Tropes versus Lovecraft - Part 4: A Pale Blue Dot

I’ve named this fourth trope (Part 1, 2, 3) of lovecraftian iconography „A Pale Blue Dot“, referencing the title of the famous book by Carl Sagan, as it draws heavily on the sense of isolation and fragility evoked by the image of planet Earth seen from space.
The internal mechanism of this trope is actually very similar to „Under the Surface“(UTS) and „Eye of the Beholder“(EOTB) in that scale, knowledge and perception are crucial factors in it. Obviously, when it comes to the scale difference between humans and the otherworldly entities in the images, here they it is pushed more or less to the limit. We don’t actually see any single human beings but of course we don’t need to, since Earth after all encompasses not only one or a group of individuals, but all of them. While we definitely know what situation humanity is in here, it’s not quite clear wether it itself remains ignorant of the threat (as in UTS) or is aware of it (as in EOTB). Even if it is, it will probably not be able to perceive it as clearly as we can in from our outer space vantage point.

To summarize, this trope and the two before it use very much the same elements to convey the basic lovecraftian philosophical worldview: human existence is threatened by outside cosmic forces next to which they are completely insignificant and which they can only perceive or understand to a very limited degree. Conceptually I think the ones where humans/humanity is not about to be eaten or willfully destroyed are more in line with this outlook because that undermines the entities’ indifference towards us.

I'll start off with one of my own drawings. It’s the cover for a HPL themed comic collection I put out for the CthulhuCon Portland in 2015. At the time I thought that it was a fairly original idea. Only afterwards I noticed other older versions of the same motif, and I 'm seeing newer ones popping up on a regular basis ever since.

 

Like with the other tropes, I'm not saying any of these are swipes (although some may very well be), I do however wonder if it shouldn’t be our goal not to replicate the same ideas again and again until they’ve lost all impact.
On the other hand I find it interesting how a quasi-religious iconography has emerged for Lovecraft’s (or Derleth’s if you will) Mythos, with all its spiritual/philosophical underpinnings. But that’s a topic for another day.

Here's another example of how a trope can become so overused that its ironic version is inevitable.

And a few fun bonus ones.

Final bonus! This is the final scene of the first Men In Black movie... seem familiar?

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Tropes versus Lovecraft - Part 3: The Eye of the Beholder

Here’s my third trope of lovecraftian iconography (Part 1, Part 2), one that I have come across time and again. 

Virgil Finlay

I call it „The Eye of the Beholder“ (obviously not very original, but I couldn't think of anything better) and the Virgil Finlay illustration above is basically a subtler proto-version of the trope, while this great one by John Coulthart is more like the real deal:

John Coulthart

As with „Under the Surface“(UTS) the trope is not so much an interpretation of a specific scene from a given Mythos-story as it is an archetypical representation of the philosophical outlook typical to a Lovecraft story. In UTS, the pitiful ignoramuses above have no inkling of the real nature of their situation, the viewer is let in on the secret so to say, and can see the true horror of what lies underneath.
By contrast, here we are put into the situation of the puny figures in the foreground and are thus forced to identify with them, since like them we mostly do not see what it is that is staring at them (or us). Because we can see only its gigantic eye, a body part that is normally rather small in our view, we are forced to extrapolate the size of the being that is looking at us here. This has an effect similar to Lovecraft’s strategy of producing horror in his readers: Don’t show the monster - just give the audience enough info to set off their own imagination. Lovecraft himself does this in „The Shunned House“,  but instead of an eye the protagonist digs out a massive elbow in the basement of a haunted house, which, to be honest, always felt more comical than horrific to me. 
Another aspect that makes this trope effective is that a giant eye causes a twofold psychological reaction of both a visceral feeling of uncomfortable closeness and, perhaps more importantly, a recognition of sentience. I wonder wether the ending of „The Shunned House“ would have had more punch if there had been a giant eye which opened and glared at the narrator from out of that hole in the ground...

So here are some more examples. I've definitely seen others, but overall this one seems to be less common than „Under the Surface“.

Again, this post is not meant to critique any specific artist or piece of art. I don’t know most of the creators’ names but perhaps given the context of this post it’s perhaps not in their interest to be credited here anyhow. If any artist would like to be credited (or if they want their artwork removed) please let me know and I shall do so.

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NEXT PART HERE

Bloodywood

From my sketchbook. Respectfully fucking around with Ghanese filmposter art from the 1990s. Rotterdam's Kunsthal has a big show of these, called Bloodywood. Around 2005, Le Dernier Cri published a book on the same topic called Hollyvoodoo, which is a title I think a little more to the point. But anyway...

More horror book covers

 Just a few this time. I find it interesting how 60s-70s horror paperbacks and magazine sized black and white comics had virtually the same type of art, using a lot of the same artists, many of them selling their art to all sorts of books and magazines all over the world. The amount of swiping in this era is strange, because a lot of these artists were good enough that it makes you wonder why they bothered swiping. There is a vampire face I've seen used on books, comics and maybe even film posters at least in 10 different examples, I wonder what the original was.
 Even though it can get samey I've always loved this classic horror style, but what is annoying is that I've never seen many films and ecountered many books that gave you a satisfying dose of this kind of thing. I used to assume these sorts of stories would be in abundance, but there are very few that really give you what you want.

 cover by Alan M Clark

 Another by Alan M Clark

 Newish Bernie Wrightson cover to an old book

 This one just for oddness.

 Australian comics used to reprint a lot of stuff from all over the world, a lot of it american and south american, I dont know if these had any original australian artists, but many of the covers were original. HERE is an index of Gredown comics, it takes a bit of a while seeing all the covers, but if you like this sort of thing, there are a lot of good ones.

The Day of the Revenants

"The Day of the Revenants" - the first zombie film ever

This long lost masterpiece of early cinematography for decades existed only as a myth of the movie industry, until it was finally rediscovered in 1995 inside a hidden screening room of Erich Honecker's mansion in East Germany, the former German Democratic Republic.The movie was probably filmed in 1909 but was immediately censored and confiscated. It's only existing copy was taken to France as loot during the chaotic period of the German Empire's collapse some time towards the end of World War one. 

When Paris was later occupied by the Nazis it was returned to its country of origin. Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels himself called it a "höchst entartet" (extremely degenerate) work of art. However, after Germany's defeat it was found by Soviet troops in his own private film collection. After that, the Iron Curtain concealed the further history of this unique production.

When it finally resurfaced in '95, unlike today, nobody really cared much about zombie films. The great zombie wave of the 80s was long gone and so only a few diehard fans, a couple of art students in Nuremberg, Bavaria took up the arduous task of restaurating and remastering the by then severely damaged material. It was screened on a handful of film festivals and raised a few eyebrows, but then it disappeared once more... until now.

At last, film history will have to be rewritten!

The Day of the Revenants from FuFu Frauenwahl on Vimeo.

I made this film in 1999 together with my dear friends S. Jerger and A. Breinbauer. We created all zombie masks ourselves. Here's a group photo from back then (I'm the guy on the far left):

Horror Book Covers

  ...I adore this cover, dont know who did it. I've said before how confusingly few great covers there are for genre books (particularly science fiction, where Richard Powers is one of the only artists who excites me), but I've been looking around anthologies from older horror editors like Aickman, Danby, Lamb, Haining, Wagner, Asquith, Chetwynd-Hayes, Bernard, Davis and Sutton, for good art and there is some. Alden Norton is a lesser known editor of the era.

...JK Potter

  ...I just saw this for the first time today. I'd really love to have this but I've heard it is rare. Some other editions are called Random House Book Of Ghost Stories, seemingly with the beautiful color taken out.

  ...I think this is by John Howe.

  ...This art was done by a friend of M.R James, I cant remember his name but I think he had a go at writing too. There are a few interior images for this book as well in some editions.

 ...I own the first version and it looks less impressive now that I have seen a version that was probably closer to what the artist wanted.

 ...These two Brian Lee kids books are amazing. I had the first book when I was a kid and the art and holograms are lovely. I found out about the 3d book later and bought it a few years ago. This sort of art really inspires me, the artist used to have a website but I dont think it is around anymore and I cant find any other similar books by the same artist.