Guest Post | The Ghostbreakers Mythos: A Dream

By GW Thomas

Lovecraft's circle shared mention of their separate creations in the pages of Weird Tales, name-dropping here and there a friend's character or some other reference. This was the beginning of the Cthulhu Mythos. Not everyone at Weird Tales was included; just the closest correspondents of Lovecraft’s. Later, August Derleth would take what was largely a game for HPL and tie it into a commercial package that featured monsters, weird books, and a shared world of dreams and terror. I suspect Manly Wade Wellman tried a little of this magic too.

"The Half-Haunted" (writing as Gans T Field), a Judge Keith Hillary Pursuivant ghostbreaker tale, appeared in Weird Tales in September 1941. This tale was the last for the Judge for several decades because Wellman would create a new ghostbreaker of even greater popularity in John Thunstone. But in this tale, Wellman borrows a page from Lovecraft's literary game. He mentions another Weird Tales alumnist's creation, that of Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin, without doubt the most popular character in WT's original run. In effect, what Wellman was doing was saying that the Judge and de Grandin existed in the same WT universe:

"...New Year's Eve found him at Harrisonville where de Grandin and Towbridge [sic] wanted his word on translating certain old Dutch documents better left untranslated..."

1941 is an interesting date for this to happen. De Grandin had been around since October 1925 while the Judge had first appeared only three years previous in January 1938. Still, the readers of WT liked both and you can see Wellman trying in a small way to create a Weird Tales Mythos like Lovecraft's. Why hadn't he included some actual Mythos?

Wellman did write one Mythos tale, "The Terrible Parchment" (Weird Tales, August 1937), that appeared five months after HPL's death, written as a memorial to the great author. By 1945, the only Mythos works appearing were August Derleth's pastiches. Derleth had taken control of the Lovecraft material, writing to authors such as C Hall Thompson to cease-and-desist. A number of unauthorized pastiches had appeared in Weird Tales by Gardner F Fox and Thompson. Ironically, "The Half-Haunted" appeared in an issue that sported a cover based on one of Derleth's pastiches about Ithaqua: "Beyond the Threshold."

Wellman did it again in "John Thunstone's Inheritance (Weird Tales, July 1944):

She smiled, with a great deal of maddening mystery. "Why not ask your friend the Frenchman -- Jules de Grandin? You and he are very close. Are you surprised to learn that I keep some watch on your movements?"

He answered her questions in order. "I invited de Grandin, but he and Dr. Trowbridge have all they can do in that line just now..."

Seabury Quinn finally returned the favor to Wellman in Weird Tales September 1945 in a non-de Grandin story called "Take Back That Which Thou Gavest." Instead of including Judge Pursuivant or John Thunstone in a story, Quinn pulls the authors into the frame for one. The opener is Quinn and Gans Field walking the streets of New York, looking for somewhere to drink. Quinn mentions that Field has just finished "The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" and is now working on "The Black Drama." (These stories both appeared in Weird Tales in 1938, seven years earlier. Editor Dorothy McIlwraith must have liked this kind of self-referential promotion for she could have easily cut the entire frame as the story does not need it.) The gist of the frame is that Gans sees an odd old man and curses at him in French. Wellman is well-known for his jovial nature and Quinn comments on this. How could a man be so evil that even the pleasant Gans Field should curse him out?

It's possible that Wellman saw a chance to tie other Weird Tales characters outside of the Mythos (maybe giving Derleth a bit of a poke too?), especially if they were ghostbreakers. A Ghostbreaker Mythos. To make this a reality, more writers would have had to be connected. To my knowledge this never happened. Wellman did tie some of his own ghostbreakers together into this shared universe when he wrote the 1982 novel The Hanging Stones, featuring Silver John and Judge Keith Hillary Pursuivent. He did not have John Thunstone and Silver John meet, but the singer with the silver strings did cross paths with John Thunstone's greatest enemies, the Shonokins, in After Dark (1980). So in this way, all three of his famous ghostbreakers do exist in the same universe.

I wish that E Hoffman Price's Peter D'Artois had flourished in Weird Tales, then he could have been tied into the Ghostbreaker Mythos as well. Unfortunately it was the popularity of Jules de Grandin that forced Hoffman to give up the character, since readers kept accusing him of ripping off Seabury Quinn.

Even if Wellman's mention of de Grandin was just a blip on the screen, a mere whim to please a fellow writer, the idea of a Ghostbreaker Mythos is very appealing to one such as I. Imagine Martin Hessellius, Abraham Von Helsing, Flaxman Low, John Silence, Carnacki, and all who followed belonging to a fraternity of ghost chasers! This idea was irresistible and I have used it in my own work. Thank you, Manly Wade Wellman! The Fraternity of Ghostbreakers goes on...

Using friends in stories was also part of the Cthulhu Mythos game. Clark Ashton Smith used Lovecraft as the model for Tomeron in "The Ephiphany of Death" (The Fantasy Fan, July 1934). Robert Bloch portrayed HPL in "The Shambler from the Stars" (Weird Tales, September 1935) and Lovecraft returned the favor in "The Haunter of the Dark" (Weird Tales, December 1936). Frank Belknap Long used a thinly disguised portrait of HPL in "The Space Eaters" (Weird Tales, July 1938). For Quinn to use the same idea in 1945 is not surprising. It's part of the Mythos game.

Perhaps the most interesting of these portrayals was done by August Derleth in 1966 in "The Dark Brotherhood". This posthumous collaboration with Lovecraft is about a man (who is very much like HPL: keeping strange hours, admiring architecture and graveyards) who finds multiple versions of Edgar Allan Poe popping up. In this way, HPL and Poe get to share a story together just as Derleth and HPL penned the story together.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Ghosts and Laughs: Comedians as Ghostbreakers [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The idea of a 'funny ghostbreaker' begins not in a movie, but on the stage. Paul Dickey and Charles Goddard's The Ghost Breaker: A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts (1909) (listen to the novel version) came at a time when the occult detective was no longer cutting edge horror. Names such as Martin Hesselius, Dr. Abraham van Helsing, Flaxman Low, and Dr John Silence had become familiar articles in the weird mystery genre. Not until World War I was over would interest in all things beyond the veil revive and the ghostbreakers would catch their second wind. But in 1909, people wanted to laugh at the shadows, not fight them.

It wasn't long before Cecile B DeMille made the first silent version of the play in 1914. It was first remade in 1922 with Wallace Reid and Lila Lee, then again in 1940 and 1953 (but more of that later). What is important to grasp here is that the Dickey and Goddard play set in motion a common plot that would be recycled over and over. A young woman would inherit a haunted house and invite her new boyfriend to go along with her to see the property. While in the house, mysterious things would occur, probably some running, screaming, and carrying on. (In fact the 12th film in the Carry On series was called Carry On Screaming! (1966). This scenario is overly familiar to all of us from dozens of TV episodes and endless Scooby-Doo cartoons. In the worst Ann Radcliffe style, the monsters will be explained away, the young lovers will triumph, and the true ghostbreaker fan will be disappointed.

Walt Disney would play three ghostbreakers (Mickey, Donald, and Goofy) for laughs in “Lonesome Ghosts” (December 24, 1937). Other cartoons featured ghosts and haunted houses: Popeye’s “Shiver Me Timbers (1934) and a proto-Bugs Bunny in “Prest-O-Chango” (1939), for example. But only “Lonesome Ghosts” has dedicated ghostbusters who hire out to rid buildings of ghosts. These cartoons are all done for laughs, not serious ghostbreaking.

Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard made the next version of Dickey and Goddard with The Ghost Breakers (1940) and scored a hit. Hope is snide and Goddard fun and beautiful. And the island with the zombies is creepy enough. Like all other versions, no real monsters show up. All the films mentioned on this page are in black and white, adding to their horror feel; Hope's film most of all. It would be much harder to send funny chills down spines in vivid Wizard of Oz color.

Abbott and Costello worked pretty hard to get us to giggle in Hold That Ghost (1941), a film that tried to capitalize on Bob Hope's success, but fails for the most part because of the lack of any real ghosts. The boys did a better job of saving Universal and its 1930s monsters in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

The first and best of the franchise, it has our witless duo as baggage clerks who get the job of unloading real monsters at a wax museum. Dracula, played by Bela Lugosi, hypnotizes Bud and together they resurrection the Frankenstein's monster, all the while Lon Chaney Jr.'s Larry Talbot goes about changing into the Wolf Man. Boris Karloff turned down the chance to be Frankenstein's monster, but made up for it a year later in a film that bore his name.

This film spawned five sequels: Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), a short for the Colgate Comedy Hour had "Abbott and Costello Meet the Creature From the Black Lagoon" (1953) and finally, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). Each of these recycled the same basic idea and got less and less funny, though they all made money.

The last official remake of The Ghost Breaker came in 1953 when Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis filmed Scared Stiff. There are more night clubs and singing in it, but in all important ways it is not all that different than Hope's venture back in 1940.

Television and Saturday morning cartoons claimed the province of the funny spooks in shows like Bewitched (1964-1972), The Addams Family (1964-1966), The Munsters (1964-1966), and I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970). It would take Richard O'Brien's burlesque sex comedy The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1973) to make fans sit up and take notice again. First in a stage play (how appropriate) and then a cult film in 1975 starring Tim Curry, we see the same story again: Brad and Janet, boyfriend and girlfriend, end up in a haunted house full of weirdos, dancing and singing, and exploring their sexuality, all while an intergalactic power struggle plays out.

What all of these films lack is a true investigator of the supernatural. They are simply ordinary folk who fall into unusual circumstances (and are supposed to make us chuckle). Films such as Young Frankenstein (1974) and Shaun of the Dead (2004) have proven you can make a successful horror parody (much as Dickey and Goddard were trying to do with the ghostbreaker genre), but this requires that the audience have a collection of shared tropes to play off of. It took Dan Ackroyd (an actual believer in the paranormal) and Harold Ramis (not so much) to write and perform in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989) to see if real occult detectives could be funny. The results fortunately were -- yes, they can.

Before we leave our funny ghostchasers, there is one other that needs mention. In comics, ghostbreaker spoofs were less common, though the Kolchak the Night Stalker television show did receive one lambasting from the Marvel Comics group in July 1975.

Marvel experimented with monster spoof comics with a title called Arrgh!. It ran five issues from December 1974 to September 1975. The series was edited by Roy Thomas. The majority of the strips used were based on the classic Universal monsters. In the fourth issue a parody of The Night Stalker TV show lead off with a 10-pager written by Jack Younger (aka Russ Jones). The artwork was penciled by Gerry Grandenetti (better known in the Warren magazines and undergrounds) and inked by Marvel staffer Frank Springer.

The level of humor is typical of a MAD Magazine parody with Kolchak becoming Karl Coalshaft. His boss Tony Vincenzo is Tony Vinagretto. The plot follows a pretty typical episode with Coalshaft's trying to get the big supernatural scoop and failing each time: first with a vampire, then a werewolf. In both cases, the police show up, riddle the monster with bullets, and it is up to Coalshaft to use his special weapon (that he always carries) to put them down. His camera captures pictures, but is always destroyed. The strip ends with him returning to his office and not noticing his boss is actually a vampire. Tony tries to kill him, but falls out the window. Coalshaft walks away, giving up on monsters forever.

What makes this parody so apt is that the writer had only to repeat what he had seen on the show to make it ridiculous. The juvenile name jokes and sight gags are typical, but what is actually funny is that the Kolchak show was this predictable and silly. That sounds like I'm not a fan, which isn't true. Like Chris Carter, who created The X-Files, I watched these shows as a kid and loved them. They inspired much of what followed in the occult detective line. Still... the show's faults are laid bare in this 10-pager. I suppose it's no surprise that it was cancelled after 20 episodes. "Monster-of-the-week" is a criticism that has been given the series, but you can apply that just as easily to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Charmed series, both of which ran for many years and have huge followings. I suspect what ultimately ruined Kolchak's success was the lack of a larger cast of characters and becoming formulaic almost instantly. (You have to remember the two successful TV movies that spawned it.) It was prominent enough to warrant this single parody... "The Night Gawker”.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Monsters Chasing Monsters [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The history of the ghostbreaker changed on March 10, 1997 when Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired for the first time. (The movie doesn't count.) Whedon's popular character Angel split from the cast for his own show on October 5, 1999 to begin his own campaign against the darkness. And ever since then, most ghostbreakers have been supernatural beings.

Now, let's be fair. Whedon wasn't the first. Even Blade, created by Marv Wolfman, predates Angel. But Joss made them big business. The current "paranormal romance" trend starts with Buffy. By the end of the Buffy run they had dozens of slayers, two vampires, a werewolf, an ex-demon, a lounge-lizard demon, and a witch all pursuing evil. Despite this, the best characters (in my opinion) were Xander, Giles, Fred (pre-transformation), and Wesley. The humans. And perhaps Joss Whedon would nod his head and smile. Because that’s what he planned all along. The humans act as a mirror to his super-beings, whether they are ghostbusters or traveling around in space or fighting super-beings in the Marvel Universe. This is a Whedon thing. But it opened a door to another kind of Hell Mouth – the Monster That Fights Monsters. (It reminds me of that classic Gahan Wilson cartoon where a monster is running after another monster and the human observers says: “It one god-damned thing after another!”)

A 2009-2010 comic book shows just how far this monster-busters thing has gone: Casper and the Spectrals (Arden Entertainment, written by Todd Dezago and drawn by Pedro Delgad). Imagine cute little Casper who never had any friends because people always ran away saying "A g-g-g-ghost!" is now teamed up with Wendy and Hot Stuff as a monster-fighting team. It's well done but, really? Not even that One Percenter D-Bag Richie Rich to bring a little humanity to the gang.

I have to admit I'm old school. Call me a Kolchakian traditionalist if you like. I don't like my vamps to be good guys. I like my Scully and Mulders to be human. I have enjoyed Buffy, Angel, and Blade. I'm not slagging these shows, only pointing out a trend I don't care for. But the over-all effect of this type of ghostbreaker is too akin to a superhero showdown rather than a more Mystery approach a la Carnacki, John Silence, or even Jules de Grandin.

A show I really enjoyed in the first six seasons was Supernatural with its culture of Hunters: humans who prowl the night, protecting humanity. (The show took a left turn I couldn’t endure after this, forgetting about ghostbreaking and becoming a soap opera about a war between Heaven and Hell. Sigh.) The early episodes were more my speed, rather than someone trying to hook up with a vampire. (My favorite line is when Dean Winchester says, "Suck this, Twilight" and blows away a vamp.) The story lines I have enjoyed the most are those when the boys hunt, rather than consort with Satan and angels, and save/destroy the world. I wish the producer McG would create a spin-off show called Tales of the Hunters (or something better) in which we don't go off to save the world each week but just hunt. Kind of a CSI-Supernatural.

This is something X-Files might have done if it hadn't turned into a soap opera about UFOs. (Why does this keep happening?) The Kolchak remake, The Dresden Files, Constantine, and The Exorcist tried, but all were met with cancellation. Perhaps my dream is simply too uncommercial? Doesn’t anyone want a show about humans surrounded by monsters, trying to save humanity from the darkness? Well, besides The Walking Dead? (As long as Rick and his friends are never joined by a zombie sidekick, there might be hope.) Robert Kirkman’s Outcast is another bright light (odd phrase for such a dark show). Kyle Barnes and the Rev certainly are old school, but the show is limited in its scope. It wouldn’t work with new kinds of threats showing up each week.

So I sigh and keep hoping for a truly old school ghostbreaker show to appear. This may show my "raised in rural Canada" background, but all I can say is, "Let's hunt!"

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Guest-blogging | That F'ing Monkey

I've been wanting to try guest-blogging at some other blogs for a couple of months now, but hadn't gotten around to seriously thinking about it or approaching anyone yet before my buddy Ken from That F'ing Monkey asked if I wanted to chip in for three posts. Ken and his wife just had a baby boy and he knew that when his son arrived he'd need a break from the blog to focus on being a new dad. It was awesome timing, but I would have agreed even if I hadn't already been thinking about it.

Ken's idea was for me and him and Brandon (the other regular TFM contributor) to imagine that we were guest programmers on Turner Classic Movies and pick three films to talk about. We'd introduce them, talk about why we liked them, and give some background information and trivia if we wanted. I was totally into it.

I'll let you visit TFM to read my posts (and Ken's and Brandon's), but the films I picked were Alfred Hitchcock's silent version of The Lodger, the under-appreciated British horror classic Night of the Demon, and Tom Berenger's hilarious Western parody Rustlers' Rhapsody. Click the links or each picture below to go to the appropriate post.







My main criterion at first was simply that I wanted to choose from three different movie eras, but I ended up finding a recurring theme that tied them all together. I explain more about that in the Rustlers' Rhapsody entry.

Anyway, thanks so much to Ken for asking me to participate. It was a lot of fun and I'd love to do it again.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Files #2

Earlier this week I reviewed The Spider #1 for Robot 6, but it’s not the only recent Moonstone book I’ve read. Nor is it the only one that offered an encouraging introduction to a character I’ve heard a lot about, but don’t have much personal experience with.

I do know a bit more about Kolchak than I did about The Spider. I have vague memories of watching a TV movie or two as a kid and I’ve checked out a couple of stories in one anthology or another, but none of those have actually helped the character for me. On the contrary, they gave me the impression that Kolchak’s misfortune and demoralization are such integral parts of the concept that there’s no hope that he’ll ever achieve any kind of success. I at least need the illusion that a hero may succeed, so when failure becomes a built-in part of the concept, I lose interest.

Still, enough people whose tastes are otherwise similar to mine enjoy Kolchak, so I keep trying to find a hook to grab onto. One of those people is Christopher Mills, so it’s appropriate that he’s writing Moonstone’s new comic series, which looks to be just the handhold I’ve needed.

I don’t know what happened in Kolchak #1, but I don’t need to because the second issue starts a new story arc. In it, Kolchak has been fired from yet another newspaper, but is on his way to Miami where he’s been offered a new job with a tabloid. One of the problems I’ve had with Kolchak in the past is that in the stories I’ve read he insists on being taken seriously as an investigative journalist, when he’s in fact Jack McGee from The Incredible Hulk. It might be overstating things to say that he’s embraced his McGee-ness in Kolchak #2, but he’s at least come to terms with it and is apparently being rewarded for it. Being rewarded – in my admittedly, very limited perspective – is something that’s long overdue for this character and it’s allowing me to move past Kolchak’s haplessness and enjoy the rest of the concept: a rumpled, unlikely monster-hunter.

And for his first case, he’s looking for a Florida skunk ape (in spite of the cover, which – while cool – has nothing to do with anything in the book), so I’m totally into that too.

Pass the Comics: Jetareeeno!

Jet Dream and her Stunt Girl Counterspies



'60s spy comics at their swingingest. [Gold Key Comics!]

The Monster Hunters in the Hour of the Werewolf



There's no monster hunter like an old, British colonel turned hunter-for-hire. Especially when he's drawn by Mike Zeck. [The Charlton Story]

Art Show: A Golden Princess Who Ruled with Singing Whip!

Tiger Girl



By Joe Doolin. [Illustrateurs]

Sheena



By Nicola Scott. [Pink of the Ink]

After the break: Red Sonja, a school-girl monster-hunter, the JLA, Aurora, a giant flying monkey, and Al Williamson tributes.

Movie News: I Hate Tentacles

Meet Blackbeard



This man is in talks to play Blackbeard in Pirates of the Caribbean 4. I didn't think those movies could get any better, but I guess I was wrong. (I know it's cool to hate the last two, but I can't help liking them.) Penelope Cruz is going to be in it too, which could ease my grieving over Keira's absence.

Sharktopus vs Dinoshark



The world's not awesome enough for a movie with both Sharktopus and Dinoshark in it, but Undead Backbrain has the complete skinny on their separate films.

Moby Dick with Dragons



And Danny Glover as a fantasy-world Ahab. I'm skeptically curious.

Doc Savage movie



I don't know enough about Doc Savage to be truly excited about this, but any pulp adventure movie set in the '30s is going to get my money.

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein on screen... again



It was meant to be a TV series (I reviewed the TV-movie/pilot a few years ago), but Koontz didn't like how it was going and pulled his name off it, choosing instead to co-author a series of novels. Now those novels are becoming at least one film. I never did get around to reading them, but I'm curious now to see how the new film version compares to the old one.

Monster in Paris



Unfortunately, they're not making a movie out of my and Jason Copland's Paris-set giant monster comic just yet, but there is an animated film in the works about "a shy movie projectionist and an inventor who team up with a cabaret star, an eccentric scientist and his monkey to save the city from a monster."

I miss John Hughes



I pulled out The Smiths' Louder than Bombs to listen to recently. That album always makes me think of John Hughes because he's the one who introduced me to it. After the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, I made a habit of getting the soundtracks to all his films, knowing that I'd find some amazing stuff on them. "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" was on Pretty in Pink and Kirsty Macoll's cover of "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby" is on She's Having a Baby, but I also have Hughes to thank for Echo and the Bunnymen, Love and Rockets, Gene Loves Jezebel, Kate Bush, Flesh for Lulu, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and of course Simple Minds. He's even responsible for my digging into Bowie's career any earlier than Let's Dance thanks to that quote at the beginning of The Breakfast Club.

By sheer coincidence, Vanity Fair ran a series of articles on Hughes about the same time I was listening to The Smiths. /Film has conveniently collected them, but my favorite part was learning that he never lost that love for new music. According to /Film's summary, "His iTunes library filled several hard drives, and he planned the playlists for his sons’ weddings as carefully as he had the soundtracks for his movies. In recent years, he took to dispensing pre-loaded iPods to people he liked, much as he’d assiduously compiled mix tapes for Ringwald and Broderick in the old days." There's a great story about the one he gave John Candy's son and how it was eventually used, but you should go read that one for yourself.

October's adventure comics

This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs is up at Robot 6. It's about all the great adventure comics coming out in October. We got treasure hunters, Viking demon-hunters, giant Nazi robots, ray guns, pirates, monsters, private eyes, a haunted house, and more Apocalipstix! October's going to be a great, great month.

Monster Week: Miscellaneous Monsters

Adventure into Terror!



By Colleen Coover.

Dylan Dog movie



I think I knew they were making a Dylan Dog movie. What's news to me is that Taye Diggs is playing the bad guy. What's sad is that - if I'm completely honest - this is way more interesting to me as Private Practice news than as monster news.

Dracula and Frankenstein vs. The Incredible Umbrella



Mike Sterling uncovered this book in his preparations for a paperback book show and rightfully decided to hold onto it for himself. It's also got Sherlock Holmes and I'm guessing some pirates amongst other Victorian Whathaveyou, so on the Wish List it goes.

"I asked for a pony..."



Why I Love Sam Hiti, Reason No. 685

Image Comics in May

Some good-looking stuff coming out from Image in May.

Pretty Baby Machine #1 (of 3)



Jesse James vs. Machine Gun Kelly isn't the only action Machine Gun Kelly's seeing in the near future. Pretty Baby Machine covers what happens when Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Machine Gun Kelly have to join forces against Al Capone. And Kody Chamberlain's illustrating it. Awesome.

Frank Frazetta's Swamp Demon one-shot



Josh Ortega + Josh Medors + another Jay Fotos colored/edited Frank Frazetta comic = a nice, warm, swampy, demony feeling.

Monster Zoo



Everything I need to know is in the title.

Proof, Volume 1: Goatsucker



Bigfoot as monster-hunter? Sold.

Artists of the Day: Ryan Ottley, Grant Gould, and Unknown Pirate Girl Artist

I've got a huge backlog of artists I want to feature here, so I'm going to start ganging them up on you. I'm always interested in new folks to feature too, so let me know your favorites in the comments.

Ryan Ottley



This and lots of other Hulk vs. Thing awesome-sauce can be found at Again With the Comics.

Grant Gould



Grant's depiction of his girlfriend (and sometimes collaborator of mine) Jess Hickman as a zombie hunter.

Yes, Jess is that butt-kicking in real life.

Unknown Pirate Girl Artist



No idea who drew this, but I found it here.