I’ve been reading a bit of Algernon Blackwood recently, so I thought I’d post what is one of my favourite fantasy illustrations, Matt Fox’s two-page spread for Blackwood’s excellent weird story, “The Wendigo”:
It would have originally been divided by inner page margins, hence the fact that the two halves don’t fit together.
It originally appeared in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in June 1944 (Blackwood’s tale was first published in 1910), but the above scan comes courtesy of Peter Haining’s wonderful Terror! A History of Horror Illustrations from the Pulp Magazines, a 1976 book chock-full of classic (and not-so-classic) pictures from the pulps and penny dreadfuls.
When I first saw this illustration, I was initially put off by its unrealistic style, but I kept coming back to it, and eventually it won me over. Nowadays, I’ve come to prefer illustration which is as much design as realistic representation, and, particularly in fantastic art where an air of make-believe is so necessary, I always find art which is only realistic — however perfect — just doesn’t do it for me as much as stuff which is plainly artificial, and so obviously the product of a human imagination.
If you want some more Matt Fox, here’s a pretty thorough gallery of his Weird Tales covers, illustrations, and some comic work, over at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.
My Lovecraftian story, “Zathotha” has been published in Graeme Phillips’ Cyäegha issue four, out now. (For ordering details, see this page, on Stranger Aeons.) Cyäegha is produced in a limited run of 75 copies per issue, and has in the past reproduced some intriguing, rare Lovecraftiana, both fiction and art. Issue 3, for instance, was devoted to the Australian pulp writer Vol Molesworth. Issue 4 mixes old and new, including fiction, poetry, reviews and an interview with artist Paul Carrick. Anyway, I’m thrilled to be in its pages.
Earlier this year I was asked to contribute to Lovecraft Black & White, a volume of original illustrations inspired by the works of H P Lovecraft, published by Dagon Press in Italy, and today my contributor’s copy arrived! There’s a lot of high-quality work here, which puts my offering rather in the pale, I can’t help thinking. I was among three who chose to depict “The Music of Erich Zann” — or “La musica di Erich Zann”, I should say, as the book is in Italian, of course.
I took the “black & white” literally and didn’t use any greys — everyone else seems to have! Here’s my pic. The main idea was to try and represent the music Zann used to calm the things beyond his cosmic window with a blending of occult and musical symbols:
Despite not being able to read the text, I love this short comic strip, which seems to be about the development of the young H P Lovecraft’s imagination. I must put the text through Google Translate to find out:
Here’s a couple more pages from the book:
It originally appeared in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in June 1944 (Blackwood’s tale was first published in 1910), but the above scan comes courtesy of Peter Haining’s wonderful Terror! A History of Horror Illustrations from the Pulp Magazines, a 1976 book chock-full of classic (and not-so-classic) pictures from the pulps and penny dreadfuls.
