American Horror Story

Deleted the B&W version of this from the blog, as I hadn't realised how faded some part of it were. The colours have come out a touch more saturated than the original, but not too bad. Still unhappy with the one likeness, but still pretty pleased with the pic as a whole.
As flawed as the show was I found it a lot of fun and loved how it embraced as many horror tropes as possible as if it had invented them. This pic was done for the very talented Chris Doherty, if you've not been reading Video Nasties, go there now.

Curse of the Werewolf

I love Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf, one of Hammer's (many) best films. Not sure I got his likeness, but this was a quick sketch, so I forgive myself.

Brrrrrmmmmmm!

Incase you don't visit the Groovy Age of Horror blog (and you should), or follow me on twitter (and, well, you can, but should? Not essential), here's sketch I did for it. Psychomania is a strange film I've mentioned on this blog before, Beryl Reid as a devil worshipping mam and Nicky Henson as her Hell's Angel immortal son.... what's not to like?

Groovy

My book project revealed, it's the UK edition of Bruce Campbell's autobiography 'If Chins Could Kill'! There's a new intro by Mr Campbell for this edition, and here's the full wraparound cover I drew for it.

Dumb luck that I got the chance to do this, and nothing like my original idea, but the chance to do it even if it was a very definite brief was too hard to pass up.
Art style was done as requested, the look is supposed to somehow be a cross between the classic EC sensibility and a more modern take a la Bryan Hitch.
The book is being published by Aurum and will be available fairly soon at Amazon, Waterstones and Bookdepository and loads of places, even ones on streets.
And for anyone interested, here's my first idea, it's rough, and based on a fairly recognisable Evil Dead still, but my take was to make the cover look like an issue of Famous Monsters.

Kids love Lovecraft

Back to the to the fun cartooning for a bit. This is a bit of art for a pitch, the scene doesn't appear in the comic but when I was told the idea, kid's perform cover-ups for weird going's on, I got this image of Lovecraftian horrors hidden in a phone-box.

Now it can be told

A few months ago I promised a sneak peak of a comic I was working on before finding out sneak peaks were not allowed. Well, the comic's out so I guess I can talk about it. The story is called 'Etc' and it's in Boom Studio's Zombie Tales no. 7. The script was written by Shane Oakley and I was happy to find Shane's scripts have the same dark over the top humour as his awesome artwork.
I made a bit of a mistake and missed something from the script, so I've added it in for this post, sorry Shane, hope this makes up for it a bit.

Drawing and book stuff

Got word back about Hero-Z, and it's good news. It's great news actually, with two very big Brother Lee Love style thumbs up! Yay me! I take back all my panicked doubt and vow not to do that again. Until the next time:)
Still waiting for news about my slightly earlier secret project so you'll have to wait abit longer to see anything from that - unless you asked me and I sent you a sneak peak!
In the meantime I've started a new project, it's fairly brief and I'll probably post a few images over the next few days, so keep an eye out of you're interested.
A few posts ago I mentioned I was about to start reading 'Bust' by Bruen and Starr, well, it was fun, nothing amazing, brisk enjoyable read. Not quite 'hard' crime though, and as it's published by a company called Hard Case Crime it's fair to expect that. It was harder and less farcical than Carl Hiaasen though, and followed the same principle of low life character's greed and stupidity creating trouble.
After that I moved on to a book called 'Crimson Orgy' by Austin Williams which was also a lot of fun. Set during the making of an early (just after 'Blood Feast' in fact), and lost, exploitation horror movie called, you guessed it, 'Crimson Orgy'. The making of the movie proves to be difficult, but more than the sense of strange and impending doom, I enjoyed what seemed to be a genuine feeling of a small band of wannabes, not bothereds and troubled folk united and torn apart in their quest to make a film on the cheap. The prose is simple and direct without being clunky and the characters are nicely defined. I discovered this book, a fair few others through the wonderful Groovy Age of Horror blog, if you haven't visited it then give it a look.
After finishing 'Crimson Orgy' it seemed like the perfect time to pick a book of the shelf that had been sat patiently waiting for for quite a while. I'm only about a quarter of the way through 'Flicker' (it is over 600 pages though) but I'm enjoying it immensely. It's about fabled, and fictional, director Max Castle who started out working on The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and progressed to classic gothic horror of his own and then got eaten up by Hollywood producing B movies after suffering disgrace at the hands of those who didn't understand his work. His reputation initially seems to be nonexistent and his films lost, some never even released, but after a few quirks of fate one his films is discovered leading to a reappraisal. That's where I'm up to at the moment, and the back cover promises a lot more oddness.
Very nice dense, but easy to follow, prose and some serious research, and obvious love, raise Flicker much higher than the cheap tagline 'Sunset Boulevard meets the Da Vinci Code'. The mere mention of the Da Vinci Code's enough to put me off, but it does seem that it's mentioned only in an atempt to entice the millions who bothered with the poorly written item - although content wise there is a parallel of a secret religious order and a conspiracy, but still, cheap marketing is cheap marketing. Rosak has been involved writing about counterculture before, and this history obviously comes in handy for the time and setting of Flicker.
Can't remember when I first heard about Flicker, I know it was before I saw the intitially similar John Carpenter short 'Cigarette Burn' (not his best work, but well worth seeing), but what did make me want to read it was Murray Ewing's review here. Murray also writes about Cigarette Burns here, and adds to the 'fictional film with a dark past' genre with his review of Ramsey Campbell's 'The Grin of the Dark' here. I'm sure I've got a copy of Campbell's other entry into this genre, 'Ancient Images', kicking around somewhere too. 2000ad had a stab at the genre recently with 'Chiaroscuro' by Si Spurrier and 'Smudge' (a pen name for Cam Smith judging by the artwork), and although it was fun and reasonably enjoyable, it seemed a little uninspired to me. Also worth a mention is The Faceless: A Terry Sharpe Story by Robert Tinnell and Adrian Salmon. It doesn't really fall into the genre, but it does involve fictional films of a very Hammer-esque nature, and is damn good with some wonderful artwork - and that's all the excuse I need to mention it:)
Enough of this ramble, for those who haven't heard already, Garen (yes, related to Murray) Ewing's superb strip 'Rainbow Orchid' has been picked up by large UK kid's publisher Egmont, as they also publish Tintin over here I can't think of a more perfect fit for Garen's perfect book. Garen has pursued his own vision to produce a story of outstanding quality, which is laudable enough, that he'll now be able to reach an even bigger audience is richly deserved , there's more info on this excellent news here.

Books, comics and a film

I've enthused about Richard Sala before, so getting hold of the two issues of Delphine was a real treat for me. As with Sala's other long form works there's a grotesue supporting cast, leisurely twists and turns and a genuine sense of carefully structured mystery, but what I particularly enjoyed was what seems like a return to the almost poetic tone of his shorter pieces. The wash tones are lovely too. I can't wait for the rest of the issues.
Shattered Glass stars the always excellent Peter Sarsgaard, but what was surprising was not just how good it was, but how good Hayden Christensen was. Once again George Lucas drags a duff performance out of a most talented actor.
'Little Girl Lost' by Richard Aleas is part of the Hard Case Crime series, and so far it's one of my favourites. The fact that it has a cover by the great Robert McGinnis is icing on a very lovely cake. The story it self it not terribly original but it's so nicely done I didn't really care. In the same series 'Home is the Sailor' by Day Keene was let down by an overenthusiastic quote claiming the book to be better than Jim Thompson (a similarly silly quote foolishly compares Aleas to Chandler). It's a mugs game comparing something to genius. The itself was actually pretty enjoyable, and yes, Thompson-esque, but rather than out doing the great man, it was Thompson-lite.
Gilbert Adair's loving parody/homage to Agatha Christie and English crime authors of her type, 'The Act of Roger Murgatroyd' is a wonderful frothy and witty read. Splendid you might say. It works as a genuine book of it's type as well as funny play on them, rather like my beloved 'Dungeon' series. Read this one with a pot of tea and some scones.
I'm still working on 'MY robot', it's not going as fast as I'd like but not as slow as it would appear. Posting is suffering from my drawing panels and pages out of sequence. At the moment pages 3 and 4 only need one panel each and they're done, so they'll probably both go up together. In the meantime I've recently finished rejigging an old piece of work, I'll post that later, maybe tomorrow.

Peter Cushing

Just finished this as a present for someone.
I'm not much of a caricaturist as I tend to strip away rather than exaggerate but I hope I managed to capture Peter Cushing's striking handsome features as well as his elegant and sinister brittleness - it's why I opted for the younger Dr Frankenstein look. It makes me smile to think of him playing Grand Moth Tarkin in his slippers, how simply British. An incredible actor.
As I'm giving away the original artwork I used nice paper and brushes instead of the cheap paper and chunky markers I've used recently figuring photoshop doesn't care what I use to make lines with. It reminded me that I love work that exists finished in the real world rather than the digital one. I even decided to try a bit of dry brushing on watercolour paper and am quite pleased with the results. Hope it goes down well with the giftees (think Imade that word up!)
Might draw Christopher Lee to complete things.

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.

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.

More to life than reading... apparently

Took me a while but I finally finished reading 'Heart Shaped Box' by Joe Hill and very enjoyable it was too. The main character, Jude (a mix between Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson Alice Cooper I guess.... he's a rock star btw), is sort of a bit unlikeable, but I liked him anyway as as well as having a bit of charm he's also a redeemable character, important in horror. There's not much in the way of plot, it's more of a ramble, but that work's fine. It's more of a ghost story than a horror one if the distinction matters and whilst it won't be worrying M.R. James coffin it's a fine yarn and I hope it does well.
Next on the reading list is G.W. Dahlquist's The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters which I have high hopes for. I was very lucky to get hold of an advance copy of this (although it's been out in the US for a while now) as the proof is a lovely looking thing it's own right presented as 10 seperate volumes with Victorian stylings.
Drop by in a day or two and I should have a page of pencils for Zombie of the Great Unwashed posted.

For Mr Glazebrook

Man this one took longer than it should've! I fiddled about far too much with the placing of each zombie to try and give them a decent outline but still look like a big jumble of DEATH!
Obviously this scene doesn't quite appear in Return of the Living Dead, but I'm gonna call artistic license if that's ok.

What was I thinking?

Mix boredom, obsessiveness, bizarre sleeping hours and new beta blog account and you get me wading through my old blog posts. Which is weird, and scarily enlightening. Lot’s of posts about plans for things that haven’t happened, morose musing and not enough actual work.
Glad I got a lot of that out of my system:)
Found some interesting comics as I wasted valuable sleeping time, Zombee by Miles Gunter and Victor Santos sounds like fun; samurai, ninja, zombies? Yeah, I’m buying that.
I’ll also be buying Chickenhare. There’s preview pages here and the Bone influence shows pretty heavy, which is fine as it also has it’s own flavour.

Captain Kronos vampire Hunter

Welcome to anyone wondering here from the Forbidden Planet blog!
Thanks to a little help from Danny I've finally upgraded to beta which means I can tag all the various randomness.
Anyway, here's the skinny about the latest pic. Before Buffy, there was Kronos, and he was one seriously cool chap!
For those who don't know Kronos was a Hammer film and was written and directed by Brian 'Avengers' Clemens. It's one of the best Hammer films (which is saying something) and has some brilliant touches.
As I mentioned before I faffed about with the background, mainly out of guilt for the lacklustre Phibes background earlier. It's not the most detailed of bgs but I think it works at least.

Frightmare by Pete Walker

‘Making Mischief’ is the title of Pete walker’s biography and it’s aptly named. Walker’s supposedly best 3 films (I can’t say if they are or not having not seen all his films... yet) are all designed to create controversy, or as he put’s it ‘to rub people up the wrong way.’ Thankfully there’s a bit more to them than that. Walker’s films are bleak grubby cynical affairs with black humour and over the top concepts that brilliantly capture the 70’s, perfectly in keeping with the decade that spawned the excellent UK comic ‘Action’ (Pete Walker directing a film version of ‘Kids Rule Ok’ would be amazing. In fact he’d have been perfect for the previously mentioned ‘Psychomania’ come to think of it) and the once excellent ‘2000ad’.
So far my favourite Walker film is ‘Frightmare’ which funnily enough is the least controversy courting film of his loose trilogy and does seem to be the best (although ‘House of the Whipcord’ is a close second). Plotwise the film seems to try and play things a bit coy by not coming out and saying what it’s about, yet Walker’s exploitation pedigree and his obvious affection for liberal amounts of blood mean that the hints are less than subtle and nothing else about the film or the marketing implies that there’s meant to be some great reveal. Which is a roundabout way of saying I’m going to tell you what’s going on, so consider this a spoiler. ‘Frightmare’ is about a cannibal old lady. There, the cat’s out the bag.
When Walker first cast Sheila Keith he must have instantly realised he’d found his muse, either that or she was cheap/available/game for a laugh, either way both found the perfect match. In ‘Frightmare’ Keith adds something a little extra to her creepy old lady act (and a fine act it is too!), gusto. The literally lip smacking relish she displays when she goes in for the kill, especially the bit with the drill, is over the top genius that must make even Tom Baker turn an envious shade of green. It’s all the more effective when juxtaposed with her scenes as a slightly confused old lady.
There’s a bit more to the plot than that and it’s actually quite a good one involving teenage kicks far too loving husbands dopey psychiatrists and Peter ‘Manuel’ Sachs, but I’ve already given too much away. ‘Frightmare’ is available as part of an Anchor Bay boxset and it’s very nicely put together, 5 films, a fair amount of extras and available pretty cheap on amazon and no doubt elsewhere..... it’s also got ‘Die Marianne Die’ which has a title sequence that features Susan George wearing a very skimpy outfit and giving it some serious go go dancing.... just thought I’d mention it.

ZombieWorld Champion of the Worms by Mike Mignola & Pat McEown

So, zombies, I love ‘em, and the last couple of years proves I’m not alone, not even part of a small select audience, I’m actually part of a huge flesh eating hoard. Cool. The zombie craze hadn’t boomed when COTW came out but now it’s back to take advantage and I’m very happy it has, I never got round to replacing my original issues and I much prefer collections - especially when they have lovely sketchbook sections at the back. I don’t think ZombieWorld quite took off when it first came out, Mignola and McEown set up this environment with COTW for other creators to follow and play in. The trouble is it was a hard act to follow and more importantly the COTW felt like a personal vision, the others were just stories (interestingly Bob Fingerman who did the excellent ‘Beg The Question’ wrote a ZombieWorld story, it was really good but it just didn’t quite have the same spark as COTW. Fingerman’s just finishing his own zombie story, nothing to do with ZombieWorld, and it looks fantastic - ‘Recess Pieces’ (a pun Americans will get easier than most Brits I guess) has a space on my bookshelf all lined up ready).
Anyway, on with the review.
Lovecraftian monsters, mummies, zombies, museums, a solid quirky story and absolutely beautiful artwork. It’s the artwork that really sold me (although Mignola’s story is great, especially as it manages to be a little different to the usual zombie tale - don’t get me wrong, I like the usual zombie tale, but it’s nice to have a change), McEown’s previous work (on Grendel was great, but Zombie World was something else, Basil Wolverton meets Yves Chaland on a particularly strong Herge kick, just jaw droppingly beautiful stuff. Sadly McEown seemed to disappear from comics (into animation I belive) with only a few stories left behind (one of which was a serious inspiration for my own Simian Smith as it happens), I’m hoping his recent reappearence in Dark Horse’s Book of the Dead bodes means he wants to do more comics, I’ll be keeping an eye out.
COTW's demands you read it and it's pretty cheap (insert your own 'arm and a leg/zombie' gag here!) so you've got no reason not to give it a go. NOW!

I Drink Your Blood

Despite it’s lurid title ‘I Drink Your Blood’ is a surprisingly sensitive film chronicling the plight of a young boy stuck in dying town. Okay, that’s a lie, ‘IDYB’ is as lurid and as fun as it’s title suggests and any review of it is pointless as it’s the kind of film you’ll either love or don’t care about. I loved it. Great drive in fodder with a strong emphasis on gore. What is surprising about ‘IDYB’ is how cool the gore is, there’s some really choice moments which although not what you’d call convincing are effective.
Like ‘Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things’ ‘IDYB’ avoids the typical pitfall of this kind of film, ie dumb kids played by bad actors mill around doing nothing we care about until near the end when the director can finally spend the tiny budget on the effects. A bit of wit, something for the dumb kids to do and a lot of verve give ‘IDYB’ a solid pace, and they don’t wait until the end for cheap thrills either.
So, if you want a film with a plot that involves satanic hippies, LSD spiked old geezers, rabid dog infected meat pies and people running around attacking each other all to the strains of a very funky cheesy sound track I can give no higher recommendation than ‘IDYB’.