Illustrations for the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast all seem to highlight the same moment, as portrayed here. The two are seated together, the beast pledging his devotion, while Beauty looks away, pleased but ambivalent. This one, using the palette and style of the 1960s, shows the encounter in slightly abstracted form, with a …
Tag: Art and artists
Not Feyd Away
The recent release of Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune got me thinking about the many depictions of Feyd Rautha, Paul Atreides’ antithesis and rival, created by artists over the years. Why not the saintly Paul himself, you ask? Well, he’s just not as interesting. He spends most of the book in a stillsuit, the …
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 …
The Curious Lamp-post
Mr. Tumnus pauses near the lamppost in this pen and ink illustration by Masianus Andrzej, which resembles a Victorian engraving.
Narnia Nightmare
Not all depictions of Narnia are positive. It is a scary place in a lot of ways — there’s an evil witch who turns innocent creatures to stone, a trusted friend betrays a child, and another child betrays his siblings, out of spite no less. The know-it-all hero — the Gandalf, if you will — …
Through the Portal
Portal Fantasy: A subgenre of fantasy literature where inhabitants from our world enter a secondary one through a magical portal door or gate, or in some cases a magical object like a tree or mirror. Usually used in children’s fantasy but not always. The portal trope is a particularly robust one in speculative literature. Its …
Sea Serpent
Arthur Rackham’s version of a sea monster featuring some very wild dentition.
Equal Opportunity
A hopeful Atompunk depiction of the Space Age from the early 1960s complete with revolving space station and a family of astronauts with jetpacks. Now the early 1960s were likely as sexist as America ever got, and very very firmly into gender roles — boy child has a blue spacesuit, and girl child a pink …
Kriss: The Gift of Wrath [Review]
Kriss: The Gift of Wrath by Ted Naifeh Art by Warren Wucinich Oni Press, 2019 This graphic novel is the perfect gift for a middle school child of 11 – 12 who is getting into experiencing adolescent angst, heavy metal, Goth culture, and fantasy fiction. The story is a time-worn one: a young orphan and …