Undead Backbrain

A catalogue of wondtabulous merchandise has just become available. Produced by the good folk at WETA studios (SFX creators for such films as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong), in conjunction with Dark Horse Books, it is a visually spectacular and conceptually ironic collection of weapons and other devices of great use to Imperial Interplanetary conquerors and their constituents.

Just look at this testimonial!

Crudmobot 370, a fine piece of Grordbortian manufacturing if ever we saw one, was initially programmed for helping the elderly and gardening. But not anymore!

“Dear Doctor, I just wanted to inform you that I think my head is partially repurposed wave weapon components. While changing Eldritch Fuddle Senior’s man-diaper, to stop himself from slipping, he grabbed my head to balance. Something clicked. In a blinding flash of electricity and excremental vapour his entire mid section was gone.
That was a surprise, for both of us. My surprise circuits almost melted in fact, and my regret valve just imploded, fused solid. Anyoldway, just thought you might be interested to know that, and that my new job as a truck mounted heavy gun for the French Foreign Legion is going spiffingly. I am now disintegrating minorities I had never even heard of!”

The catalogue looks fabulous and is eminently useful for all you folk out there intent on establishing the superiority of the Empire.

Here is the cover:

And a couple of useful pages (click to see a bigger, more readable version):

Here’s an ad that is designed to convince anyone of a suitably heroic disposition:

And here pictures of some satisfied customers!

Check out the website for a wealth of fantastic information, including a Bestiary of the Cosmos, a multitude of rayguns and the adventures of Lord Cockswain.

• Official website
• Amazon link

Artist Malcolm McClinton has sent Backbrain a sneak preview of his cover art for the first in a graphic novel series featuring Hiram Grange, who is an agent for the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs — a secret organisation run by the Freemasons.

This first book is called Village of the Damned and the series is coming out through Shroud Publishing. McClinton describes it as “visual, raw, grittily violent, more than a little seedy, with supernatural monsters, hot chicks … and very very cool”.

Publisher Timothy Deal describes Hiram Grange as an anti-hero — “an awkward and gangly unlikely hero who suffers addictions to absinthe, opium, and sex. A man as flawed and complex as he is capable and deadly.”

Our primary goal was to create a five-novella series for Hiram, each detailing a separate but connected supernatural adventure. In each novella, Hiram investigates areas of confluence–geographic regions that are hotbeds of supernatural activity. In an area of confluence, Hiram may encounter the undead, lycanthropes, vampires, or any number of otherworldly entities.

The five books in the first “season” of the Hiram Grange Chronicles are:

• Book One: Hiram Grange and the Village of the Damned, Tim Deal
• Book Two: Hiram Grange and the Hitler Gene, Scott Carr
• Book Three: Hiram Grange and the Digital Eucharist, Robert Davies
• Book Four: Hiram Grange and the Chosen One, Kevin Lucia
• Book Five: Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow, Richard Wright

• Malcolm McClinton’s blog
• More information on Shroud Publishing and the Hiram Grange series

Click on the image to see it bigger!

By Adam Vehige

… or at least in a Poster!

Yes, that’s me there!

Now you can get the treatment, too, courtesy of artist Todd Tennant.

Check out his American Kaiju Store for more details!

Worth1000’s most recently completed Photoshopping contest was Versus 2 — “I’d Pay To See THAT Fight!” Some unusual contests resulted. Here’s some relevant to us:

Check out all the entries here.

A while back, I posted about a series of cards called Dinosaurs Attack! Now I find there’s a cool set about all those pesty rotting corpses in Tinsel Town — Hollywood Zombies!

Here’s a news cast all about the living dead plague that has hit Hollywood, featuring the undead Michael Jackson:

The card set has a great website, with cool extras. You can even make your own zombie by mixing and matching body parts! Just click on the Monster Mash-Up link.

Well, not the art itself. That clearly wasn’t an accident. But my finding it was.

Someone had sent this picture:

Tin Tin vs the Alien! How cool is that?

Well, I wanted to know whose work it was so that I could blog it here in the proper manner (”proper” meaning to give credit where credit is due). My Googlish search led me to a place called Studio Space (though the site URL “hangedmanstudio” is a nice alternative). It’s a blogspot owned by Malcolm McClinton, an artist whose illustrative work graces book covers, magazines and assorted genre markets.

To my delight I found that I liked the rest of his work, too — and that he has painted some excellent giant monsters and zombies. I asked him if I could put a few up here and he said I could. So take a look (click on the images to see the full-size versions) and then go visit his Studio.

Giant Monsters

Malcolm says he painted this Rampaging Robot as an exercise in perspective. It looks like a poster waiting for a film to promote!

This is the cover art for a book called Secrets of Morocco, published by Chaosium. I think the book is an extension volume for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Anyway, it seems that Malcolm likes tentacles.

While, strictly speaking, not a giant monster, this Organic spaceship might as well be!

Pellucidar!

Zombies

This somewhat deliciously unnerving piece is an illustration for a story titled “Zombie Love Song”, published in Polluto magazine.

And this is the cover artwork for a zombie novel titled Pallid Light (Elder Sign Press).

All artwork copyright ©  Malcolm McClinton.

Malcolm Clinton’s Studio Space website

Naturally, the giant-monster film industry has to have monstrous office staff. Artist Todd Tennant has revealed his designs for Kenji and Benji, described by Todd as a pair of “off-the-wall, bizarro, bubble-off-plumb kaiju”. The third picture illustrates an “office” shot where both secretarial monsters are typing away on script copies for the next day’s shooting of Guidolon’s “masterpiece”.

These images are conceptual designs for Frank Wu’s proposed feature length version of his short film The Tragical Historie of Guidolon the Giant Space Chicken.

Thanks, Todd.

Previous Backbrain article

Another of science fiction’s greats — an artist rather than a writer this time — passed away on 29 April 2008. John Berkey is recognisable to anyone who reads SF — in particular those who did so during the 1970s and 1980s — for his iconic spaceships, such as this one:

But others might be more likely to remember him for the renditions of King Kong he did for the 1976 version of the film. One of his pictures was used as the key image in advertising for the film:

Berkey is also known for his Star Wars paintings and other work that formed the basis of various film advertising campaigns.

But seeing as the Backbrain is obsessed with giant monsters, here are some more of his Kong pictures, first the original “rough” artwork for the poster image. Changes were demanded, in particular removal of the shadow on the far tower of the World Trade Center, as executives — concerned for realism as they always are — wanted to make it look more like Kong was leaping between the buildings rather than straddling the impossible distance.

Source of King Kong paintings and more information on their creation: John Michlig and his articles KongisKing.net and KongisKing.net

More of Berkey’s space paintings can be viewed here.