Senseless and insensitive

Some time ago there was Helsinki comic festival and this week-end it was Turku international book fair and being nerdy geek I took part in them.
Both got my creative juices flowing once more and forced me to revise some of my previous ideas.

Including making comics in the first place.

Those outside of Finland will probably not realize exactly how closed the market is and how formulaic they are.
There are few who do publish stuff beyond genres of humor and artsy pieces of slice of life.
Year after year one can count with a single hand of fingers the science fiction, fantasy, crime, adventure, superhero or horror stories in comics.
There is no market in our local comics for any of that.

Any sane person would fold and write some trite about relationships.

Yes, Any sane person.
But then again in these situations I ask myself one question:

Unfortunately I am not bluehaired pierced hottie (I just live with one, no wait...she's never had blue hair so far...well..so far) but otherwise it helps.

Sane people are boring and insignificant.

And once the stars are right, they(sanes) are eaten or trampled.

Sane people don't prepare for zombie apocalypse or devise deathtraps.

Sanity is just a one handicap one must lose in order to have fun.

Just last night I had an apocalyptic nightmare about humanlike bears, ghosts, nymphomaniacs, murder and the occult.

It will make a great script and carve a nervous wreck from some poor illustrator.

A mind is a beautiful thing to lose.

IÄ!

Something new, something blue, something elder...

Been married once and I am one of those who tries to learn from their mistakes instead of repeating them. But I am also among those never got the memo about "giving up" On about anything. Reason I babble incoherently this time is that I had the pleasure of chatting with yet another artist after some unfortunate hiatus. And it made me pumped to hear he might actually be working on a comic in near future. Being an avid fan of comics I rejoiced as Hannu Lipponen is not only smart guy with a sense of humor but as an artist belongs to a class of his own. Like many other honestly good artists he also is far too modest and overtly critical of his work. I have many faults but modesty isn't one of them. He is astounding. to make matter more clear here's something for your consideration. Few years back I wrote piece of Mythos. Yeah a modern day yarn of cosmic horrors beyond euclid timespace, so immense they are beyond good and evil. The beings that will undoubtably crush all mankind as byproduct of their existance. So I belong to HPL fanboy club, your point? But anyways, there was a comicproject that has been on ice for three to four years now but this script lead me to talks with Hannu Lipponen. He made some unfinished sketches. Um yeah. See this is "unfinished sketch of Cthulhu's eye in that comic:

yes. that is Unfinished. Yes that is a sketch. Someday that comic of forbidden knownledge and library set horror will be hopefully published, most likely on the hour the stars are right...IÄ! IÄ!

I await the day I pick any comic sporting his art with excitement.

Lessons in Bad-Assery

The above picture by Fred Bastide suits to the t what I am looking after.

Yes, I am working on one editing a Scifi comic anthology and writing few superhero comicbooks of not my origianl creation. And the King Kong vs Bin Laden. And a few others.

But my wrenched interest in Mythos revealed to us by H.P.Lovecraft still lurks in my arteries, corrupting my heart with it's venomous siren song.

And not just that either. The picture holds raw unabided redneck power in itself.

You see sometime ago I got in a deep conversation about comics and creating them. This happened as my calf was getting tattoo of picture of Hulk and Daredevil by David Finch.

In my life not that uncommon.

Anyways, the discussion went to conclusion that both dig hardboiled fiction, comics, great art and apocalyptic themes. And when it comes to apocalypse there isn't much better source of impending doom than the Old Ones.

You see Cthulhu mythos is fertile ground for any tale, from cosmic to personal, and while it (for very, very reasonably) has been used mainly in horror, there have been adaptations to other genres of storytelling.

But in the original stories of H.P.Lovecraft there was something else. As scary and disturbing as ancient gods beyond good and evil who do not care one bit.

No matter whether in Arkham city or seaport village of Innsmouth there was hints of decadence, a downseeped wrongness.

Lovecraft has been often accused of being racist, but majority of backwatery folks in his tales are wrong because of inbredness and madness almost unheard in comics.

If you disregard Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.

Many consider it to be just a vulgar piece set only to reach and break new taboos in OTTness in comics. That's their belief and opinion and they are entitled to it.

It's a free world. Everyone has right to be wrong if they really want to, why should I stop them?

In Preacher Jesse Custer's family and most of Salvation and of course the holy bloodline are stircrazy in same vein as the great book and excellent film adaptation, the Delivarence.

As I write these very words it's nighttime and I am deep in similar ground.

As a kid I saw the next door neighbour of our cottage. Some six months after his failed suicide attempt. Done with shotgun in mouth.

There are far too many pieces of sibling "love" products that have successive birthdefects from inbreeding.

Well, that and moonshine.

And there were relatives chained up in attics and every now and then they escaped and were hunted down and shackled back away from public view.

So Innsmouth sounded very likely to me and Preacher might have as well been a documentary.

but that is only one part of the equation.

the other is tough guy action/crime story.

And with tough guy I mean real tough guys, Clint Eastwood or Chow Yun-Fat

I like the old school violence as action goes. And these actors I mentioned portray it. because they are actors. They have brains as well as brawn. They are heroes with tarnished reputation. Human-sized.

That is a hard act to follow or to do well, but if you don't set to do it well it's better not to do it at all. The mixture needs only frankness, willingness to tell things truthfully, without any sugarcoating.

I have thought of several Cthulhu-related stories, some scripts are under work and as such -off my hands. But here the thing is there is ample opportunity to engulf oneself into almost everything my dark heart craves for:

a detective story of hard knocks with faint air of apocalypse arising. The violently rough edges of noir passing ever so slightly into deep dark waters of occult paranoia. If I go and add a single femme fatale... well...I would read that.

I just hope the artist feels the same.