"I have seen the dark universe yawning..."

I stumbled upon John Coulthart's blog last night and was reminded that the Italian edition of Snakes and Ladders came out in August this year from Black Velvet of Bologna, using, as you can see, the smart cover designs Michael Evans made for my own edition. I remember he saw my daughter Erin wearing a t-shirt with a snake design on it, had her change out of it so he could scan it and play around with it in photoshop, changing the colours and everything. That's the book, you will recall, in which Alan Moore conjoined the Victorian painter Edward Burne-Jones, and the co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule Francis Crick, in what appeared to be a rather far-fetched alliance. And while moving design components around I found that the Victorian Artist's The Golden Stairs made a perfect superimposition on the double helix of the DNA, though once again it's thanks to Evans for making the idea work on the page. (English version is in A Disease of Language from Knockabout in the Uk, via Top Shelf in the USA who still have copies of the old 48 pager with the snake cover if that has taken your fancy (it's not in Disease))(click for larger) But all my smartarse superimposition was chaff when the the cd was released some time later with the beautiful fold-out art by John Coulthart:

The Italian Serpenti has a translation of the long interview I made with Alan and includes a handful of photos taken of the original performance of the work in 1999 (or one of Moore's other performances; it's not clear) which were not in my own edition and which I presume must be Coulthart's, since parts of them are sampled into the cd insert designs. I didn't have them in my edition because I was too much in awe of this guy's technical ability to introduce myself and ask. He's probably got nice crisp colour shots of these, but I'm still awestruck so I've just scanned them from the book.



Coulthart has a new book of his own out. The Haunter of the Dark: And Other Grotesque Visions (Paperback)Paperback: 136 pages Publisher: Creation Oneiros (November 2006). This is the two part cover shown at the artist's own site:

From the Publisher's description: "Two modern graphic arts vision arias interpret Lovecraft’s stories as graphic novels -- and a Kaballah! Includes: * illustrations for The Haunter of the Dark and The Call of Cthulhu * thirty pages of previously unseen drawings and paintings * selections from the controversial Lord Horror series Hard Core Horror and Reverbstorm, which have been evolving Lovecraftian imagery in bold new directions * Material specially created for this volume includes illustrations for The Great Old Ones, * Also new, a kabbalah of Lovecraft’s gods with accompanying evocations by Alan Moore."
From Moore's intro to the book: "John Coulthart is the man that Beardsley or Rossetti would have been had they grown up somewhere like Salford and had access to a VCR. Had his heart set on a career as poet maudit but then failed the medical. He’d got the look, he’d got the attitude, the only thing that let him down was the consumption. You can’t be a decadent unless you’re coughing poppies, handkerchief like Flanders with a monogram. It was unfair. He’d come so close. The cathode tan. The skin so sensitive it acted as a film emulsion. Out on midnight walks, standing in one spot for too long, ends up with constellations printed on his cheeks and forehead. Pallor, though, is not enough. He needed some externalized display of illness, some tuberculotic flourish. Finally, he siphons off the inner toxins using a Rapidograph as catheter, blots up the nightmare seepage onto Bristol board, septic chromatograms that are at first inchoate, without form. Lovecraft provides an alphabet, a hideous vocabulary within which the artist can contain these gorgeous, sinister transmissions. Later, other conduits are discovered, these including David Britton’s fascist operatic lead, Lord Horror; Sweeney Todd at high tea with the Mitfords. Coulthart re- imagines Auschwitz out of Lovecraft’s R’lyeh, as a horrible lost temple sunk beneath the murk of Europe’s dreamtime. Banished from political reality, the Old Ones lurk there at the threshold and anticipate their terrible return. Blast patterns from a Brick Lane nailbomb explicate the Yellow Sign. Azathoth manifests in Deansgate, a mosaic of fire and flying splinterglass. Coulthart soaks up the cultural heavy metals, will metabolise them, pass them on in a depleted form as hatched miasmas, masonries collapsed in stipple. Wet black viper lines, escaped and slithering, hissing from the nib..." (amazon page),

Avril

Springboarding from some recent comments: very pleased that Marcus Gipps, author of the review I linked to, didn't take offence at my proposed 'It's not a graphic novel, Percy' campaign. On the contrary, he regretted missing the opportunity to nab the original sketch. Tobey Cook got that (any sketches I do for the blog I'll be mailing off to the first person who puts their hand up, so you have to look in regularly). Hayley Campbell (we always give her the full two names. Not sure how that came about. Funny thing is that most people who meet her and don't know this is a long tradition going back to her birth , find themselves doing it too) has demanded to be the first to sport the slogan on a t-shirt. Hey, you know, I'm not copyrighting this thing. If somebody beats her to it, i'll put the photo up here. I'm not even promoting anything, except chaos of course.
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Aaron White's comment to yesterday's post reminded me of something that fell out of a library book I once borrowed: several photos, I think four or five, of a young girl in various poses, obviously enjoying just being herself. Maybe I should have tried to trace her (or whoever was cherishing her photos) through the library but this was in a period when i was up to my neck in problems and wasn't thinking clearly. Or at least, not about other people's problems. Considering it later, the photos looked like they were taken in the 1960s, twenty years earlier, and they came to haunt me. When I needed a model for the doomed Avril Allard in Alan Moore's The Birth Caul, I remembered these images and, using them, I was able to recreate an authentic-seeming girl from their various angles and viewpoints. Perhaps my sympathetic sadness for somebody's loss of these lovely photos helped me to create the required tragic note.
"His sister Avril, 5 years older, wears black tights and a perfume called Midnight Passion. Smugly notices but does not acknowledge the mute worship of her brother's friends.

"is sat astride her boyfriend's motorcyle, when it hits the rear end of a lorry, 'doing the ton' along the Weedon Road."

"playground Mythology, our only truth, maintains that she is cut in two on impact, torso there to one side of the road, her perfect legs upon the other.""And still conscious, but gone to a beatific place beyond the pain. And smiling. An immaculate teen angel, dying there upon the glittering macadam when we loved her."

The Birth Caul was collected earlier this year along with Snakes and Ladders and My long interview with Alan Moore in The Disease of Language published in a neat hardcover from Knockabout, with design work by my pal Evans, who just about fell out with me over the whole thing. My pals, whatcha gonna do with them?