Mock Man Press

Another Kickstarter sketch request, this depicts Randolph Carter at the top of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber, preparing to descend into the Dreamlands. I was asked to draw Carter’s dream guide in the form of Clark Ashton Smith, which I was all too happy to do, since Smith is awesome. Although, ever since I saw his cool, emo-looking high school portrait that now graces the top of his Wikipedia page, I’ve been trying to erase from my mind the image of the middle-aged Clark Ashton Smith with his little moustache and smoking-jacket (the usual photo that used to accompany all of the 1960s and 1970s Smith reprints in my dad’s library), so perhaps I should have drawn the teenage, hotter Smith. Hmm…

Okay, here’s my explanation: perhaps the dream-entity that once was Clark Ashton Smith can take the form of Clark Ashton Smith at ANY age, all of them being, after all, facets of the ‘true’ Smith. (An idea I really liked in Joe Haldeman’s science fiction novel The Hemingway Hoax, in which a certain time-traveling entity has this ability.) So, freed from his physical body, the Dreamsmith can appear as any age, and perhaps as other forms expressing the Smith Archetype from which it is derived. Now I’m really getting into “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” territory.

On that note, there’s a new episode of The Double Shadow, the Clark Ashton Smith podcast, this week. It’s awesome! Go check it out, then read King of RPGs, and I’ll be back with a new sketch on Monday!