales. The best of these is “Mop-Head” (1951) which was graced with an eldritch illumination by Joseph Eberle sadly not reproduced in this volume. In addition, there are essays and book reviews by her including “Whimsy and Whamsy” (1949) which—despite Drake’s lukewarm assessment—has this reviewer now not only looking for a copy of Stanley Mullen’s Moonfoam and Sorceries (Gorgon Press), but more of the “fan” art of its illustrator, Denver’s Roy V. Hunt. Hunt’s work proves to be worthy of rediscovery, some of it being unique takes in Lovecraftian art for that time or the present. Thank you, Leah!
There is a lengthy section of Drake’s letters including those to Weird Tales (extolling the work of Margaret Brundage, Virgil Finlay, CAS, Algernon Blackwood and others) and 73 to August Derleth alone. Finally, nearly 50 related photographs of Leah Bodine Drake as well as a comprehensive bibliography make this publication even more incredibly useful in re-establishing her importance beyond genre.
2.
Drake is one of the great poets of Faery. Some fine examples of this were published in A Hornbook (such as the classic “Changeling”), but one notable early (1933) narrative “The Ballad of Fair Elspeth” appears here for the first time. The theme of The Pied Piper is used not only in “The Little Piper” (1934) but in “Peddler’s Pack”. Written in 1939, it was later submitted to Anthony Boucher for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction but rejected. That publication’s loss is our gain.
A gnomish peddler offers The Good including
The missing star
From the Pleiad’s throng;
The opening bar
Of the sirens’ song
but upon their rejection, leaves only the detritus of The Bad that must be taken:
A weed from Bluebeard’s funeral-wreath,
Roots of mandrake, dragon’s teeth
There’s a moral for editors there somewhere!
Another inspiration to Drake is the work of Lord Dunsany. The poem “The Stranger” (1938) and prose “Time and the Sphinx” (1947) are both dedicated to him. The verse “Unhappy Ending” (1935) is the most Dunsanian of all, being a mordant tale similar to “The Hoard of The Gibbelins”.
Jason Eckhardt adds illustrations, 15 in number, to the mix. Two fine examples are that for “The Ballad of The Jabberwock” (1946) which concerns the legend(?) of The Jersey Devil and the one for “The Crows” (1955)—being one of Jason’s best works anywhere.
In 1941, Leah wrote in her short essay “To Be a Poet” that “You must feel moonlight, see the wind, taste sunlight and smell colour.” The best poetry summons visuals with its words. After seeing John Duncan’s Symbolist painting of 1923 Ivory, Apes and Peacocks, Drake wrote “The Journey of The Queen of Sheba” in 1937. Originally slated as the finale of A Hornbook for Witches, it was cut due to length as well as being deemed only “borderline fantastical” by the writer and her editor Derleth. May we be able to tarry near these borders longer—it is the standout piece in this collection.
She sat in a peacock-shade throne
On a grey beast out of myth, whose walk
Woke the thunder beneath the ground,
And whose tusks were inlaid with orichalch.
Coming down
From slopes of the Mountains of the Moon
Where rivers are born and dragons hiss;
Plumes of ostrich, and ivory horns
Heaped with spices and ambergris.
Bejeweled verse such as this could have suitably adorned any one of Lin Carter’s anthologies for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series back in the day.
3.
It is necessary for a poet to be steeped in some great tradition of mysticism.
—John Livingston Lowes
Lowes was a Harvard professor whose seminal work was The Road to Xanadu (1927), an examination of S. T. Coleridge’s sources (and one of this reviewer’s most treasured volumes on the shelf). This quote was appended to Drake’s essay “A Poem Should Have” from one of her personal scrapbooks. By her own rite, Leah Bodine drake’s entire oeuvre is part of this great tradition, woven into the tapestry of imagination.
I respectfully take exception to her own evaluation of her work, however. In “Minor Poet” (1947) Drake relates that
On mornings when no withered leaf
Rattled a branch, I’ve watched the strange
Dance of the lonely hippogriff,
Wings folded—still beyond the rangeOf my crude weapon!
For someone who had enjoyed popular reception of her art during her life, Leah Bodine Drake still wanted more. Her “heart fully aware of the legacy of myth” (Schultz) that makes us who we are was her greatest crude weapon. For fantasy readers, this collection is as good a gateway to poetry as any. The magick of her art is accessible as starlight reflected in dew drops on that withered leaf held in one’s hand.
STEPHEN JONES. The Art of Pulp Horror. Colchester, UK: Applause Books, 2020. 256 pp. $40.00 hc. ISBN: 978-1-5400-3297-3.
The artists of pulp horror could do it all.
The bodice grabbing bony spectre on the front boards of this book was originally painted by Norman Saunders for the comic book Unknown World #1 (1952, Fawcett). Saunders is now best remembered for the infamously gory Mars Attacks! (1962) bubblegum card series. At the same time Junior was playing with these, Dad was ogling Saunders’ covers for “men’s sweat” magazines such as Man’s Story. “Pulp” then does not just refer to the popular early 20th-century publications printed on coarse cheap paper that gradually yellowed, turned brittle and acquired a sharp acrid smell, albeit one beloved by us collectors. Rather, it is a whole coarse aesthetic, somewhat yellowed in acceptability to some modern tastes, that perhaps always repulsed if not shocked its contemporaries. This volume, while seeming to initially lack focus, demonstrates this lineage of lo-brow, examining pulp through all media, from books to comics, from broadsides and posters to paintings and back again. Starting with The Art of Horror (2015), this third in a series of bumper art books by Stephen Jones might at first look to be table leavings of those previous but is instead a full meal in itself.
A strength of this collection is in its telling of this history from a UK perspective. Sarah Cleary starts by making the point that most editions of gothic novels preceding the advent of The Penny Dreadful in the 19th-century were too expensive and unattainable for the average punter, relegating shilling shockers to chapbook formats. This popular press then was already slated for the cheap seats. Boys’ weeklies such as The Magnet (1908-1940) with Billy Bunter and his Greyfriars’ chums appeared, as well as minor academies established by the likes of Edwy Searles Brooks featuring “ Detective-turned-housemaster Nelson Lee, his assistant Nipper and the schoolboys of St. Frank’s.” More grown up fare was offered in periodicals such as The Passing Show (1922-1939) and Hutchinson’s Mystery-Story (1923-1927) as well as hardback anthologies such as The Creeps Library Series (1932-1937) edited by Charles Birkin.
Pulp stateside boasted artists such as Robert A. Graef, responsible for covers of The Argosy (the Frank Munsey publication starting in 1882) showcasing fantasies by A. Merritt and Ray Cummings. A new discovery for this reviewer was the superb linework of John Richard Flanagan who started as a “stand-in” for that Australian mage Norman Lindsay. Flanagan went on to delineate the diabolisms of Fu Manchu, Wu Fang, Yen Sin, et al. As to that, there are six pages in this collection exhibiting that xenophobic trope known as “The Yellow Peril” inherent to the period.
There is an overflow of imagery that could have been in Jones’ last book The Art of Horror Movies (2017). Paper ephemera is included from lost films such as the 1933 RKO version of The Monkey’s Paw and, more famously, the 1926 Lon Chaney Sr. vehicle London After Midnight. An outstanding 2018 painting by Bob Eggleton channels Chaney’s Man in The Beaver Hat, chromatically capturing that face in all its bug-eyed sawtooth slaver. Gregory William Mank contributes a foreword to the section on “Poverty Row” studios such as Monogram, which featured George Zucco, Glenn Strange and recurring casts giving comfort in cliches of chills. As in the previous volumes, other contemporary artists offer tribute to these classic and not so classic horrors. Canadian illustrator Sara Deck designs a funereal poster for Val Lewton’s 1943 film The Seventh Victim. Rue Morgue alumni Graham Humphries is also amply represented with a 2018 and 2019 diptych(?) of the film ‘set’ Oakley Court which has been used many times, from Hammer’s The Reptile (1966) to Richard O’ Brien’s Rocky Horror (1975). Finally, there is the reproduction of a 1965 British quad poster for the American International Lovecraft adaptations of Monster of Terror (Die, Monster Die!) and The Haunted Palace as a double bill—oh those lucky cinephiles!
Paperback cover art ranges from (the sadly recently deceased) Rowena Morrill’s surreal Dunwich Horror (1978, Jove), complete with lizard skeleton yo-yo, to Hector Garrido’s depiction of John Christopher’s The Little People (1965, Avon), which can best be described as Machen if adapted for a men’s sweat magazine. Eric Stanton’s ‘sleaze’ paperback covers clearly show the influences, if not the outright collaboration, of his studio mate, Steve Ditko. Toiling in these same pits of publishing, African American artist Bill Alexander is represented by covers for Myron Fass Eerie Publications’ horror comic reprint magazines. His lurid ‘fun’ house styling mirrors that currently employed by California Bay Area painter Skinner. Other original ‘comic’ art by Lee Elias and Warren Kremer for the Harvey horror titles of the 1950s in some instances serve even more crispy grue beyond that of the legendary EC line.
Coda
On my 4th grade schoolyard, I traded doubles of the 1966 Topps bubble gum card series for Batman. By comparison to the ‘camp’ TV show of the same time, there was more ‘sweat’ in the hairbreadth escapes of Gotham’s Finest painted on these than under the makeup on Cesar’s Romero’s moustache. Norman Saunders was again responsible. I can still taste those powdery pink brittle tablets that were enclosed in those card’s wrappers. Proust can keep his madeleines—these will always remain my Communion Wafers to this lineage of Lo-Brow Kulture.
R. MURRAY GILCHRIST. I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales. Edited by Daniel Pietersen. London: British Library, 2021. 320 pp. £8.99 tpb. ISBN: 978-0-7123-5400-4.
1.
“I walked in pain, as though giant spiders had woven about my body. On the terrace strange beasts—dogs and pigs with human limbs—tore ravenously at something that lay beside the balustrade…the monsters dispersed hurriedly among the dropping blossoms of the pleasaunce, and where they had swarmed I saw naught but a steaming sanguine pool…”
Not in Kadath, nor a Hodgsonian nightmare, we are in equally dark dreamlands here.
Tragical romances as stylistically rich as those of Robert Murray Gilchrist (1867-1917), like old acquaintances, ought not be forgot and always brought to print. The British Library Tales of The Weird series and Dead Reckonings contributor Daniel Pietersen raise a cup of kindness to share with us all.
In 1975, Hugh Lamb’s Terror by Gaslight reprinted Gilchrist’s “The Basilisk”. Other selections followed in further anthologies by Lamb. Collections of the writer unfortunately have been out of print for more than a decade. A Night on the Moor, the Wordsworth paperback edition and the earlier Ash-Tree Press hardcover, The Basilisk and Other Tales of Dread (2003), contained the bulk of the material in this present volume. The latter’s cover by Ash-Tree stalwart Paul Lowe is gorgeous (well, to those of us with predilection for venomous mythopoeic taxonomies) but somewhat misleading to its contents overall. Lowe’s painting for Frances Oliver’s Dancing On Air (Ash-Tree Press, 2004) could rather more accurately represent one of Gilchrist’s tales for example.
Two women artists lend a truer feel to this current imprint that will hopefully have a lengthier availability. I Am Stone cover artist Sandra Gómez also contributes a frontispiece sharing a time-warped synchronicity with the plate “St. George” by the occult artist W. T. Horton (The Book of Images, 1898). Photography by Fay Godwin introduces each section of the tales, perfectly documenting the genius loci of Gilchrist’s moody Peak District. In one case, there is evidence of what appears to be a basilisk skeleton…
2.
Among more than a half dozen scholarly essays, Dan has written about RMG in this journal before: “Bestarred with Fainting Flowers: Symbolism and Myth in the Work of R. Murray Gilchrist” (DR #21) and “I No longer Live in This House: The Liminality of Undeath in the Works of R. Murray Gilchrist” (DR #26).
Pietersen postulates that Gilchrist is a liminal writer, that is, his work falls through the cracks between Gothic, Decadent and Weird genres. It would be a mistake to adhere to the writings of the author any of these labels, albeit a majority of the stories here are Gothic in tone. The Decadent category, let alone Weird, can only truly apply to a handful of Gilchrist’s more ornate fictions, including the aforementioned “Basilisk” and “The Crimson Weaver”. One might classify some other stories as Folk Horror, such as “The Panicle” and the greatest revelation in this volume, “My Friend”. All labels aside, his writing sets an alluring bejeweled snare for the reader’s interest despite the frameworks of melodrama in these narratives. The Spectator said of Gilchrist’s writing in his first novel Passion and Plaything (1890) that it was “and unpleasant book containing far too much in the way of sensuous description”. We will always assent to more of that, please. Several stories of his do have abrupt endings (“The Stone Dragon”), sometimes not quite clear in their resolution à la Frank Stockton.
In some of his later writing, however, Gilchrist developed a clearer, more direct style which does add to the telling. The tragic “The Madness of Betty Hooton” and the darkly comic “Sir Toby’s Wife” (which Pietersen dug up for this collection from The British Library vaults) are examples. The giggling sexton in the second tale could have been a role for that splendid ham barnstormer of the last century, Tod Slaughter.
Pietersen ascribes greater agency to Gilchrist’s female characters as opposed to the ofttimes weak, passive male narrators. But this may be just wishful thinking. Female antagonists such as “The Crimson Weaver” fall easily into the Fin de Siècle trope of La Belle Dame Sans Merci:
“Stooping, with sidelong motions of the head, she approached: bringing with her the smell of such an incense as when amidst Eastern herbs burns the corpse…She was perfect as the Diana, but her skin was deathly white…”
The protagonist Marina in “The Basilisk” is no less objectified:
“Her beauty… was pale and reposeful, the loveliness of a marble image… I had found her laden with flaming tendrils in the thinned woods of my heritage. A very Dryad, robed in grass colour, she was chanting to the sylvan deities. The invisible web took me, and I became her slave.”
3.
Gilchrist wrote twenty-two novels, six short story collections and four regional guidebooks. He must have been somewhat successful, but who was he writing for? Robert was something of a country dandy, who periodically appeared in his local parish wearing a cassock and girdle (predating Montague Summers stylistically). Existing photos of him show a sweaty tousle-headed Scot with physiognomy of a Highland Jean Lorrain, on closer inspection a sly gleam betrayed in the eye of the author posing for Decadent.
Gilchrist’s apprenticeship to the cutlery business until he was twenty-one might have been where he met George Alfred Garfill, who worked in his own family’s scythe works. The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances was dedicated to Garfill who would be Robert’s companion from 1895 until his death.
“My Friend” might be the one story especially written for George. And himself:
“…the friend I had won (the first and the last) loved me so dearly that he would be unhappy unless his hand were clasping mine…”
Parts of this story reads like actual biographical entry:
“Circumstances had bound him to a profession that chafed his very core: but Nature had given him aspirations, and miraged him a future as great (if as worthless) as my own. How daring I grew! Farther and farther I had ventured down the heretical abyss”
The narrator and his friend journey to the countryside and come to a set of Druid stones. What follows is—a meditation? Or is it a flashback to an ancestral memory?
“A sacrificial hymn was beginning at the Circle—a naked and bleeding victim was bound to the altar…the long bearded priests shook their white robes—the sharp knife glittered—and my own stiletto waxed heavy, as it strove to draw me downwards…Again the skies opened, but with only a momentary gleam; one glance of the Almighty Eye. But it was not so swift as
to prevent me from seeing the face of the Sacrifice.”
“My Friend” is worth the cost of admission to this ceremony and this volume alone.
4.
Pietersen states that there are a mere eight copies of Gilchrist’s novel The Labyrinth (1902) on public loan to the entire world. The Spectator review of it upon release as “a book with an atmosphere of nightmare” whets one’s interest. Friend and critic, Arnold Bennett said:
“Murray Gilchrist’s best work lies in his short stories, some of which are merely and quite simply perfect…[but] The Labyrinth…is astounding. The Labyrinth is like a rich, mellow naïve eighteenth century tapestry; whenever I think of it, I think of it as the one truly original modern English novel…Perhaps in about twenty years it will be the correct thing to have read him.” [“Books and Persons”, The New Age, 21 March 1908, p.412]
A humble plea then.
After immersing ourselves in the language (A fourteen page “Notes on the text” with glossary is included) and revelations of I Am Stone, we need a reprint now of this—possibly tragic? romance of The House of The Eleven Staircases. With, of course, no one less than Daniel Pietersen at the helm editorially, brought to print by some canny independent publisher…
After more than one hundred years it would be the correct thing.
JON B. COOKE and RONALD E. TURNER. Slow Death Zero. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp, 2020. 128 pp. $24.95 tpb. ISBN: 978-0-86719-883-6.
I called the doctor
Up in the morning
I had a fever
It was a warning
She said “There’s nothing I can prescribe
To keep your raunchy bag of bones alive”
I got some money left for one more shot
She said “God bless you” I said “Thanks a lot”
It’s a slow, slow death.
–The Flaming Groovies, “Slow Death” (1972)
San Francisco’s proto-punks The ‘Groovies’ lyrics refer to an unrepentant addiction. It was a warning THEN. If you’ve smelled the Purple Haze in the skies from out-of-control wildfires or had a Hard Rain fall by the feet in the NOW of 2021, it could also refer to humanity’s current self-injected climate catastrophe(s).
As a Hippocampus reader why should YOU be interested?
Contributors Richard Corben, Cody Goodfellow, Mike Dubisch, Skinner, and initiator of this all-new 50th Anniversary collection, Thee Jon B. Cooke have all done their servitude in the Lovecraftian art and literary mines. But there’s a different grade of ore here.
Cooke pens a six-page history of Slow Death which was inaugurated two years before that Flaming Groovies single—it would be reason to pick up this anthology alone. As he has done with in-depth articles for Comic Book Artist (TwoMorrows Publishing), Jon serves up a thorough look at the underground comic title, What It Is and How It Came To Be, with every cover of the original run reproduced. Gary Arlington, who started the San Francisco Comic Book Company which published it had a vision: “My dream is for E. C. Comics [The groundbreaking 1950s publishers of Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales, among other titles] to return with the better underground cartoonists.” Ron Turner was another fan. Drew Friedman contributes an inside front cover portrait of “Baba” Ron, The Once and Future founder and Last Gasp guru and
this publication’s co-editor. Ken Meyer’s Jr.’s vignette of Cooke in Wally Wood-ish space
gear should be a tee shirt design for those of us fans (some since JBC’s seminal ’90s fanzine Tekeli-li!). Make it so.
From the 30 artists and accompanying 6 writers here are a few highlights then, reflecting toxic rainbows:
William Stout’s art will always get this writer’s attention. A great cover showcasing his rich detailed style is followed by a 7-page piece that is more optimistic than most of its company called “Antarctica”. He states
“The world’s greatest photographers all noted that it was impossible to capture the color
of the continent because of color photography’s chemical limitations…as an artist, I
don’t have that limitation—whatever colors I see I can put down onto paper!”
The Colour Out of Antarctica, indeed. Stout had done three covers in a row for the original run of Slow Death, The “Two-Fisted” homage on #8’s Greenpeace Issue being a standout and predecessor to this current collection.
Richard Corben is responsible for possibly the best comic—excuse me—graphic narrative adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft ever done, “The Rats In The Walls” (Skull #5, 1972). One of the last pieces done before his recent passing “Garbage Man” is included here, in contrast to Stout’s storyline being one of the bleakest. “With a nod & thanks to Richard Corben & Howie” (“When Howie Made It In The Real World”, Slow Death #2, 1972), Jon Cooke notes in the Errol McCarthy illustrated tale “Last Chance Gas” that he penned. It has a happy(?) if not righteous ending for its two protagonists.
Cody Goodfellow and Mike Dubisch (Black Velvet Cthulhu) team up for two offerings, “Flotsam & Jetsam” and “Terminal Colony”. Both are scathing indictments of those who become part of the solution only to become a bigger problem—Spoiler: The cancer on the Earth may be US. Goodfellow in particular has proven a true discerning conscience for the enlightened Weird Community but is no Cody Comelately. We are lucky to have him visit this planet.
A Wizard, A True Star, the Bay Area’s Skinner delivers a Panter-esque double page spread of E. C.-like aliens finding our world already trashed: “But hey! At least the flooding makes for some good tubin’ across town!” says greeter Baba Ron trying to scam some beers.
Brooklyn’s Danny Hellman (who I first encountered by covers done for the fanzine Brutarian) ends the book with a faux comic book cover for The Fighting Hippie #18, with Ron Turner breaking that 4th wall to save penguin hugger Greta Thunberg (to whom this whole book is dedicated) from the evil machinations of John D. Rockefeller. There is a suggestion by Jon Cooke of future issues beyond this celebratory revival.
If we make it that long of course before our last gasp.
Slow death…eat my mind away
Slow death…turn my guts to clay
Slow death
Yeah, yeah.