happy halloween

Only the devil's weakness can put a smile on that face.

I can't quit John McCain.

I once read about some guy who became obsessed with painting Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus. I'm worried that I might become that guy with John McCain. I don't know what the deal is, but, all politics aside, I really hope McCain doesn't win next week...I might be drawing him for the next four years.

the truth about the world

The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being a fact among others.

Blood Meridian. Cormac McCarthy. The man is good, folks.

"Ignore the bleached remains of former expeditions..."

My good pals Storm the Castle! have released their EP, The History of Doomed Expeditions Vol. 1.

I can't recommend it enough.

You can order it here

My daughter knows her mythozoology

The Art of Sam Weber

For more greatness, please visit here

marilith

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, a marilith is a powerful type of demon. In first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons mariliths were known as Type V demons. In 2nd Edition AD&D the name "Type V demon" was revised to "marilith".

The name marilith is a mash-up of Mara, a demon of doubt and temptation from the story of Gautama Buddha, and Lilith, a Mesopotamian storm demon that appears in the story of Gilgamesh as well as in the Book of Isaiah.

Lorenzo Mattotti's Hansel and Gretel

The story of Hansel and Gretel, as told in five drawings by Lorenzo Mattotti.

Mattotti is a master of color, but his black and white work is almost more incredible to me. These drawings are ridiculously great.

sketchbookin'

hunched over

Crisis on Infinite Heart Attacks

Pa Kent died in the latest issue of Action Comics. Heart attack.

Counting film and TV, plus Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman comic series, which takes place outside of normal DC continuity, he's died of a heart attack at least four times now.

Batman has the Joker, Superman has Luthor, and Pa Kent has Cardiac Arrest.

At least his original death was...well...original; he and Martha contracted a rare tropical disease when they discovered a buried pirate chest on vacation (and thus, you can't tell me that superhero comics weren't better in the Silver Age).

Anyways, I feel bad for Pa. Doomed to clutch his chest and keel over ad infinitum.

In rememberance, here's Pa Kent and his uncomfortable fixation with spanking his adopted son...

Breakdowns

Ahhh...I've been waiting for this collection to come back into print.

Enough formal experimentation, invention and deconstruction to choke a horse. In a good way.

Plus, a new Acme Novelty Library comes out next week. These are good times.

Continuing my love affair with John McCain's face

Cower before Occu-Lor the...uhh...Observant?

Or, um, the...Omniscient? Obsequious? Ominous? Optometrist? Oboe-Player (or Oboist)?

celestial tease

A page from the secret short thing I'm working on (hint: the word 'celestial' is in the title)...

face study