THE WOODS

Here is the story "THE WOODS", such as it is, that George Turner starred in. He had a BALL playing Uncle Fogey, got into the costume changes etc with great enthusiasm. He owned a "native shield" prop from his beloved KING KONG which you can see on the wall in one shot, although that is not the room he was actually in. This was my first experiment with "live action comics" which I actually thought I had invented, forgetting for a moment there was a whole tradition called "fumetti" where captions are added to photos! Of course the digital manipulation involved was not same as the fumettis I had seen (where one simply took pictures and added words to whatever was in them). I collaged my people into whatever backgrounds and situations I needed and added the monsters etc. Dark Horse published three volumes of these stories as trade paperbacks but this particular story is not in them. It was a perfunctory exercise- I needed a story to try out my technique so I just banged one out and went with it- and I know it's not much of a story which is why I didn't use it in the books. But it DOES feature the late, great George Turner and will always be special to me for that.

George Turner

George Turner was a great guy who co-wrote (although it was MOSTLY him) The Making of King Kong, the definitive chronicle of that monumental and immortal film. And I'm not talking about "the 70's one" junior! George was a great writer and artist and a dear friend. We worked together doing storyboards for Filmation, even carpooling and sharing laughs and stories all the while. (He once grumbled about their Tarzan cartoon show that "Tarzan has to KILL somebody once in a while!") George passed away a few years back but it was a true privilege to call him a friend. He was also the editor of American Cinematographer magazine for many years and authored many books on movies including The Cinema of Adventure, Romance, and Terror (which spelled ART to him!). I can by no means offer a real biography of George but he was a genial and mischievous gent from Texas with a southern drawl and a twinkle in his eye. He gave me this ink wash drawing (obviously inspired by the work of Willis O'Brien and Marcel Delgado) as a gift and I thought I would share it. I asked George why Kong and many old movies were so great and the Jurassic Parks and their kin seemed so lame by comarison. George puffed on his pipe, looked off wistfully and opined: Well those OLD boys like to go out in the world and DO things... these NEW boys like to sit around in offices...". Amen. One other quick expample of his wit. We were in a Mexican restaurant and I noticed they had tongue tacos and I said, "Hey, George! You ever had a tongue taco?" and he shot back "well, that would be a TALK-o, wouldn't it?" I miss George. He graciously volunteered himself as a star of the first "photo comic" I made, a lame story called THE WOODS, which I will share with you. Soon. Soonish. Soonishly...

Murder Ink

Told in the manner of a silent movie, the actual movie (if you can call it that!) can be viewed right cheer... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjyMAYDrGqA

"THAT!"

"How does it feel to share your body with an ALIEN life form? "To be TRAPPED with a hideous, unwanted THING? I know... I can tell you. This is my story." So opens the horror tale called THAT from the pages of PETE VON SHOLLY'S MORBID volume 2 DEAD BUT NOT OUT (from Dark Horse- get it now!" It's a kind of 50's paranoid kid-or is he? /alien invasion/ thing. It's weird- Morbid (voume one) sold great and continues to sell but the second book (which is much better in some respects!) lays there like a lox! Here's a link in case I convince you that you need this book for your continued well being and literary wholeness: http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/10-397/Pete-Von-Shollys-MORBID-Volume-2-TPB-Dead-But-Not-Out The story features David Merritt, long time pal and boss of the model shop at Stan Winston's studio (Legacy) as the dad and comics great Mike Vosburg as the teacher.

Too Many Monsters???

I wanted to cram more monsters into my History of Monsters Mural than I could fit! The damn thing was already over 35 feet wide (at one foot tall). I was going to put a cryptozoology section in and even toyed with the idea of a section of my own monsters (seen here) from the pages of my Dark Horse MORBID books, which I wish some people would go and buy... ahem. Especially volume 2!

That's the Spirit

Burton for Certain

So I made a couple goofy Superman drawings while working on Tim Burton's version of the movie a while ago. What I did had NOTHING to do with the script and is in no way representative of what they were going to do. Then I made Ed Wood Super Hands for Comic Book Nerd (from TwoMorrows- an imperishable classic!) combining a bunch of names from Burton movies. I don't generally like his movies or go to see his movies. The last one I actually liked was Beetlejuice, and now that I think about it, that might be the only one. I workd on Mars Attacks but don't think that one ever quite figured out what it was...

Aaaaaaaaaand here also are the Haunted Mansioning lenticularization of Mr Burton himself for your viewing pleasure. Oh wait! I forgot- I also liked Ed Wood!

Big Schtick

NIGHTMARE BED

From a comic story of the same name. That I did.

Random Oddments and Peripherabilia

1) Andrea Von Sholly's unproduced Yithian. (But you can get the box at http://www.morbidmonster.com/)

2) How The Thing should have looked in those not so good movies.

3) Monster Models we used to want. I used to want them anyway!

4) An illustration from SPINECRAWLER, my forthcoming
graphic novel. More news to come.
5) Jennifer Tilly reads Pete Von Sholly's MORBID (get it from Dark Horse!) in Romania while
waiting to start shooting SEED OF CHUCKY.

Personal Evacuation Comics

This Melvin This Monster Rides Again

I did one of these Melvins and posted this before so what the hell? Can you spot the fake cover? Dell published ten issues of Melvin in '65 and '66 but the last simply reprinted the first so I made a new cover to round out the group. I made a whole new comic too which is on my website at http://www.vonshollywood.com/. (I do a lot of important stuff like that.) You might want to check out Drawn and Quarterly's new hardcover Melvin Monster collection. It's the first book in their JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY and it's a must- have if you love Stanley.

PVS and HPL

Context is everything, so in order to say something about me and Lovecraft I need to lay some out: I was born in 1950 and loved comic books, dinosaurs, and monster movies since I first encountered them. Famous Monsters of Filmland, the amazing magazine that delightfully warped the lives of so many, and which my big brother bought from issue 1, was a veritable trove of secrets and wonders that introduced (for many) and championed (to all) such cinematic luminaries as Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney, O’Brien, Harryhausen and the rest and made me realize there was a vast history of horror and monsters to discover. So I stayed up and monitored our old black and white tv set for late night showings of the Universal classics and whatever else I could find while also attending showings of features like The Mole People, Calitiki, Fiend Without a Face, Mister Sardonicus, The Tingler, Harryhausen, at the local cinema. But eventually there didn’t seem to be all that much more to discover and I was growing slightly weary of gothic horrors, vampires, mummies, aliens, mutants,giant bugs etc. Especially when they were poorly done, which they usually were. One fateful late 60’s afternoon I was sitting in study hall (tenth grade, age 16 or so) looking through the Modern Library omnibus volume entitled Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. The finaltwo stories in the book (as if they saved the best for last) were by somebody called H.P. Lovecraft; they were “The Rats in the Walls” and “The Dunwich HorrorΓ. The Lovecraft name was vaguely familiar.There were glancing mentions in Famous Monsters but there were no Lovecraft movies yet so I had no idea what to expect. I read “The Rats in the Walls”first. it was a fairly short story but I experienced a jolt unlike anything I was familiar with. There were horrors aplenty; hordes of ravenous rats, hideous nightmares, ancient underground grottoes leading off into infinte subterranean darkness and pocked with giant pits full of sawed and chewed bones of human and things not altogther human and finally a man who went mad and tumbled down the evolutionary scale to relish his ancestral cannibalistic nourishment… but maybe best of all, many hints of things just beyond the reach of the light. Hints which were even more exciting and pleasing than the overt horrors. “The Dunwich Horror” was next and it was all over when I finished that one. I had been introduced to the Necronomicon, Arkham with its Miskatonic Library, Yog- Sothoth and so many key Lovecraftian entities and conceptions which were new to me. And it excited my imagination all over again. I know the stories were written forty plus years earlier but they had not seeped into the mainstream yet. What WAS the Necronomicon? Was it a real book? Was Miskatonic a real river and college? It all sounded so plausible. Naturally I wanted even more and dug through stacks of yellowed,smelly paperbacks at used used book stores eventually finding two true gems: a collection entitled “The Colour Out of Space” and even a short novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. It just got better and better as each story added new dots to connect and a vast world of eldritch, foetid, blasphemous, nefandous, sepulchral imagination seemed to be slowly revealing itself. Then I went to a “new book book- store” and we looked HPL up in a huge tome they had called Books In Print and I found out about a publisher called Arkham House and ordered the three volumes that comprise the bulk ofLovecraft’s fiction. I bought many books directly from them over the next months and years and even sent stories and poems to publisher, August Derleth- and he wrote back! He didn’t offer to publish me of course but he did respond and he was encouraging. What I sent him was crap, so that was more than I deserved! But it was what Lovecraft would have done as he did for so many aspiring young writers like Derleth himself and Robert Bloch and dozens more). Anway the things and scenes in those wild and wordy Lovecraft stories fairly begged to be drawn. The images were boiling inside and clamoring for expression on paper… Unfortunately my art also frankly sucked, so it would be a long time before I could feel reasonably pleased with anything I did. When I approach HPL as an illustrator something mysterious happens. The images just kind of bubble forth impulsively– and slowly I think some of them have started to not suck quite so bad. Mind you I have no delusion there’s anything special about what I do and have done. I have no exclusive insight into anything- I am simply compelled to do it and it’s the kind of expression that appeals to me most. I just do my part to “spread the weird.” I do have mixed feelings about illustrating HPL. In a way it seems nobody ought to do it. The best form it can ever have is the way he wrote it. Not in pictures or comics or movies. Just HPL’s words.But on the other hand you just WANT to draw the damn stuff. And it’s fascinating to see how other artists conceptualize the same scenes and monsters. I don’t know how to explain Lovecraft to anybody who hasn’t read him, I don’t recommend him to people, and I have no real reason to think anyone would like his work or should even read it. I discovered it at a time and age when it was just what I wanted, and when the context seemed perfect. Now Cthulhu runs for President and is available as a plush toy. There are Lovecraft role-playing games, many movies have been made (but not many good ones)…his influence has seeped into all aspects of horror. The world is different. We can see the planet from space. It’s harder to imagine there are Mountains of Madness in Antarctica now… although the melting polar ice may yet reveal things it would be far better not to see. The merciful shield of aeons-old frost may be all that stands between us and knowledge that will drive us all stark raving mad. “That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons death may die.” There is plenty of social upheaval and unrest and turmoil and if Nyarlathotep comes out of Egypt and begins his magical mystery tour, well… Wait, where was I? See? The stuff just kind of grabs hold of me… and that is doubtless tied to the context in which I first discovered HPL in that studyhall in that thick book. At the very end like it was best and saved for last… In my own work I naturally gravitate to themes which might be called Lovecraftian. Hidden realms and malign survivals from prehuman times. A suspension of natural laws. All the stuff I love to draw and write about is like that. I don’t know who said it but a delightful phrase about what Lovecraft did comes to mind: “H.P. Lovecraft turned the Universe into a Haunted House”. I like that. Presented here are majority of the pieces I made for an unpublished (so what else in new?) portfolio based on The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which some call HPL's Lord of the Rings, being as it's kind of a rambling epic fantasy thing. But more eldritch...

WTF Wednesday (Wait, this is Tuesday... oh well!)

This is a new feature! It has stills from a short animated movie I made, a poster mockup,  a CHGGGWOM page, and a MORBID birthday card. It is probably the first and last of its kind.

Collect it all! One, count it, One! Unless there are some fucking comments, that is.

The Stars Must Not Have Been Right

So, after THE THING (SPACE THING as they called it) kit from Dark Horse we were going to make this Cthulhu kit, which my wife Andrea sculpted. Molds and plans were made etc and then it was decided it was too expensive, wouldn't sell etc etc and was dropped and never spoken of again. A design addition we added, which some might not like, was to give Cthulhu a mouth under those waving tentacles. After all It ate things so might have had a mouth which nobody saw... until it was too late. My hope was to have a line of cool kits made following classic "horror fiction" monsters as they were described in the original texts. Alas it was not to be. If anybody wants to produce the kits, Gentle Giant might still have the molds, I dunno. Bottom line: here is another thing that might have been.