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!

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.

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...

A LETTER FROM MARS

 

Fifty years ago, today, RAY BRADBURY, visionary American writer of fantasy and sci-fi classics – think The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 – sat down at his typewriter in Beverly Hills and replied to a fan-letter from a 25-year-old guy in Britain who had sent him some provoking questions about a mutual idol – Walt Disney...

 

 

 

 

 

This remarkable letter was to be the beginning of a wonderful friendship that would last for almost 40 years and only ended with Ray’s death in 2012. 

 

Only a few days before he died, I received – by email, via his daughter, Zee, who latterly served as his amanuensis – a final missive…

 

 

**********************************

 

Dear Brian,

 

Thanks for your wonderful note; it's always great to hear from you.

 

Zee read your email to me and I cannot believe what you and David have to go through. [We had to vacate our flat for a year during repairs to the building] 

 

Of course, now that you've had to dig through all your treasures, perhaps we should get you two here to take care of this out-of-control homestead of mine!!!! I love this old house of mine and even if I didn't, I think I'd be stuck here because there's just so much stuff.

 

I'm glad to hear of your new book and I do hope you'll send me a copy of it when it comes out.

 

I think Zee told you that I had been in the hospital, but this old Martian is doing fine, so don't you worry.

 

I send you and David much love,

 

Ray

 

**********************************

 

My discovery, in my early teens, of the extraordinary worlds of Ray Bradbury was a fiery baptism in the waters of metaphor and simile, in the rip-tide of allusions and illusions, in the great wave of allegory and analogy. 

 

His books were like gathering the Golden Apples of the Sun; getting drunk on Dandelion Wine in the shade of the Halloween Tree in the October Country; or finding a prescription for a Medicine for Melancholy whenever Something Wicked This Way Comes.

 

Our correspondence and, later, our meetings in London, California and Florida, were treasured like the rarest and richest gifts stolen from a dragon-horde or from seemingly commonplace pebbles and shells found shimmering along new-washed shoreline in the first light of dawn.

 

To engage with Ray on any topic of conversation was nothing short of thrilling: invigorating, enlightening, challenging and inspiring. Never more so than when talk turned to shared passions and obsessions. 

 

Cue a topic; any one: Disney (especially Fantasia and the wonders of Disneyland); dinosaurs and robots; Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol; comic books (Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars and the ‘pulp poets’ of the ‘fifties); cinematic classics (The Phantom of the Opera, Citizen Kane and La Strada); the monsters of moviedom (from King Kong to the beasts of Ray Harryhausen); Hollywood’s funny men (Stan and Ollie, Buster Keaton and Chaplin); artists (especially Piranesi, Eyvind Earle and, his own frequent illustrator, Joe Mugnani) and then more Disney and so much more of anything and everything.

 

Ray became my mentor and critic, my goad and guide, source of inspiration and spur to my imagination; but he was also ever the challenger to my preconceptions and debunker of my hypocrisies. We talked about joys and sorrows, origins and destinations, risings and fallings, dreams and nightmare, realities and masquerades, every shade of love, hate and whatever lay between. 

 

Our thirty-eight years of friendship was, as I grew up and he grew older, a love-affair of ponderings and speculations. I miss him as much today, as I did twelve years ago, when that ‘Old Martian’ (as he called himself in his last email) set off on his last great exploration of the Great Unknown that, again and again, he celebrated throughout his life…

A BIG ISSUE

 

It's Donald Duck's 90th Birthday and yet he is as belligerent as ever...

 

ANGRY DUCK: 'It's all very well saying "Don't mention it", but it really IS – IN THE ROOM!'

'WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DISNEY?'

 

A rare item of Disneyana: a 1944 WWII poster designed by the Disney Studio for the US Government's War Manpower Commission.

 

A mean, salivating grasshopper clutches a handful of dollars and a lunchbox as he hops from job to job in search of higher wages. Disney's artwork thematically references the studio's 1934 'Silly Symphony', The Grasshopper and the Ants, that (with its popular song 'The World Owes Me a Living') would have been familiar to many Americans of working-age. During WWII, American unemployment levels dropped to 1.4% due to the influx of production jobs for the war effort. This poster sought to dissuade defense workers from using the labor shortage to 'job hop'

 

Walt Disney Studios was in difficult financial straits when WWII broke out due to animators enlisting to serve in the forces and the loss of European revues from their films. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Disney's massive studio lot in Burbank, California was commandeered by the US Army and many of Walt's animators were moved from making entertainment cartoons to making training films for the Navy. By 1943, almost 90% of Disney's work was related to the war effort, from powerful propaganda films to posters such as this one.