Mock Man Press

The Horror at Martin’s Beach is an underrated story. The collaboration of Sonia Greene and HP Lovecraft produced magnificent results, at least in this case: it’s a very suggestive, bizarre tale (although the central motivation of the monster is pretty obvious, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing), and the creature itself is very weird and richly described. Also, you can never have too many underwater horror stories. Even “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is actually set on land, and Cthulhu himself is a land-based creature, although he waits under the sea. But this is Lovecraft’s only story in which something literally PULLS PEOPLE INTO THE WATER AND EATS THEM.

For the creature, I drew on images of anglerfish and other deep-sea fish, since presumably the monster is a product of Earthly evolution, unlike most of Lovecraft’s entities. Perhaps an overgrown pineal gland, or some other portion of the brain responsible for psychic powers, was the actual ‘central eye’ that the scientists identified, and the creature does in fact have two other eyes, but they are small and vestigial. The monster from the Korean movie “The Host” was also an influence.

There’s a new page of The Deadliest P.R. Guy in the World over at King of RPGs! (Well, sorta.)

This was a sketch by request for a Kickstarter backer. The bunny and the badger look, perhaps, like Aberrant D&D versions of standard animal templates. (Or perhaps, a Dire Badger?) Presumably they are the offspring of normal animals who bred with extradimensional entities, and in fact, if you look carefully, you may be able to figure out who the bunny’s father is. Either way, aren’t they cute?

I recently watched Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus”, which was enjoyable, but pretty light given all the buildup; also, it was much more of an “Alien” movie than I expected. Particularly, it left me wondering, exactly what in “Prometheus” was supposed to be so much like Guillermo Del Toro’s “At the Mountains of Madness” that Del Toro gave up on making the film? The scenes of exploring the tunnels? The holograms (perhaps a smart replacement for Lovecraft’s scenes of people deciphering endless amounts of wall-carvings)? I didn’t see anything which really screamed “This is just like At the Mountains of Madness” to me, honestly, but I guess the superficial similarity of “archaeological quest to discover humanity’s origins” is close enough to make a studio shy away.

Clearly, though, the “Alien” franchise hook was the push that the studio needed to green-light a big-budget R-rated science-fiction/horror film, unlike “Mountains of Madness”, which Del Toro reported was plagued by the studio demanding a PG-13 rating. I have mixed feelings about the ratings problem: if Peter Jackson’s “King Kong,” with its scenes of people being eaten by giant gross bug-things, got a PG-13 rating, I really don’t think “Mountains of Madness” necessarily needed higher than PG-13. But on the other hand, Hollywood’s movie ratings have gotten so much, much stricter over the 30 years that I’ve been watching movies (the first R-rated movie I saw was the Arnold Schwarznegger “Conan,” with my dad at the age of six or seven) that perhaps I’m wrong, and even a single Shoggoth Death Scene would have gotten “Mountains” an R. PG and R- rated movies in the ’70s and ’80s were INFINITELY gorier and more violent than movies with the same ratings today. Frankly, it’s been depressing and irritating watching American society fall backwards and get more and more conservative in this regard… particularly while gore-for-gore’s-sake films like “The Human Centipede” series are still released openly in American theaters, albeit Unrated. Anyway, I mention all this because the Wikipedia page for “Prometheus” says that there was no way “Prometheus” could have been released with a PG-13 rating if any of the surgery scene (probably the best part of the movie) was left intact; but sheesh people, it’s just a little CG surgery! The liposuction scenes in “Super Size Me” were MUCH grosser!

It almost seems like there’s some kind of reluctance to have extreme levels of gore and bloodshed in movies with a fantasy or sci-fi element, as well as ‘classy’ movies in general, whereas nonsupernatural and aggressively ‘trashy’ movies with blood and gore still get a pass. Obviously, Lovecraft himself would probably have disapproved of too much gore (then again, he’d have disapproved of a lot of things), and it doesn’t seem strictly necessary for a “Mountains of Madness” adaptation. But as someone who’s watched Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento and early ’80s Tom Savini movies… sheesh, people. NOTHING I’ve seen in an R-rated movie since I came of age to watch them has been NEARLY as violent and shocking as R-rated movies thirty years ago, in that hazy wonderland of gore and terror into which I was born, a primary-school child looking with dread and curiosity at the posters of splatter movies outside the local movie theater. That’s why I lose all respect for anyone who complains about ‘how violent movies are nowadays’; they’re basically total idiots with no historical context. Then again, if I apply this relativistic line of logic to other areas, like racism, virtually no fictional work today is racist if you compare to how racist things were in Lovecraft’s time; -_-; (except of course that awful giant-crocodile movie “Primeval”). But in the case of graphic violence, which hurts no one except for fictional characters, I will forever be adamantly pro-early-’80s.

The latest of my Cthulhu sketches: Cthulhu in the waters, about to engulf the steam yacht “Alert.” “The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly…” Also, this drawing was done mostly using brushes, as opposed to the pens that I normally use for these sketches.

I’m working on a non-Lovecraftian project today, but I’ll be back to Sarnath and Secret Project as soon as I can!

Who’s that hideous, rotten corpse clutching the struggling torso of American Revolutionary hero Patrick Henry? Why, it’s the zombie of James Madison (1751-1836), author of the Federalist Papers, of course!

A bit of explanation may be necessary… I drew this as part of a 5-hour event at Dead End Press in Seattle, for their July 8th Zombie Founding Fathers sketch jam. Dead End Press is a new art studio in the Ballard neighborhood, and they’ve been doing a series of sketching events; there’s a new one coming up in August which I’ll post about later. I drew this in 5 hours, drinking Coke and kvetching with 12 other zombie-drawing artists, including Seth Goodkind, Jordan Giarrantano and Brian Britigan — basically, some serious competition. The final piece was drawn on 18″x24″ paper, and is now hanging on the wall at Dead End Press, which is why this image is just a cellphone photo. You can check it out at the Dead End gallery until mid-August.

Today I’m working on new projects, but “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” will return next Tuesday! See you then!

Today’s sketch is another ‘zombie’ portrait drawn for an awesome backer of the Map of Zombies Kickstarter! The backer requested to be drawn as one of Lovecraft’s ghouls, rather than a zombie, and of course I was more than happy to go with it — particularly since I’d already included Lovecraft’s ghouls on the zombie map buried up in the top right corner under various semi-infectious bestial cannibal things. (I guess it’s very questionable in “Pickman’s Model” whether ghouls are really ‘infectious’ or whether the only people who become ghouls are those who have some preexisting ghoulish blood… but in Robert Barbour Johnson’s excellent semi-Lovecraftian story Far Below the question is settled.) Actually, I would never have thought of including ghouls on the zombie map, except that another ‘zombie encyclopedia’ type of thing (a book, not a map) listed them as “New England Ghouls,” so I figured if they could get away with it, I could.

In case I haven’t mentioned it enough, I’m gonna be at Go Play Northwest tonight and this weekend! See you there!

NEXT UPDATE: Monday!