Richard Corben's Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft and Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

So H.P. Lovecraft is pretty damn influential. Richard Corben is apparently kinda big too, working a lot in Heavy Metal magazine and other various comics. I know Corben as "that guy whose stuff I hated on Hellboy and I hope he never works on Hellboy again but alas." Personal opinion.

Funny thing is, these are the same expressions I make whenever I see Corben's faces.

So I hated Corben in Hellboy. I still do. Imagine my surprise when I read that he's kinda known and some influential creators really dig his stuff. Times like this I wonder if I'm missing something that's obvious to all the others out there praising. Opinions are more persuasive when accompanied with reasoning (to be fair the same applies to negative criticism, and probably some of my blog posts). God forbid I listen to a bunch of people praising something then decide to praise and like it myself. A quick skim through Corben's wikipedia page and we get a "Quotes about Corben" section (maybe there are others who think like me and need persuading), followed by what is indeed a list of quotes by many prominent figures in related fields, all praising Corben's work. And mostly being a bit ambiguous; vague.

"He works with towering technical skill..." -Will Eisner
"He put stuff into his comix that the overground press wouldn't print." -Robert Crumb
"I was very struck by the visceral punch they had, by the unusual artistic point of view. And also by the unabashed exaggeration. It's as if you wanted a woman to have big breasts, you drew it." -Frank Miller
"Corben's technique introduced the airbrush to comics. His sophisticated knowledge of how color is printed allowed him to get fantastic results. His work has maintained a sense of humor and spectacle in tales of barbarians, time travelers and Arabian nights." -Harvey Kurtzman

So these are about as specific as the quotes get. The rest are about Corben's stuff being "great" or about Corben himself being "a genuine giant of his chosen medium", etc. Of course this is just a quick look on wikipedia and I could spend more time researching Corben's decades of work, but that's not gonna happen. So I'll work off of what others more familiar with his work say. And what I read tells me that Corben is: technically brilliant, familiar with print, exaggerates his proportions, and introduced airbrushing to comics. Oh, and he's funny? I guess.

Looking through his art in Haunt of Horror and Hellboy I can start to see where these people are coming from. We can see the experience in his art and his work with colors is great. What I don't get is why does his exaggeration with the human face and body have to be so ugly? I took a look on his website biography and saw that "Corben has regularly attended life drawing sessions throughout his career." So why do his people look like such ass? The self-portrait painting on the biography page looks fine, and I even looked on his Figure Gallery page. This is where I got my answer. Corben can actually draw people fine.

It all makes sense now! (c) Richard Corben

What I can't get over in Corben's art are his people. Yes I've said this already. But in particular I refer to how he chooses to depict faces, figures, and fingers. Oh god his fingers. When they don't look normal-ish those pudgy sausages bother me. And his figures. I don't know why. I just don't. I think most of the time this probably isn't the case but it's the worst examples that stick with me and flash through my mind. His faces though are the constant. They are what first alerted me that something was amiss, and they are what tell me "crap, it's Corben." It's funny, cause for some reason his faces in Haunt of Horror aren't as bad. Another funny thing is they're proportionally similar to how Lovecraft's mug was.

Have we met? (Incidentally the pirate on the right actually looks okay.)

So I've rambled on enough about Corben. Let's talk about Haunt of Horror. It's actually not bad. Not particularly horrifying either though. Corben takes liberties with the source material. The short stories are trimmed into comic form and the poems are extended into short story form. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. What I think though is that somehow Corben's delivery of the serious, horrific twists turn into punchlines too often. Sometimes from cheesiness, others because of "wait, what?" moments. In Dagon I actually laughed at how ridiculous the last 3 panels were. And Corben remains true to Lovecraft's first person form, but there's a problem with his usage of thought bubbles when the thoughts don't read well or smoothly. And that's about as much Corben as I want to stomach in a day.

Actually a pretty cool panel from Hellboy: Being Human.

Oh right, yeah, there's the documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. Pretty straightforward, it gives a pretty in depth look at Lovecraft's life and influences and spends some time trying to explain Lovecraft's xenophobia. But this is a documentary as much about Lovecraft's work as the man himself and talks at length about the Cthulhu mythos. Stylistically it attempts to bring some of the mythos' flavor. The film is entirely in black and white and features a soundtrack and narration to fit the mood. The information the film provides can mostly be found on wikipedia (well, maybe not the analysis of Lovecraft's writing style), which sort of renders the point of the documentary moot when you can spend less time on the wiki and learn just as much. Where the film becomes interesting is in its interviews with modern day creators who are fans of the mythos and pulled inspiration from it. Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro, and John Carpenter are probably the most known names who speak on Lovecraft, but there are plenty more who contribute their thoughts.

I don't know if this documentary is one someone new to Lovecraft should watch as it reveals much about his writing that would probably be best discovered through actually reading his works. Probably better to watch when you've been acquainted with his works in some way, and if you're well versed on Cthulhu you probably don't need to watch the documentary (just skip to the interviews).

Selected Bible Segments

So this weekend was pretty crazy at New York Comic Con/Anime Fest. Probably not just for me but everyone else in the class too. My friend came down from Wellesley to table at NYAF Artist Alley with me, which was pretty fun. She made a killing doing quick ink portrait caricatures for $5 a piece (really underselling herself in my opinion). Her prints did pretty well too, particularly one of My Little Pony in Adventure Time fashion shown here (http://shainareads1001books.tumblr.com/post/9493049908/d-im-thinking-of-changing-the-caption-on-the-top)
I basically played second fiddle to my friend, handling her sales when she was too busy doing portraits and barely selling any of my own prints. I did get some sketch commisions in, so those were fun. And I met some other cool artists, which was great.

I'm getting sidetracked. I'm actually treating this like a blog and not just somewhere to post my ill-conceived thoughts on comics. So, to the point of this post: comparing Crumb's Genesis and parts of The Wolverton Bible to their source, the Bible. Both are relatively straightforward adaptations. Both artists approached the task with respect, and the parts we're looking at (Genesis 3-5, 25-27, 37-47, Revelations 1-3, 19-23) aren't particularly detailed or evocative. I've already compared how Wolverton and Crumb each approach the job, so it's easy enough to scroll down the page to those posts.
My friend from Wellesley says I probably shouldn't compare Wolverton, Crumb, and Chwast's work to Dürer and Doré's. She has a point. I probably shouldn't have. Oh well.
Since both Wolverton and Crumb work pretty straightforward from the text, we can see that they worked with what they had. Genesis is relatively barebone, probably leading to some of the boring scenes I criticized in both Wolverton and Crumb's books. With Revelations though, we get some descriptive imagery, leading to some of the better pictures in Wolverton's Bible. What I like to see in adaptations are artists taking the limits placed and stretching as far as they can with those limits.
With the sketch requests I received at the artist alley, some of them were pretty simple, to-the-point (Big McIntosh from My Little Pony as a space marine) and others gave me more freedom for interpretation of their request (a halfling paladin in crystalline armor with angel wings, youthful face, flowing hair, and a claymore). I enjoyed both types of commisions, so being reminded of that is fun.

Dante's Divine Comedy Adapted by Semour Chwast

I'm not quite sure what Seymour Chwast was trying to do with his adaptation of Dante's Divine Comedy. He's not trying to show his faith like Wolverton, and he's not trying to lay it all out on a plate like Crumb. Well, yes, his attempt does seem more similar to Crumb's. But without the labor put into the art. I mean, goddamn. This art is so simple it's... I was able to breeze through the book within an hour, the art was so simple. The dearth of text helped too.

So what was Chwast trying to do? Dumb it down and make a Divine Comedy for Dummies? His art does have a fun quality, and the humor he injects into the narrative through Detective Dante's comments do lighten the mood. It's definitely not Hell that he's illustrating--it's not nearly as depressing or horrifying as it should be. When I was in Florence, I remember picking up another illustrated copy of the Divine Comedy, by Gustave Doré. Masterful engravings. The cover illustration of thieves suffering punishment by serpents almost made me want to turn my head away (to be fair, after some experiences in Europe I do think some thieves deserve being tortured alive by snakes). But Doré's version was still rather boring (from what little I saw) and I put the book down after thumbing through a few pages.

Yeah Doré snakes! Punish those thieves for the wallet they took from my friend in Barcelona! I'd say punish those con artists in Barcelona too if they weren't burning somewhere else for fraud!

Were it Doré I might agree with Detective Dante. But since it's Chwast it might be sarcasm.

If you like snakes, feel free to steal all you want!

The art quality of Chwast is crude, simple, and a little pleasant. It reminds me of Evan Dahm's art for Rice Boy. But worse. Jules Feiffer is also brought to my mind, but Chwast's work isn't nearly as delightful as Feiffer's. In the end, I'm still wondering what was the point in Chwast's adaptation of The Divine Comedy.