A TRAIN OF THOUGHT

Today would have been the 104th birthday of legendary fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, with whom I was fortunate to have a 38-year friendship from 1974 until his too-early death in 2012. Whenever I visited Ray at his home in Los Angeles, I always made a point of pausing in front of this oil painting hanging on his sitting-room wall. 

 

Entitled ‘The Carnival’, was painted in 1952 by Joseph ‘Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992). Long before Ray was sufficiently established in his career to purchase the original canvas, he had spotted a lithograph of the picture in the window of a Beverly Hills gallery. 

 

‘The Carnival’ presents an enigmatic vision of a crowded, flag-and-banner-bedecked train which is either coming out of nowhere (bound for a destination equally unknown) or is, otherwise, reversing towards the abrupt and perilous end of both railroad-track and viaduct. For Ray, it seemed to chime with some of the bizarre and fantastical themes that he had explored in his 1947 debut collection of short stories, Dark Carnival.

 

The result was the first of many meetings between two men with minds wide open to the eloquent and extravagant possibilities of an unfettered imagination. For Joe, it was the beginning of his collaboration with Ray: illustrating, decorating or providing evocative jacket-art for a succession of books beginning, in 1953, with The Golden Apples of the Sun and including such story collections as The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy and the novels, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Halloween Tree.

 

Joe's carnival train also, unquestionably, contributed to the shaping of Ray's book Something Wicked This Way Comes in which Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, with its entourage of monsters and misfits, arrives by locomotive, under the cover of night, in a sleepy American town to disrupt the fates and fortunes of the local residents and, in particular, the destinies of two young boys.

 

I'm sharing this haunting image today with grateful, affectionate memories of my many encounters and long years of correspondence with Uncle Ray and with respect and admiration for his creative collaboration with the talented Mr. Mugnaini.

"DOCTOR, WHO ARE YOU?"

Exciting news from the Whoniverse as Puffin publish the BBC book Doctor Who in Wonderland by Paul Magrs. A brilliant premise and excellent conceit: a new story in which the TARDIS deposits the Doctor in front of the gates to the Oxford university college, Christ Church, in what (in literary circles) would come to be regarded as a particularly notable year: 1862.

 

The Time Lord (to be specific, the Fifth Doctor, as portrayed by Peter Davidson) along with three of his companions from that era – Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough – are instantly swept into the milieu of Victorian Oxford where everything is going like a summer dream until, at a tea-party in the Deanery Garden, there’s a decidedly nightmarish twist… 

Paul Magrs skilfully and wittily interweaves many Whovian, Dodgsonian, Carrollian and Alician threads to create a memorable adventure that will be better enjoyed without ‘Spoilers’ from me. All that needs saying is that this excellent read is a loving tip-of-the-top-hat (‘In this style UK £9.99’) and, of course, a Panama Hat, to two great and enduring fantasy concepts, whose creative origins bridge a 100-year-span from 1862 to 1963.

 

Only one complaint from this reviewer: having read the book, it’s rather frustrating not being able to now reach for the DVD and watch this episode!

WHAT'S THAT IN MAN-YEARS?

Although Snoopy made his debut in Charles Schulz's Peanut comic-strip on October 4, 1950, his official birthday is today!  

Many happy returns, you old dog! 

 

 

MY NEW BESTIE

 

 

Gosh, but I've missed my friends from the Antibiotic Family for a couple of weeks but, today, they're back in my life with a vengeance (6 capsules, 4 times a day) – hopefully to avoid return visits to hospital next week...

ONE MAN AND HIS DOG

I really enjoy sharing the work of artists who I've either long-admired or have only recently discovered.

This acrylic painting – 'Dog Day Afternoon' – is the work of self-taught Canadian, Steve Walker (1962-2012), whose work contains many hauntingly poignant images, invariably in a palette of muted colours, that often speak to unsettling combinations of joy and sorrow, loneliness and abandonment, hope and expectation, anticipation, frustration and disappointment and every other mood within the complex turmoil of human emotions...

As here, the features of Walker's subjects – invariable handsome young men, for he was a prolific chronicler of life, love and loss in the gay community – are often unrevealed: leaving us to interpret their body language and add whatever personal thoughts and feelings the settings bring to mind. Thus, the observer becomes, in a sense, a co-conspirator in the creation of the scene.

"IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK..."

 

ANGRY DUCK: Call yourself a voice coach! I've been paying you millions of dollars for 90 years ––– and there are STILL people who CAN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD I'M SAYING!!

 

PROFESSOR OWL: Pardon...? Say again.....?

 

 

SUPER-ART

A classic piece of contemporary comic-book art: Adam Hughes' variant cover for DC's Superman #3 (published September 12, 2018). 

Simple, bold and dynamic: the urgent immediacy of Clark Kent's imminent transformation into Superman, the upturned gaze, the catastrophe of the moment reflected in his spectacles. 

Brilliant!

ALL THE WORLD'S A FAIR

Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

Sixty years ago, in 1964, I was 15 years old and fixated on all things American – art, literature and music, politics and pop-culture (especially humour, cartoons and comic books) and, of course, TV and movies. 

 

Coverage in the British press of the opening on this day of the New York World’s Fair 1964-65 was was hardly extensive, but wherever it appeared I found and devoured it.

 

The concept was visionary and the realisation looked awesome. Everything about it was new, vital and stimulating: a contemporary re-embodiment of those British extravaganzas, The Great Exhibition of 1851 about which I’d read and, from a century later, the Festival of Britain of which I had a few toddler memories. 

 

I was particularly obsessed by the NYWF because my idol, Walt Disney, was responsible for creating a quartet of attractions for the Fair’s pavilions, including the first manifestations of Disney’s ‘audio-animatronics’ including prehistoric landscapes of robot dinosaurs and an address from an android Abraham Lincoln.

 

Six decades on, the New York World’s Fair has lost none of its fascination for me and ‘memories’ of this event that I never attended have continued to fuel my fascination with the art and mechanics of theme parks – especially those engineered by Mr Disney and his successors. 

 

Perhaps this selection of posters – several by noted artists and all redolent of 60’s graphic art and design – will convey something of the sense of excitement experienced by my teenage-self!

 

 

 

Artist: David Klein (1918-2005)

 

 

Artist: Henry Benscathy (1909-1996)  

 

Artist: Unknown  

 

 

  

Artist: Dallasta

 

Artist: Unknown

 

 

 

Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

 

Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

 
 

 

 

Artist: Disney Studio

 

 Artist: Unknown

 

 

 Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

 

 

 

 

Artist:  Whitney Darrow Jnr. (1909-1999)

 

 

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

 

Here's great piece of great art by Al Feldstein (1925-2014) for Weird Fantasy Vol. 1, # 17 (January 1953) featuring dinosaurs, a spacecraft and the name of a man familiar with both: Ray Bradbury! 

 

In fact, the Bradbury story included in this issue, 'There Will Come Soft Rains', had nothing to do with either space-travel or prehistoric life, because Weird Fantasy covers were invariably generic, featuring images guaranteed to catch the eye and raise the pulse of the potential reader: rockets, robots, aliens, monsters, dinosaurs and (wherever and whenever possible) scantily-dressed females in peril! 

 

Nevertheless, this could so easily have been an image for Bradbury's legendary dino-saga, 'A Sound of Thunder'. 

 

And, anyway, I just love it!

PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE

I am much struck and deeply moved by this extraordinary 1967 painting, 'Pacific': the work of Alex Colville (1920-2013), a Canadian artist and print-maker, responsible for works of Magical Realism that confront the viewer with mysterious imagery that beg questions and provoke propositions. 

 

There is so much discipline in its composition: the precision of painting: the geometrically-tiled floor; the table (with its curious measuring rule – establishing a formal sense of order, control or, perhaps, indices of time and space) and the portentous pistol carelessly, or precisely, abandoned or just waiting; the louvered window and the seascape beyond all contrasted with the figure of the shirtless man, turned from us, head and features unseen, watching, we presume, the gentle breaking of a single wave...