Saturday Cartoons: Artist/writer Edward Gorey was born on this day in 1925. Celebrated for his gothic visual style and humor, Gorey designed book covers for Doubleday before releasing his own series of projects beginning in the early 1960s. His work rode the wave of Edwardian and Victorian resurgence in the 1960s, which was popularized in the media by The Addams Family (1964-1966), Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-1967), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Wacky Races (1968-1970), and the John Steed character played by Patrick Macnee in The Avengers. Like the Addams Family series and cartoons, Gorey leaned heavily toward macabre mystery. Asked about his fascination with gothic subjects, the artist told The New Yorker in 1992, "If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful,
because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense.
Sunny, funny nonsense for children- oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no
happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy
nonsense, either." His early assignments included The Secret Agent, Amerika, War of the Worlds, and Let's Kill Uncle- a story adapted for the screen by William Castle in 1966. Story continues.
Gorey's universe echoed similar motifs in pop culture during the 1960s. Take a short tour of Dandy fashion and fur coats from the decade: Adam Adamant Lives!, The Avengers, Carnaby Street, The Rolling Stones, Assassination Bureau with Diana Rigg (1969), and Franju's 1963 remake of the 1916 classic serial, Judex.
I discovered Edward Gorey through his dark alphabet book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. First published in 1963, the book had a resurgence of popularity in the early 1980s. Each letter of the alphabet featured the strange demise of a child drawn in Gorey's signature thicket of ink lines. He may be best remembered for the intro animation based on his work made for PBS Mystery. He also designed the costumes and sets to Dracula in 1977, published as Dracula: A Toy Theater in 1979 and rereleased in 2007 with paper dolls and sets. Gorey passed away in 2000. Images and the Mystery video below. Learn more: Amphigorey, Amphigorey Too, Amphigorey Also, Amphigorey Again, Amazon author page, and artist news and archives at Edward Gorey House. Related post: The Adventures of Richard Sala.
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The master of macabre mystery (and fellow fan of The Avengers), Richard Sala, is back with a new book for Fantagraphics called The Hidden. "Eight desperate people are stranded at a snowbound diner. Their phones can only pick brief and perplexing bits of conversation. The radio is filled with static- although occasional, broken-up bits of news are heard- reports of some sort of global catastrophe... A ninth person arrives, hiking to the diner from his stranded car, where he had been listening to his car radio. He informs the others that, yes, from what he was been able to make out, something alarming seems to have happened, a catastrophe on a global scale… Oh, and one more bit of local news he happened to pick up, he says: The previous night an inmate escaped from a nearby hospital for the criminally insane, after killing his doctor and several bystanders. The police warn that he is very, very dangerous...
What perhaps sounds like the description of an old weird tale or an episode of The Twilight Zone is actually just the beginning of the new suspenseful, brain-twisting graphic novel from the author of Delphine, The Chuckling Whatsit, and Cat Burglar Black. In The Hidden, as the isolated characters become increasingly unraveled, one character tells of a dream he recently had. Then each of the others tells a dream, a personal anecdote or a story they’ve heard, ranging from the bizarre to the absurd to the truly horrific. Each will be presented as its own chapter. Then there are the games- a selection of (fully illustrated) card games and board games found in the diner. Are these merely children’s games- or something more sinister? 48 pages of full-color comics." -Amazon
The Hidden is listed on-line for a late-fall release, but Fantagraphics has pushed the release date back a bit to allow our man to really go the extra mile on the artwork. We can't wait! Sala has posted a sneak preview of the book on his blog here. During the launch of his previous book, Cat Burglar Black, Sala sat down for a virtual interview with Spy Vibe from our private lairs in the Bay Area to talk about his passion for classic mystery adventures, storytelling, and Emma Peel's jumpsuit! He also shares scans of the photos and letter he received from Patrick Macnee as a young fan. See the Spy Vibe feature interview The Adventures of Richard Sala here.
Spy Vibers who have not explored Sala's work should expect hints of Edward Gorey, The Addams Family, Fantomas, Judex, Irma Vepp and les Vampires, and worlds filled with trap doors, hidden chambers, sleuths and ghouls, and ghastly murders. I recommend that you pick up The Chuckling Whatsit and Maniac Killer Strikes Again!. Amazon shoppers can find the Richard Sala page here.
