A Fistful of Harryhausen! (Matt’s Picks)

    Ray Harryhausen, along with Frank Frazetta, were the interior designers of my imagination.  My dreams were built of bricks made from their images.  I can’t say that I was surprised to hear of the death of Harryhausen; as I had been surprised about ten years ago to discover that he was still alive.  Like Frazetta, he went dark in the 80s, and until the advent of the internet (and DVD special features), I had to go on rumor and innuendo.  With his absence, I assumed death.  I am glad that both men lived long enough to see their work appreciated and available to new generations of awestruck children.  Stop motion animation has a magic, something unreal, yet undoubtedly physical.  And he was a master of that magic, creating some of the coolest monsters to ever fight superimposed people.  From skeleton warriors and dragons to dinosaurs and aliens, the man knew his creatures.  Not content to tape fins on a lizard (as so many did), he made monsters that leapt off the screen to terrify and delight.  He died this week at the age of 92.  He will be missed.  But his legacy lives on.  What follows are a few of my favorite Harryhausen creations.

5.  The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was one of his earlier films, written by his friend Ray Bradbury.  It’s also one of the earliest monster movies I remember watching (along with The Creature from the Black Lagoon) which fostered in me a life-long love of monsters and monster movies.  It’s a great design and has a more ‘realistic’ feel than many big lizards from movies of that era, being more lively, not plodding like most.

4.  The Selenites from H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon are a great menacing alien, big heads, big eyes, and devious plans.  Living in crystal caves on the Moon has no doubt made them rather irritable, and humans showing up and messing with their giant caterpillar cattle doesn’t help.  Plus, they probably want our women.

3.  The 7th Voyage of Sinbad features a bunch of awesome creatures, but the one I love the most has to be the Cyclops.  Some combination of traditional depiction, reptile skin, and a horn, along with Harryhausen’s brand of magic made a creature menacing and cool, without the usual dopiness one gets with the creatures.

2.  Probably the most famous sequence in Harryhausen’s amazing repertoire, the animated skeleton battle in Jason and the Argonauts is simply one of the coolest moments in adventure film ever conceived.  Just a great scene, and so inspirational for future special effects movies.

1.  The Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth is one of the coolest monsters ever conceived.  It’s semi-humanoid, but reptilian and strange.  And yet, somehow, like King Kong before, he becomes the sympathetic figure, trapped by the hatreds and violence of Man.

-Matt

Dork Art: Mike Mignola's Midnight Circus

Just popping in with some cool news revealed at C2E2.  In the current continuum Hellboy might be stumbling around Hell, but that doesn't mean we can't get another amazing Original Graphic Novel during the downtime between issues.  After illustrating the epic trilogy that sent HB into the abyss (Darkness Calls, The Wild Hunt, and The Storm & The Fury), Duncan Fegredo returns to the Mignolaverse with a flashback tale depicting kid Hellboy's flight from his Military Base homestead to the freedom of the circus.  A perfectly cliche American notion for young Hellboy to explore.

Comic Book Resources has a quick interview with Mignola in which he claims inspiration from both Ray Bradbury & Pinocchio.  As well as cramming in "almost everything I find hideous and disturbing about circuses."  The young Hellboy shorts hold a special kinda sway over HB fanatics.  Stories like "Pancakes," the more recent 1948, and even Eric Powell's weird tale "Midnight Cowboy" are adorably bittersweet comics and the idea of a longer book focusing on the transition from boy to man is incredibly appealing.  But I better be getting some Mac the Dog too.

--Brad

Dork Art: Ray Bradbury's The Scythe

Over on his Pulp Sunday blog, comic artist (and ITMOD favorite) Francesco Francavilla just posted this beautiful tribute to Ray Bradbury's short story "The Scythe."  Absolutely gorgeous.

--Brad

The Passing of Ray Bradbury

Painting by Les Edwards

Ray Bradbury has died.  Age 91.  A long life that left an undeniable mark upon literature and media.  Growing up obsessed with science-fiction and horror, Ray Bradbury was one of my first genre loves.  Getting a hold of The October Country and The Martian Chronicles at the age of 12 or 13 was essential in my development of the Dork that writes for this blog today.  Stories like "The Emissary" and "The Veldt" still haunt me and as a budding wannabe writer it was easy to see his influence upon other author obsessions like Stephen King.

And then there's Something Wicked This Way Comes.  A perfect novel.  Quick wham bam reading.  It's at once sweet and nostalgic/warm and fuzzy...and then it turns dark, and scary as a nightmare.  Also a really fantastic film starring the shadowy Jonathan Pryce and the good-hearted Jason Robards.  A real must, if you haven't seen it already.

In the brief time I taught Middle School English & Creative Writing, Ray Bradbury was one of four authors I chose to force feed to my students (the other three were Harlan Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, and Ambrose Bierce).   One of my proudest moments of that oh-so-brief career was when one of my students asked to keep my copy of the Ray Bradbury Omnibus that I taught from, complete with highlights, notes, doodles, and underlines.  I was so surprised by his desire to continue down the Martian landscape that I just handed the book over, and I like to think that that student, a college graduate by this point (damn, that makes me feel real frickin' old) is still tearing through the pages of that big beast of a book.

--Brad