Basil Gogos

A bunch of books turned up on my doormat yesterday and today. Reckon I'll have to knock it on the head for this (paid) month, most of what I've bought has been 2nd hand, but not all.
Anyway, got some nice stuff to read. 'Thrill-Power Overload' is the history of 2000ad and full of interesting behind the scenes info.... zarjaz! Cassanova by Matt Fraction and Gabrial Ba is a lot of fun, stylish artwork that reminds me of a cross between Eduardo Risso and Paul Grist and a story that's Jerry Cornelius by any other name, but with some other interesting concepts thrown in so it feels fresh not derivative.
Coolest of the bunch is 'The Art of Basil Gogos', I've only seen a little of his work, the odd cover of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' viewed from the other side of the counter of a 2nd hand book stall in Hartlepool when I was a wee un. Gogos produced some perfect portraits of horror icons, in fact did his bit to make them icons, certainly in America, this quote from Roger Corman sums it up perfectly, "Basil's art was an amazing gift for me as a filmmaker. Fans were scared once they had seen one of his portraits. They knew the picture would terrify them by the time they got to the theatre." And if that's not good enough, here's link to his site and the cover to his book.

Red in claw

Kelvin's comments on my Nightmare on Elm Street pic have prompted me to update. Not a major difference, so I've added in a couple of sketches. As usual I sort of like the sketches more than the finished piece, aint it always the way.

British horror

So, you know how I found some interesting stuff in an Oxfam book shop a while ago? Well, I had the same success in a Barnardo's bookshop. I'd not read anything by R. Chetwynd-Hayes before, but was familiar with his name due to Jeremy Dyson talking about him on a documentary about the old BBC Ghost Story For Christmas (genius) series and because his work was adapted into 'The Monster Club' and 'From Beyond the Grave' films, which, coincidentally, were the two books I found. So far I've read a few stories in FBTG, and they're great, a lovely mix of cosy British quirks and horror, one making the other stand out nicely.
In the meantime I've started 'Obsession' by Ramsey Campbell, it's very good so far. I've only read short stories by Campbell before, they're very good indeed, he has a nice prose style, it's occasionally wanders a bit, but he seems to know where he's going.

Simon Gane

Probably should've linked to Simon Gane's blog ages ago, but some things are so good you want to keep em to yourself. Getting hold of Simon's work was tough, specially since I left london and the small press friendly bosom of Gosh, but I've got hold of a fair bit (wouldn't mind getting hold of the rest of The Adventures of Scrumpy and Smiles, assuming there was more than one issue), Punk Strips and Meet John Dark are must for your bookshelf. Since collaborating with Andi Watson on the wonderful Paris (due out as a proper book with spine and stuff very soon) Simon's work will hopefully reach a bigger audience with DC's The Vinyl Underground, here's hoping.

Nightmare On Elm Street

Odd choice of pin up for me as I don't really care for Freddy Krueger, even a gore hound like me is a bit put off by the strange love people had for Krueger, as played up by each film where Robert Englund portrayed him as almost lovable with a quip for every occasion.
On the other hand I did like the inventiveness of the dream sequences, and all this is pretty hindsighty. But really, I did this because I suddenly had an idea for a visual and when I scribbled the twist curving figure I quite liked it.
Oddly the colouring is not how I originally intended, but I figured what the hell, mess around a bit.

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly on DVD

At last! Only a few months to wait and pretty cheap. Danny turned me on to this and I've been waiting ages for a prohttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifper release (Redemption were supposed to bedoing it but that was ages ago), it sounds utterly fantastic and one of the main reasons I bought Jonathan Rigby's excellent - which clued me in to a load of brilliant sounding films.

Zardoz

Okay, I give up. Think this is as good as I'm gonna get it without starting from scratch. There's two big mistakes here. One was with the colour, I was aiming to do something with a limited palette and then throw the big red nappy and 'x' into the mix to make it jump out. Good idea, I think, but I haven't pulled it off, there's no contrast with the colours or shades. The other mistake was to fall under the spell of someone else's artwork. Still, a couple of important lessons there.
The original drawing had a few other figures in the background, but it distracted from Zardoz's big floaty head.
If you've seen the insanity that is John Boorman's 'Zardoz', you'll know that the phallic positioning of that gun is not accidental:)
BTW, haven't said this in a while, but all criticism is welcome.

No picture

There really should be a rather lovely picture of the film Zardoz here. Sadly I've been struggling with it, which is annoying as I had the basic thing drawn. Then I redrew it. The I scanned and coloured it. Then I recoloured. Again. Again. Still not happy. Colouring is hard, and I've been looking at some amazing work by people who seems to be easily able to do then kind of things I'm struggling to do, inspiring, but infuriating. I will finish the thing by the end of the week. Def.

Redux

Just finished messing around with 'Zombie of the Great Unwashed', it's now got a grey tone and some general tidying up. If you want to see the new version go here I'm going to work on a toned version of 'Bad Advice', my contribution to 'Best New Manga', I might even redo some of the bit's that don't work, it's a bit of a Lucas, but seeing as I was turned away from doing something for the 2nd volume I figure it probably does need improving. No badly CGed characters will be added though:)