Tales of derring-do! Girl adventurers! Occult mystery! Infernal foes! Secrets revealed! Pirates! Love, loss & betrayal! Intricate art bound in lovely hardcovers! Indie going mainstream! Original creations! It’s been an incredible year for comics. So many good ones that I can’t even begin to claim to know what would be the best comics of 2012. [...]
BBC Radio 4 presents dramatizations of Frankenstein and Dracula, as well as extras including discussions of the difficulty of performing Frankenstein’s Creature, Vitalism, and who Stoker might’ve based his Count on. Click through to The Gothic Imagination. (via @booksadventures)
The Library of Congress has an online exhibit on the history of illustration, cartoons, animation, single panel gag cartoons and comic strips in the United States. (via @fantagraphics)
Terry Windling recounts the history of the Ash Girl or Cinderella story from the 9th Century Yeh–hsien to the Disney film, Cinderella, based on Charles Perrault’s 1697 version.
In anticipation of The Elephant Man Joseph Merrick’s birthday next month, Abebooks’ Avid Reader has compiled a short history of John Merrick’s life and a gallery of books about Merrick, sideshow histories and biographies as well as a few promotional cards from the late 19th century.
Tim Callahan is re-reading and writing about all of Alan Moore’s major comics. From Hell, Moore’s collaboration with Eddie Campbell, is the 26th installment.
Over the holidays, I participated in the Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit‘s Secret Santa Exchange. I sent Tars Tarkas, Apocalypse IV: Judgment. And Permission To Kill‘s David Foster sent me two comics : Vampire! Featuring Fire Fang and Vampire! #2: The Brothers of Fire Fang (Meteor Comics, 1995). Together they reprint five of Australian [...]
As a follow up to “The Yellow Curse,” Grady Hendrix has posted a gallery of images offering a tour of racist stereotypes of Chinese people from 1881 to the present.
Grady Hendrix has written a fascinating piece about Chinese-American life and Chinatowns in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries and a story he’s written about it. “If you were an average Chinese living in New York’s Chinatown at the turn of the century, your life sucked. You had a thriving, albeit mostly male, community [...]
“He was a hero to some, a villain to others, and wherever he rode people spoke his name in whispers. He had no friends, this Jonah Hex, but he did have two companions: One was death itself… The other, the acrid smell of gunsmoke…” I’ve meant to write about Jonah Hex for a long time [...]
Illustrator Claire Hummel reinterprets Disney princess costumes to make them more historically accurate. (via The Bookshelves of Lesser Doom)
Neil Gaiman’s tale of Lovecraftian horror is available as a PDF download of the “daily newspaper for all classes,” The Star of Albion–including ads for such things as “Jekyll Powders.”
Slouching Towards Bethlehem has found tantalizing evidence of a detective agency operating in Meiji Era Japan, The Iwai Detective Agency.
Yellowback novels were pulpy Victorian reading. Emory University has a bunch of them for you to download. (via @houseinrlyeh)
An illustrated gallery of 1950s rayguns and a lovely, sweet and kinda steam punk illustrated marriage proposal by Joel Kimmel. (thanks, Humash!)
Kirkbride Buildings are the castles of the American Midwest. They’re also 19th century State Hospitals.
Dr. Evermore’s Forevertron gives hope to humankind. (thanks, Edie!)
England’s own clockwork soldier has the temerity to protest conscription, reported in The London Bell, May 12, 1887.
In this age of fast zombies and vampires sparkling in the sun, maybe it’s time to remember the overlooked, the eternally cursed, the bandaged, leathery and passionate undead: mummies.
