Category: Visual essay

The Lady of the Green Kirtle:
Sisters in Green

Previous parts of this series can be read here (Part I) , here (Part II)  and here (Part III) Now that I’ve established The Lady of the Green Kirtle has Green Fairy lineage, I thought it would be fun to look at some of her cousins, the Green Fairies interpreted by contemporary artists. These images …

Continue reading

Jadis 2022: Rising

Some new images of Jadis I found, this post concentrating on more graphic and comic depictions. First, this  Joker-faced, sneering White Witch who is glamorous but creepy. Another cartoon Jadis, this one better-looking and imperious rather than maniacal. She reminds of Yzma in The Emperor’s New Groove. A simple but very effective Jadis by Liliribs, …

Continue reading

Aslan on Stage (Part I)

When comparing Tolkien to Lewis, Lewis wins in the theatrical department. Every year, around the world, theater groups are tackling The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, creating different interpretations of the same text by their choices of costume, casting, lighting and sets. I can’t see anyone staging The Fellowship of the Ring the same …

Continue reading

The (Al)Lure of Queen Swanwhite

[Jewel] spoke of Swanwhite the Queen who had lived before the days of the White Witch and the Great Winter, who was so beautiful that when she looked into any forest pool the reflection of her face shone out of the water like a star by night for a year and a day afterwards. This …

Continue reading

Traditional Chimerae

  It was a single being that had the force of three beasts, the front part of a lion, the tail of a drakon, and the third–middle–head was that of a goat, through which it breathed out fire. — Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 31 – 32 (Greek mythographer c. 2nd A.D.)   Chimerae depicted in ancient …

Continue reading

Children of the Elder Things, or Echinoderm Horror

  As I talked about here, H. P. Lovecraft’s Elder Things were such a unique creation both of their time and for SF in general that their caliber was not duplicated  for many years. There were echoes of them in the BEMs (bug-eyed monsters) of the lurid SF pulp covers of the 1930s through the …

Continue reading

The Art of the Elder Thing (Part III)

In this post I’ll examine  Elder Thing depictions done in different media and styles. This is an Elder Thing stripped down its basic elements: starfish head, wings, cucumber body, five tentacle legs. I’m guessing it’s a petroglyph painted on some exposed shale rock, which since has been desecrated by bird poop. The creator of the …

Continue reading

The Art of the Elder Thing (Part II)

In Part II of this series I’ll be taking a look at the Elder Things interacting with their natural environment — either the snowbound Antarctica of At the Mountains of Madness, or their titanic cities of long ago. This illustration of the creatures shows them checking out a ship that has been stuck in the …

Continue reading

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 …

Continue reading

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 …

Continue reading