Category: Visual essay

The Art of the Elder Thing (Part I)

The Elder Things are one of Lovecraft’s crowning creations, an  exercise in speculative biology that also includes the Yithians (The Great Race) and the Mi-Go, also known as the fungi from Yuggoth. These trifecta of beings stand the test of time even today of what an alien intelligence could be like. Lovecraft based his creatures …

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City of the Elder Things

The City of the Elder Things (it didn’t have a proper name) is the most well described of Lovecraft’s alien cities, which also includes Pnakotus, the city of the Great Race of Yith that lay in the Australan outback, and R’lyeh, Cthulhu’s tomb. Immense, alien, frozen in time both literally and figuratively, half of the …

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Hurray for Mrs. Claus

Mrs. Claus is a second-string character in the annual Christmas story, behind Santa himself, his elves, and his reindeer. She is usually depicted as elderly, smiling dispenser of cookies. Except when she’s not. In the pic above she’s a vicious ax murderer (in advertising art for the Christmas horror flick Mrs. Claus) while below, she’s …

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Jadis Redux

The second Summer of Narnia is drawing to a close, so I’d like to share some more images of my fave magic-using evil Queen, Jadis. First is a B&W rendition by comic artist Sebastian Ericson. Long black hair, grasping, claw-like hands, evil sneer, spiky crown… yum. A section of a video art project about The …

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The Wood Between the Worlds

He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side—in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a …

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The Great Sea Serpent

Suddenly, only about the length of a cricket pitch from their port side, an appalling head reared itself out of the sea. It was all greens and vermilions with purple blotches—except where shell fish clung to it—and shaped rather like a horse’s, though without ears. It had enormous eyes, eyes made for staring through the …

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The Lady of the Green Kirtle (Part II)

Green Kirtle = green scales = reptile = poison = poisonous intent, poisonous sexuality, poisonous philosophy. The Green Witch is all about poison. Green-yellow is the color of pustulence, of unhealthy phlegm, pus, the eruptions of an infected wound; it’s the color of insects, snakes, lizards, certain larvae, caterpillars, and amphibians, and centipedes. Creepy-crawlies that …

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The Lady of the Green Kirtle (Part I)

  The Lady of the Green Kirtle, sometimes known simply as the Lady, is the second major villain of the Chronicles of Narnia. She plays a star role in The Silver Chair, where she is responsible for killing Caspian’s wife and abducting his teenage son Rilian, using him in her plans for conquest. As I …

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Dissing on The Dispossessed

I’m not going to snark on the book itself here, only the covers. But in doing so you’ll learn a fair amount about the book! First of all, this one, which to my mind is the classic one. It’s grand, sweeping, colorful, exciting. It boils the tale down to its basics: two worlds, very different, …

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Getting Around in the Atompunk Age

  One of the futurism themes of the post-WWII era was transportation. This makes sense. Innovations in manufacturing and aircraft design,  the growth of large cities, and the need for improved highway systems and vehicles  all came together in a magic moment, in the Western world at least. Germany had its Autobahn, Britain the M- …

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