GROSS ANATOMY (part 1)

Welcome to the first installment of Gross Anatomy!

Don't worry. I don't think I'm some precious Bob Ross of Bic and this isn't a "tutorial". I just thought it would be fun to share the stages of development that go into a finished drawing. I'll try to dig up some old sketches and post these every few months. This first installment of Gross Anatomy features a t-shirt design I did recently for my favorite Creepsylvanian thrashers, Ghoul. This was actually drawn with micron pens (.005 & .05) instead of my usual ballpoints, but the process is basically the same. Without further ado...

I start out with a barely recognizable sketch, usually scribbled while I'm talking on the phone or listening to music. Many of these are scrawled on the envelopes of unpaid utility bills or whatever else is close at hand. Even though this looks like shit, it will be an important reference later to remind me of the basic form and action I'm trying to convey (in this case, a zombie thrasher holding a bloody spinal cord).

From the scribble sheet I move to illustration board. Now I'm working very loosely with pencil to figure out the composition and dimensions. Lots of erasing and experimenting typically happen in this stage. This is also when I really start to have fun and think of ways I can embellish the detail (in this case, puke gags and a crystal skull)...

Here comes the ink test. When I work with ballpoints I skip the ink test and go straight for the kill. But this drawing is for a shirt so I wanted to get a sense of how to ink things so it will (hopefully) translate well as a screen print. I make a copy of the pencil sketch and block off the black & white areas to get a sense of the overall design.

Here's the final image! I've tightened things up and fine-tuned the detail. After this stage I generally crawl out of the basement and sleep for a long time. Sleep is often followed by beer and a phone call to the water bureau to convince them not to disconnect my service for non-payment. This is followed by phone calls to the band demanding money. And so the cycle begins anew.

Don't forget to click on these images to get a better view.
Until next time...GO FORTH & KILL!!!

NYC

Black Hearse

I'm showing my drawing 'Black Hearse' at New York City's MF Gallery this weekend! This is the gallery's 4th Annual Halloween Show and they will be selling prints of my drawing that I signed just for the occasion. The show will be on display through Halloween but New York horror hordes should not miss the opening reception this Saturday night, September 16th (7pm). I'm unfortunately unable to attend so if anyone makes it, please take photos that I can post up here.

MF Gallery
157 Rivington St.
NYC

"I remember Halloween..."

Creepy Crawls

Today marks the official release of my pal Leon Marcelo's great travel book Creepy Crawls! To celebrate the occasion I'm posting a slightly abridged version of our sprawling interview which will appear in its entirety in the upcoming issue of Destroying Angels!! Enjoy this interview and don't forget to order your copy of Creepy Crawls here!

Dennis Dread:
Welcome to Destroying Angels #9, Leon! I thought I should point out before we begin that I have compiled these ghastly questions on July 7th which, according to your new book Creepy Crawls, is the very same date back in 1967 that George Romero began filming Night of The Living Dead!

Leon Marcelo:
Ha! Eeek-cellent! And thanks - or should I say, "Fangs!" - for the interview, Dennis.

Now, the first thing I noticed about your book is the cover. You originally commissioned monster cartoonist Eric Pigors to illustrate the cover. Did the publishers intervene and suggest a photo? What is your opinion of the final cover?

I like the cover a lot, but it took me a little while to "warm up" to it. The biggest response I got from those I showed it to early on, yourself included, was that it was very "classy" and I feel that that was actually my biggest reservation about it. It's not that I wanted something garish or "vulgar"! No. A HUGE influence upon the book’s narrative "voice" is horror TV hosts like Zacherley, Doctor Morgus, and Elvira, horror comic book icons like the Crypt Keeper and Uncle Creepy, and horror culture gods like Vincent Price and Forrest J. Ackerman. Creepy Crawls is oozing with puns, alliteration, "horror" words, "gross" words, "medical" words, and so on. Because of this, the cover that I had in mind when I was putting together the book proposal (which was about July of 2005) was something along the lines of an old Creepy or Eerie cover, replete with corner box, lurid slogans running across the top or bottom - "Shocking!" - and, of corpse, some sort of “ghastly one” who would host the reader to all the horrors within. Basically, it was a cover that would be a visual manifestation of the book's narrative: something that just oozed ... "HORROR!" Well, after I was contacted by Santa Monica Press with an offer for publication (which was only about two weeks after I sent out the proposal, which still is a shock), the cover was the first thing on the chopping block. I have known Eric Pigors for a few years now and have been - and AM! - a BIG fan of his art. Being the super NICE fiend that he is, he illustrated a "host" for Creepy Crawls who we came to call "Eee-Gore." He put Eee-Gore in a few cemetery photos I had sent him earlier and made some mock-up covers for me to include with the proposal - ALL for free. Well, the publisher dug the art but didn't want to use it for two reasons. First, he wasn't sure how big of a "draw" Eric's name would be - especially if he was going to lay out, say, a thousand dollars to commission a cover from him. Second, he didn't want to take Creepy Crawls in the "all out HORROR!" territory for fear of losing potential readers with "weaker stomachs" (i.e. luke warm horror aficionados). So, unfortunately those plans of mine for the cover, in particular Eric’s art, were out. While it was all a relatively painless experience, it was a good lesson for me early on not only about how MY expectations might depart from those of my publisher, but also how to pick my fights, so to speak. So, yes, I do now dig Creepy Crawls’ cover a lot. Eric actually likes it a lot himself! What do you think of it, Mr. Mad-Mad-Mad-Monster-Artist?!?

Eric Pigors has a fun style and I like the character he created for Creepy Crawls, but I'm sticking to my guns and actually prefer the final cover. After reading the book I'm more convinced than before that the photo is more appropriate for your material. I really like the art on the Creepy Crawls website homepage. Did Lou Rusconi draw that?

I'm happy you dig Creepy Crawls’ website! Yes, that main page art is Lou Rusconi's. He did a GREAT job with that.

Ok, I want to set the record straight. Many readers may be familiar with the basic premise of your book through Rue-Morgue magazine's popular column, 'Travelogue of Terror', in which writers visit locales of horrific significance. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were the very first writer to contribute to this column and was it not your own submissions to the editor of Rue-Morgue that prompted this idea?

That is indeed the way it happened. If you ask Rue Morgue, I don't know what they would say, BUT I had submitted travel articles to the editors of Rue Morgue as early as spring of 2001. My ‘Poe's Baltimore’ article comes to mind. I thought that would be PERFECT for their magazine, given its very own very “Poe-etic” name. They had no content of this nature amidst their pages. Nothing. After almost a year - or so it SEEMED! - I finally heard back from the head honcho over there at the time, Rod Gudino. He really dug what he read and wanted to use them but didn't know exactly HOW they could use them because, again, they didn't really have a column in which to publish "travelogues." Then MORE time passed. FINALLY, around the spring of '03, I was asked by Gudino if I wanted to take bits and pieces of some of my other film-related travel articles (many, if not most, of which had been published before in the pages of Chiller Theatre's very own magazine) and contribute the resulting "hack-and-slash" job as the debut installment of their "Travelogue of Terror" column. I was thrilled, as I had never written for a magazine the size of Rue Morgue before. I had written two pieces for Fangoria, but they only appeared on Fango's website. But at the same, I was a little pissed off! My travel articles had been on Rue Morgue's desks - and creeping through their heads – for almost TWO years and - lo and behold! - they are going to do a "horror travels" feature in their newly expanded issues. But what could I do about it? Nothing. So I took Rue Morgue up on their offer and the debut was VERY popular. I was hoping that Rue Morgue would feature more and more of my travel writing but ... no. To date, I've only done the "Travelogue of Terror" column one other time and that was with a piece on Dario Argento's "Profondo Rosso" shoppe in Rome. You can actually eyeball an unabridged and re-written specimen in Creepy Crawls. After a few headaches thereafter, I gave up trying to be featured in Rue Morgue, let alone "Travelogue of Terror." But I do DIG Rue Morgue a LOT and read it every month…

The Profondo Rosso Shop in Italy sounds awesome! It seems surreal to me that Luigi Cozzi was just hanging around working the counter when you visited! I love Alien Contamination (the movie AND the Engorged song)! Speaking of Dario Argento “fandemonium”, I first read your travel writing in Chas Balun’s acclaimed zine Deep Red back in 2002 and a revised version of that piece on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre appears in your book. When did you start visiting locations and how many years of travel does your book cover?

Let me first just say that being published in Deep Red- DEEP FUCKING RED! - was a TRUE honor for me. I had met Chas Balun at a Chiller Theatre convention a few years ago and always sent him my latest travel articles, along with dirt my "black bride" and I had dug up from the Chainsaw locations, Friday the 13th's "Camp Blood,” and so on. Well, in the spring of 2002, Chas called me on the phone one morning and asked me if I wanted to write something for the 15th anniversary issue of Deep Red that Blackest Heart Media (R.I.P.) was going to be publishing. For someone like Chas Balun - a horror writer and artist whose work has had a HUGE influence upon me – to personally invite me to contribute to a legendary underground horror magazine like Deep Red was -and still is- a BIG thing. If only Chas had written a foreword for Creepy Crawls like I begged him to do...Ha! To get to your actual question though, the book covers, roughly, eight years of "creepy crawling": from the earliest with Poe's Baltimore to the most recent with London. My wife and I began doing our "creepy crawls" with our honeymoon to New Orleans in June of 1998. The chapter on New Orleans would have been the "oldest" in the book if it hadn't been cut out. It would have been in the first part of Creepy Crawls that features the "historical/cultural horrors" but, because of Hurricane Katrina, a lot of the attractions (such as walking tours or stores) were no longer in business. Besides that, because we hadn't been there in almost SEVEN YEARS, the "stuff" of that potential chapter was by no means "up to date," so I simply did not feel comfortable including that chapter. "We gruesome twosome" DO want to visit New Orleans again very soon so you can very possibly look for something about "The Crescent City" in Creepy Crawls: The Return! Again, I've been doing the "horror travel writing" thing for almost EIGHT YEARS now. I can't say that the "genre" was born with yours cruelly (I actually first read something of the sort in Chiller Theatre's magazine a year or two before I mailed Kevin Clement my VERY first travelogue in the fall of 1998) but I can - and WILL! - say that I not only "popularized" the form, publishing LOTS of this "species" of article in LOTS of different magazines, but also ... "perfected" it? My gray matter PULSATES ... Ha!

Did you ever visit Forrest Ackerman's museum? I heard he started selling off his collection on ebay a few years ago to pay the bills.

No, I never have but wanted to SO badly when we were in Los Angeles a few years ago. But, alas, we didn't have the time for it. And now that I too have heard that he has started selling his famous - FAMOUS! - sci-fi/horror collection, I wonder if I EVER will! I read that he has been VERY sick lately so perhaps he had to begin selling his treasures off to pay for his medical bills? As a rabid collector myself, I can't believe how HEARTBREAKING that must be for poor "Uncle Forry" to do that! The way Forrest Ackerman wrote in ‘Famous Monsters’ all those years ago was a HUGE influence on Creepy Crawls’ narrative. His use of puns and alliteration might sound "corny" to "hardcore" horror hounds for whom "humour" has no place, but it's the same reason why I LOVE The Munsters or The Addams Family: it's FUN! I love it ALL. I love extremely nasty Horror such as Last House on Dead End Street or Cannibal Holocaust or, more recently, Hostel, but I also love Zacherley, THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, or "The Monster Mash." If it's "HORROR!" I LOVE it!

All fun alliteration aside, it is your tireless research that makes Creepy Crawls such a remarkable achievement. The opening section detailing your exploits in England, for instance, is downright educational in its distillation of such a broad range of European history. Bodysnatchers, bubonic plague, bare-knuckle fighters, bedlam! If I had a history book like this in grade school I may have paid more attention! How much research went into each section of your book?

A LOT! Ha! Creepy Crawls took a lot of time to write not only because of the construction of all those puns and all that alliteration (which was almost like a MANIA that possessed me at times!), but because of all the RESEARCH that I had to stitch together like Frankenstein's Monster: "facts," history, popular myths, cultural "artifacts" like films and literature, and so on. So I'm VERY happy you appreciated that fact. Before my wife and I undertake a "creepy crawl," we do a LOT of research on our proposed destination. This takes the form of sifting through piles of guide books for all the "charnel" that makes we two "horror fiends" drool, but also doing some hunting on the internet as well. With the latter, however, you have to do as much "judging" as you do "digging" because of simply how much FALSE information there is out there on the "netherworld wide web." For instance, when we were in London last March, I wanted to see the home Dracula was said to have bought upon Piccadilly in Bram Stoker's novel. From a review of a London "walking tour," I read that it could be found at 138 Piccadilly, which was, in fact, but next to London's "Hard Rock Cafe." We visited the location at the end of a VERY long day, so the walk there from the Tube stop was GRUELLING. But when we arrived before the Count's supposed dwelling, we took our photos and yours cruelly even posed for a few, doing my best "Vampyr" impression. Well, at the time, I was actually also reading Stoker's novel for the very first time. The following night - lo and behold! – I came to the very passage whose events chilled that very same stretch of Piccadilly - or so I thought! Because, according to Stoker himself, Dracula's home was at "347 Piccadilly," which was almost at the OTHER end of that VERY long road. It made me want to scream, mostly at myself for not looking to the primary source FIRST! But after a "creepy crawl," perhaps even more research is done when I sit down to write about it. I want an article (or, in the case of Creepy Crawls, a "chapter") to not only be well-researched but, simply, FUN to read, so there is a lot of "weighing" that must go into the whole process. How much "research" is TOO much to include? When does the research for some given location I'm writing about need to be "beefed up"? It all depends upon exactly WHAT is being written about actually. With the first part of the book that deals with horrors from history, of corpse, more "historical" research went into those chapters. With the third part of the book that features "creepy crawls" to film locations, however, there still is a good deal of "historical" research, but it is much more about the history of the films' production and reception, which always seems "easier" to write about for some unknown reason. In the end, though, I can thank my "academic" background for helping me not only with the actual research I did for Creepy Crawls but my digesting and "puking forth" of it as well. But unless you want to have it read like an "encyclopedia," that's where the Crypt Keeper/Zacherley/Uncle Forry-esque "flavouring" comes in!

I really enjoyed your section about Sweeney Todd! I still remember the television commercials that aired when the "Demon Barber of Fleet Street" musical opened in New York City! I was very young and those ads were TERRIFYING! I finally had a chance to see the play performed at the Circle in the Square Theater (off Broadway) when I was in 8th grade and it was amazing! A total gore fest with blood spewing all over the place during the throat slitting scenes! They even made this great set with Sweeney Todd's chair fixed with a trap door. I imagine it's as close as I'll ever come to the old Grand Guignol.

"The Demon Barber"! Yes. Seeing his reputed "barber shoppe" (as well as Mrs. Lovett's Bell Yard pie shoppe) was at the VERY top of my list when we were making our list of what we wanted to see whilst in London. However, the only way I have seen Steven Sondheim's "penny dreadful opera" is, alas, on video: the Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou version that used to air on PBS all the time. I also saw, on television, a "stripped down" version that was performed in San Francisco not all that long ago. "Doogie Howser" was actually there in the part of the "young suitor" of Sweeney's long lost daughter. I believe this was the beginnings of the version that is now playing on Broadway? It was REALLY good though! I would probably love ALL versions of " ... Todd." There was even news not that long ago that Tim Burton was going to direct a film adaptation. I would LOVE that like it was my very own baby! Have you ever read the first chapter of Neil Gaiman's "The String of Pearls" serial that was in TABOO back in the '90s?

Nah, I don’t remember that one…

I am lucky enough to have a copy of the "penny dreadful" promo that Steve Bissette published through SpiderBaby for it. For those out of the "know," it would have been Gaiman's answer to Alan Moore's From Hell - but using Sweeney Todd rather than "Saucy Jack" as the ghastly zeitgeist of down-and-dirty Victorian England. However, it never saw more than that first chapter.


I don't recall from my initial reading any mention in your travelogues of the werewolves of "London Town". Did you discover anything about the British roots of lycanthropy or explore any locales connected to this popular folklore while in England?

A VERY interesting thing about London was, indeed, the distinction between "London" and "London Town." There were actually the remnants of the Roman wall, which used to separate the two. This is what made the Jack the Ripper slaughters even MORE heinous: his "invasion" of London Town, which was then the home of London's "old blood" (with WHICH murder I cannot recall off the top of my head - you'll have to read Creepy Crawls I suppose!) But did I discover London’s "werewolves"? Unfortunately, NO. The closest we came to lycanthropes whilst in London was traipsing through the Tottenham Court Road Tube stop, which was featured in An American Werewolf In London! But the thing about London is that there is an ENDLESS slew of "Horror!"-ed locations you could feast upon whilst there. You could spend whole tours dedicated exclusively to London's "black magick" past, London's "vampire" past, and, apparently, London's "werewolf" past. But, yes, I would LOVE to have unearthed London's links to lycanthropy. Actually, I remember from a History Channel special one October that a lot of the "werewolf" mania in Medieval Europe took place in Germany or France, as with the case of Peter Stubbe.

There are certainly references as far back as the Norse sagas to Germanic “wolf shirts” or berserkers, but I was actually wondering if there might be any historical basis for songs like Warren Zevon’s hilarious 70’s oddity ‘Werewolves of London’ and Ian Read’s ‘Werewolves of London Town’. Probably not…

Despite my lack of werewolf "creepy crawling" in London (the SHAME!), I AM fascinated with werewolves. ‘The Howl’ just so happens to be my favorite Samhain song and I actually bought Montague Summers' The Werewolf after hearing Glenn Danzig refer to it in Danzig's first home video. I'd have to say my favorite werewolf film is The Howling, although I LOVE Paul Naschy's "Waldemar Daninsky" wolf-outs! And EVERYONE should read Neil Gaiman's "Only the End of the World Again," which is the best Lovecraftian werewolf short story EVER written. Do you have a favorite, Dennis?


I LOVE 'The Howl'! Who could not worship that opening drum beat and eerie bass line (no pun intended!)? Those are also some of Danzig’s best lyrics! Favorite werewolf film? I love the original Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr. and Curse of the Werewolf with Oliver Reed! I also love American Werewolf In London and, most recently, Dog Soldiers. What did you think of The Hills Have Eyes remake ? I've tried to ignore most of the recent remakes but I REALLY enjoyed The Hills Have Eyes! In fact, I've watched it three times and I like it better than the original (gasp)!

It is almost like confessing to a "dirty little secret" that I admit that I REALLY dug some - some! - of the much vilified "remakes" that I have seen within the last few years, specifically Dawn of the Dead, Chainsaw, and, yes, The Hills Have Eyes. I sat down wanting to HATE these three but was surprised at how much I enjoyed each of them. I can't say if I dug Alexandre Aja's remake MORE than Wes Craven's original, but I WOULD say that it is definitely a much more vicious and violent film and I believe that is the "key" that defines the "effectiveness" of some of these remakes for me. The same goes for the Chainsaw remake. It's just utterly GRISLY in parts, you know? Perhaps knowing that they have a LOT to prove, the directors of these remakes, in particular Aja, intensifies the sheer gruesomeness, the grotesqueness, of what they put before an audience. When you compare the original to the remake, Aja's film is simply so much more brutal and bestial, you know?!? Like when Michael Bailey Smith's "Pluto" is sucking the milk from that young mother's teats ... EGADS! It was just such an utter grotesquerie - I LOVED it! But does that mean that I DON'T love Craven's original? Of corpse not. They are almost DIFFERENT films. The original seemed to want to focus upon the "inner-workings" of the mutant family (setting up a more direct contrast to the "American Pie"-ness of the all-too-unfortunate "normal" vacationers), while the remake wanted to focus upon that post-Sawney Bean family's MONSTROSITY. But all that said, as much as I must admit that I have indeed enjoyed some of these remakes, I STILL do not see the purpose for them. WHY not simply make a NEW film? The Dawn of the Dead remake was SO different from the original (despite the basic "human survivors living in the zombie-surrounded mall" trope) that it could have been just another zombie flick. Had they done that, the film-makers could have saved themselves from the vitriol of a LOT of "hardcore" horror fiends. But, in the end, it's about the NAME of the original. THAT is what's important. They seem to need that MORE than the original story or characters. But some horror aficionados are SO caught up in this "I HATE REMAKES!" drama. Simply put, there is NOTHING you can do about it so, if you don't want to see them, DON'T. And, in the end, as John Landis said at last October's Chiller Theatre convention, the "remake" is NOT a new thing! And to tell you the truth, I am REALLY looking forward to Rob Zombie's "prequel"/"sequel"/"remake" of Halloween. I dug his first two films a lot and want to see what he can do with John Carpenter's "boogeyman."

Will Santa Monica Press be sending you out on any promotional tours for the book? It would be great if you could arrange some readings and book signings!

Indeed! That would be a LOT of fun - at least the signings! Given the Crypt Keeper-ish way Creepy Crawls was written, it would probably be VERY embarrassing to have to read it out loud! I'd have to PAY a Vincent Price-impersonator to read it for me! But about the signings, I don't know what kind of money Santa Monica Press has to do that sort of thing. They have been a GREAT company to work with and were definitely the perfect "home" for Creepy Crawls, given their eclectic/weird catalogue of previous titles, especially of the "travel" variety. However, in truth, they are NOT Simon and Schuster or Penguin or some other book publisher who has a million-upon-million dollar budget to work with. But we'll see! I would LOVE to sell and sign copies of Creepy Crawls at conventions here on the East Coast, such as HorrorFind, Monster-Mania, Fango, and, of corpse, Chiller Theatre. But with table costs beginning at $300, I would have to sell a LOT of books simply to come away "even," you know?!? I WILL be selling signed copies of Creepy Crawls myself. I already have a coffin-full of little Halloween trick-or-treats that I want to mail out with them. I also want to put together some kind of "barf bag" to toss it all in. I believe I have more "FUN!" obsessing over those sorts of details, promotion and "goodies" and such, more than I do with the writing of the actual WORK it's all meant to accompany!

I love your list of "13 Rules" for the would-be Creepy Crawler. Rule #8 admonishes, "If you are bringing a fiend...along with you...be sure they won't be a drag...If they don't have ANY interest in where you're going and what you're going there for...they'll become dead weight VERY fast!" I get the feeling you are referring to a personal experience. Do you have any horror stories about friends joining you on your creepy crawls?

UGHHH! Well, that rule is VERY true, Dennis. And I know all-too-well from "personal experience." That "rule" was basically the product of my experiences with one former "traveling companion" - who is a "friend" NO more and was finally seen as the untermensch that he always was, and NOT because he was simply "dead weight"! -who whined about how cold it was when we walked through the Evans City Cemetery from the beginning of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. After belly-aching without end about the subzero Pittsburgh temperatures, he begged me to let him sit in our "butchermobile" with the motor, and heater, running while we finished our tour of that legendary- LEGENDARY! - tomb yard. This experience and, unfortunately, MORE made me want to poke my thumbs through his eyeballs while bellowing in his blood-dripping face, "WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE?!?" More than that, though, it made me yell at MYSELF for choosing my "traveling companions" so unwisely. It was a good lesson to learn. So yes, Destroying Angels Reader, should you want to undertake a "creepy crawl" of your very own, when deciding who to go with - or NOT go with! - answer two questions VERY honestly: first, "Will I PUKE if I have to stare into the face of this potential traveling partner for hours, if not days, on end?" and second - and this is VERY important! - "Will this potential traveling partner HELP me to celebrate my LOVE of Horror?" If not ... BEWARE!
You have been warned...

MONSTER

Ok, no one has been able to solve the riddle of the mysterious demon. Consider yourselves losers. But at least I've learned that a few people actually read this thing. And the answer?

The artist is underground legend RICK GRIFFIN
and the album is STEPPENWOLF'S 'MONSTER' (1970)

The Mutilation Graphics demon was slightly modified from the back cover of this gatefold where it originally appeared on either side of Griffin's amazing dystopian cartoon chaos. I'll post another contest at some point in the future. Stay tuned...

Up The Irons!

Greg Irons Book Release Party!

Patrick Rosenkranz's new book You Call This Art?!! is now available through Fantagraphics Books. You Call This Art?!! celebrates the life of Greg Irons, one of the greatest artists to emerge from the late 60's underground art movement. Greg Irons was a prodigiously talented and energetic artist who mastered many mediums including psychedelic posters (Chuck Berry, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, etc), record covers (Jerry Garcia, Blue Cheer, Jefferson Starship, etc.), underground comix (Slow Death, Legions of Charlies, Deviant Slice, etc.), children's books (Dungeons & Dragons, Last of the Dinosaurs, Pirates, etc.), and tattoo art before his life was cut tragically short in 1984. Rosenkranz's highly anticipated retrospective has been lovingly assembled with the full cooperation of Irons' surviving family and friends and features an AMAZING collection of work spanning Irons' entire career, including no less than 17 comix reproduced in their entirety. To celebrate this beautiful labor of love, Counter Media Bookstore, Portland's finest purveyors of perversion, has announced a very special book signing with author Patrick Rosenkranz featuring a rare display of original Greg Irons art! Greg Irons was a big influence on my own emerging style and astute Destroying Angels readers will recall the Irons article I asked Patrick Rosenkranz to write for issue #7. At my recent art opening Mr. Rosenkranz explained that the interest generated by that issue of Destroying Angels had a direct impact on the publication of his book. It is an honor to feel as though I have contributed in some very small way to the memory of this legend and his re-discovery by younger artists and fans of art around the world. Up the Irons, indeed!

Don't miss this event!

September 11th
6:30pm
Counter Media
927 SW Oak St.
Portland, Oregon
(503) 226-8141

YOU CALL THIS ART?! A Greg Irons Retrospective
By Greg Irons; Edited by Patrick Rosenkranz
240 pages, color and black-and-white,
8” x 10” paperback • $24.95

Ash-Land

While on vacation this past week at an undisclosed location in southern Oregon, I had the pleasure of visiting the set of Bruce Campbell's latest film, My Name Is Bruce! I can't tell you how exciting it was to roam around the set watching Ash from The Evil Dead direct himself in this new ultra low-budget monster comedy! Apparently making a movie requires a lot of people and entails a lot of sitting around and waiting. Luckily, I wasn't thrown off the set for being a creepy fanboy and did my sitting around in the producer's chair. We even got to watch the scene play-back with Bruce. Anyway, I promised I wouldn't ruin any surprises by posting a bunch of photos on the internet but I doubt this one shot of a car will be much of a spoiler. Best one-liner overheard during the shoot? "So long suckers!"

CONTEST!

In a thinly veiled ploy to discover if anyone actually reads this blog, I am announcing a contest! Below is the cover of an old Mutilation Graphics catalog, circa 1991. The first person to correctly identify the legendary UNDERGROUND ARTIST who created this demon logo and the ALBUM COVER it was stolen from for this catalog wins a Destroying Angels t-shirt (black XL only) and a copy of the soon-to-be-released Destroying Angels #9! Remember, you must identify the artist and the album on which the art originally appeared to win. Good luck!

Return Of The Undead Leg!

A few months back I received some amazing photos from a guy on the eastcoast who has devoted his entire lower leg to a tattoo collage of my drawings. Today the tattoo artist himself sent some updated shots of the complete leg. It turned out great and I am flattered speechless. Thanks to Bryan and Shlak for sharing these photos!

In Grind We Crust!

Here are some photos of a guy in Missouri getting my drawing for Phobia permanently etched into his back! I hope to someday be able to tattoo my art onto people myself. In the meantime, its pretty cool to watch this tattoo progress...

"If you want blood, you got it!"

Thanks for finding these photos, Susan!

Among The Runes

Elhaz = Life!

Tiwaz = Justice!

Solstice

Enjoying the Summer Solstice sun with Mt. Hood looming in the background. It was a beautiful day and an inspired night under the stars. My family & friends on the Eastcoast occasionally ask why I choose to live in the Northwest. This is why.

Newt eggs!

Trillium.

Freyja

I am pleased to herald the coming Solstice with the release of a new poster-size print of my ballpoint invocation of the Germanic goddess Freyja! These 16" X 20" prints turned out beautiful and look very much like the original art. All of the delicate line work of the original is reproduced on durable semi-gloss paper designed to fit perfectly into any standard 16" X 20" frame. Click on the image above to view the detail. Prints are available now for $45 plus shipping. They will be shipped in a hard poster tube to assure they arrive undamaged. I will also sign prints if requested, just ask. Hail Freyja! Hagalaz!

GHOUL

Here's a nice shot of Ghoul preparing to slaughter posers in Portland this past weekend with the assistance of the always charming Mr. Fang! Is it just me or did Mr. Fang look particularly handsome that night? Cheers to all the stagedivers, thrashers, & Ghoulunatics that made the show so memorable! Also cheers to Zombie Ritual for coming all the way from Japan! The new Ghoul cd 'Splatterthrash' RULES and is available now through the mighty Razorback Records! Incidentally, the cover art was provided by cartoon artist Greg Oakes.

Gemini

Speaking of retarded photos, here are a few shots of me on my birthday last week. Apparently I REALLY like that vodka & cranberry drink. Hey Angie, thanks for immortalizing my drunken stupidity. Happy Birthday to me!

Greg Irons

Patrick Rosenkranz's new book 'You Call That Art?!!' has been sent to the printer and is scheduled for a July release through Fantagraphics Books!!! This is the long awaited retrospective of underground art legend Greg Irons and it has been lovingly assembled with the full cooperation of Irons' surviving family and friends. Did you know Greg Irons was addicted to prostitutes??? Neither did I. Can't wait to read the book! 'You Call That Art?!!' features an amazing collection of Greg Irons artwork, spanning his colorful "careers" which included psychedelic posters, underground comix, children's educational and coloring books, as well as tattoo art! Mr. Rosenkranz is the author of 'Rebel Visions', the definitive history of underground comix and an all around cool mofo. If you don't already own a copy of 'Rebel Visions', do yourself a favor and order it now from Fantagraphics. Greg Irons is back from the dead! All hail Greg Irons!

Anti-Christ Reception

My art opening at Optic Nerve Arts this week was a huge success (whatever that means)! Thanks to everyone who came out. I still haven't discovered any wealthy patrons looking to cover their penthouse walls with "zombie porn", but lots of people turned out and we managed to plow through six 12 packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the first 2 hours. Hey, wait a minute! Maybe all those people didn't come out to see the art after all...

SPILL THE BEER OF CHRIST!!!!

My art will be on display at Optic Nerve Arts in Portland, Oregon through June! This solo show collects 24 of my favorite drawings from the past few years and all original art will be available for purchase. I will also have affordable 16" X 20" digital prints of a few select works. Please come out and join us as we spill the beer...er...blood of Christ on 6/6/06. And tell your wimp friends to support REAL underground art!

opening reception:
Tuesday June 6th
7pm-Midnight

Optic Nerve Arts
1829 NE Alberta St.
Portland, Oregon

Geometry of the Blood

The following is an abridged version of the interview with Robert Taylor that will soon appear in its entirety in issue #9 of Destroying Angels. Robert Taylor is one of the founders of contemporary Odinism in America. He is also the vocalist and founding member of late 60's folk band Changes, who are perhaps best remembered for their early association with the Process Church of the Final Judgement. A veritable Renaissance Man, Mr. Taylor is also an accomplished visual artist, poet, craftsman, and lyricist. The following interview was conducted in May 2006 and will appear in the upcoming issue of Destroying Angels, slated for release on Summer Solstice.

Dennis Dread: What does the word “heathen” mean to you?

Robert Taylor: In its literal meaning, it means simply a person of the heath (land or fields), a rural person subscribing to native folk religion and beliefs. It has the same meaning and connotation as the word “pagan” (countryman). I am sure in both cases it was a term of condemnation, sort of like the word “hillbilly” in America today. They all have illusions that are brought to mind when the word is said or made use of. In the current vernacular of today it implies more. It not only means a person who ascribes to and believes in the archaic natural deities of his folk or kind, but often is used to imply someone who has rejected the Christian faith and is in some way Anti-Christ or a heretic or devil worshipper. “Heathen” is often used to denote savagery and such. These other things are not accurate of course, but they are images created in the popular mind. Those of us who proudly assume the title of heathen see it as a sign of one’s healthy mind, spirit and soul, and a return to primal sources of a primordial tradition. In essence, a return to one’s true self as opposed to alien Salvationist faiths which promulgate a false sense of self.


Could you elaborate on your personal relationship with the Nordic/Germanic pantheon?

It has been a long (nearly 40-year) relationship on many levels, encompassing mystical experiences, scholarly study, much thought and deliberation and active participation in the rites and rituals of the path of Asatru. I was among the three people who more or less founded the Odinist/Asatru troth. The two other principle individuals were Elsa Christenson and Steven McNallen. We all more or less found the pathway to the Gods in the same several-year period. The differences in approach were that Elsa took a philosophic and less spiritual approach. Steve formed what was, in the beginning, a national organization of largely dispersed members with the original AFA (Asatru Free Assembly). My former wife (Karen) and I founded a locally based group of Asatru adherents and practitioners called the Northernway. Unlike Elsa’s or Steve’s approach we maintained the Northernway as a local group. That was because we did not want a mail order organization so much as a group of actual people who knew one another and conducted services and rites in person together. Eventually the AFA began to hold annual Althings and the group became more of a flesh and blood organization as opposed to simply subscribers to a publication and correspondents. Eventually, the Northernway broke into two groups: one essentially became a Norse or Germanic Wicca group (and after a couple of years went defunct) and those that came with us reformed into what became first the Wulfing Kindred and later, when we began to spread in numbers and geographic locations, the Tribe Of the Wulfings. At some point early on, we affiliated with the Asatru Free Assembly and became an active kindred of that organization, and remained so until it’s demise. I view the Aesir and Desir from many points of view. As Jungian archetypes, as numinous forces of nature and the universe, as composite symbols of the Germanic and related people themselves. I also see them as pure spiritual entities and forces which guide their people from the inner planes. They are symbolic. They are metaphoric and they are actual in my personal experience, estimation and insights.

Stephen Flowers has shared his life-altering experience of hearing the word “Runa” whispered in his ear. Did you have an initiatory experience of this nature? Can you recall your first exposure to the Gods and Goddesses of Northern Europe?

My own introduction to Germanic spirituality was perhaps less prosaic and succinct then that of Dr. Flowers. I have had numerous mystical experiences over the years that partook both of the Germanic as well as the larger corpus of Indo-European symbology. One of those I covered in an article that was published in Robert Wards Fifth Path magazine titled ‘Animal Spirit’. I’ll not repeat that here due to its length and context. There is now a Robert Ward memorial website and perhaps one day articles from his Fifth Path magazine will be posted on the site for others to read. We all have dreams and many people have mystical experiences. The ones that matter most are those that give guidance which, when acted upon, have effects in the material world and in some way facilitate and further our spiritual quest. My introduction to the Germanic pantheon was by way of my own father, George Ellis Taylor, who considered himself a heathen all of his life and passed those thoughts and feelings on to me. Initially both Karen and I were among the very early people in the larger pan-pagan movement in the Midwest. We affiliated our Northernway group with the Midwest Pagan Conference, which held gatherings in and about the Midwest. We withdrew from the larger pagan community due to differing perspectives on just what paganism/heathenism really was and should be. We felt that the general pagan movement was too eclectic and contrived and lacked any real ethical code or basis. Much of it was based on the contrivances of people like Gerald Gardner, Alex Sanders and the largely British occultism of the early part of the 20th century Asatru, as it has evolved and as it actually was in its tribal period, was first and foremost a heroic/ethical religion. Theological concepts I think played an auxiliary part and were more the prerogative of the priest class (Gothis), Vitki (rune masters) and the exoteric side of Asatru. It largely remains as such in the present resurrection of Asatru overall. The primary ethics of Asatru can be found in the Havamal (Words of the High One).

You were among the very first to establish Asatru in America. Could you set the stage culturally for that period in the 70’s? What was happening in your own life that helped guide you to Asatru?

I have answered the above question in part already. As for the cultural stage of things at the inception period of Asatru, life was in a general flux culturally and more importantly in a spiritual sense. Early on, perhaps as early as 14 years old, I began to be aware of this spiritual crisis. In the larger European context, this crisis begins with the German philosopher, Fredrich Nietzsche. Even before Nietzsche, one can find the seeds of it in Schopanhauer and Hegel, but it comes into full focus and expression in the writings of Nietzsche. In a sense all roads lead back to Nietzsche and begin with him as far as this spiritual crisis is concerned. I can hardly imagine anyone having a grasp of this crisis, both spiritual and intellectual, without studying his writings. I derived immense insight from studying his thoughts in relation to all of this. If I recall correctly, it was in my fourteenth summer that I began studying his works at the suggestion of my father. I spent nearly an entire summer reading his collected writings in English translation at the main downtown library in Chicago. This was followed by reading and studying the works of Oswald Spengler (particularly his Decline of the West) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Foundations of the 20th Century, and Egon Friedel’s A Cultural History of the Modern World -all of which drew similar conclusions in their own manner, and all of which owed a huge debt to the philosophy of Nietzsche. Having studied, analyzed and pondered on these works, the question that remained was, how can we reverse the downward spiral of Western civilization? A spiritual rebirth seemed necessary to affect this decline. Christianity had become so played out and corrupted of spirituality that it did not seem the answer in any way whatsoever. It was already dying or dead. It was in a large part the religion that was at the forefront of the decay and decline. Nietzsche had already dissected it to its marrow, but what could take its place? A return to an honest spirituality was the general answer I came to. The Eastern religions are in many ways as corrupted as Christianity is. Plus, like Christianity, they are alien to the true nature of Western man and the Western soul. They are all constructs or expressions of other people, not us. I could find no real resonance in any of them myself. Buddhism is an ethical philosophy of passive nihilism. Nietsche’s nihilism is its anti-thesis. It extols heroic active nihilism, but the Arlen Specter of nihilism or the teetering edge of the abyss is not an answer in and of itself. It is largely a diagnosis of things. Cultural Pathology 101. As Tony Wakeford’s song ‘Looking for Europe’ says, “If you’re looking for Europe just look in your heart.” Or as the Changes song says in a slightly different variant, “For the soul to know the soul, to the soul you first must go, for the answers lie there hidden in the legends that we know.”
I felt it was necessary to return to our own spiritual roots and build up from there, and I spent the next two decades finding the soul of Western man. I found it in what later emerged as Asatru. It was and is the answer. We as Western people must draw from within ourselves, from within the true Western legacy of our legends and myths and archaic beginnings, and it does not simply end there. We must take what we have found and re-seed it with a new vision, a new creativity, a new and vibrant spirit.

What was your role in the Minutemen movement? Were you arming yourself for the impending collapse of American society?

I began association with the Minutemen in my early teens. As I grew older, so did my involvement develop from member to local leader, to executive council as head of the organization’s intelligence, and finally as National spokesman for the group and publisher of the organization’s publication, On Target. We were arming and training for the Second American Revolution. I know it is a given that when you mention the Minutemen, the first thing that comes to most people’s minds is guns. In actuality, guns played a much lesser role than intelligence, counter-intelligence psych-war, and such things as those. Though ostensibly an armed citizenry preparing against the threat of international communism on the surface, the true aims of the organization were revolutionary. The revolution had as its goal the reestablishment of America as a constitutional republic replete with the checks and balances it had been founded upon. We felt our liberties were being legislated out from under us all, and they were. Most of the warnings on these things have come to pass as it were. Most of the freedoms and liberties we have on the books are more apparent than they are actual. Try using them and you will quickly realize that you are under surveillance by the secret police. That is what occurs as soon as you elect to exercise such guaranteed liberties. Our leaders offer license in place of these actual liberties. They will persecute anyone using the first amendment rights in an adversarial manner toward them, but they will allow you the license of watching women get it on with barnyard animals on the internet. Our world today is full of license and deficient on true liberty. It is a very bad trade-off.

Have you received much attention from the FBI since those days?

Yes, to be sure--undo attention by them or the other intelligence agencies that have no mandate to operate domestically. They investigated and interviewed family, friends, neighbors, etc. I had my phone taped, mail covers, agent provocateurs and such which they utilized in one manner or another. I’m sure I’ve kept a lot of agents busy and working and earning their salaries for decades. Even now, I am listed on the immigration security list as some sort of dangerous character and put through the usual indignities every time I travel by air. And in the nearly forty years they have been giving me attention, nothing practical has evolved from their standpoint. You would think, after that much time, they would wise up and allocate their efforts elsewhere, where it might do them some good or serve some actual advantage. Maybe they missed 9-11 so completely because they were all preoccupied with shadowing people like myself who have done nothing they can construe as illegal. After forty years, you would think they would find something more profitable to allocate their resources toward. One thing I have come to think after all the years of their attention is that they are very myopic of mind and there isn’t a great deal of real imagination among these types of people. suppose one can justifiably expect too much of accounting and pre-law students. They are hardly the epicenter of imagination or very profound thoughts. Interestingly, as I write this, there is a big flap over telephone taping or surveillance by the Bush oligarchy in Washington. It seems like most all of what I have predicted over the years is coming to fruition. And I don’t think Specter is going to save the nation from further tyranny. Only the American people as a whole can possibly do that. I can’t imagine what they’re all waiting for. A leader?

Would you agree that your visual works, similar to mandalas, reflect a yearning for wholeness?


That is the general thesis, that such round art is an attempt to reach or acquire wholeness of being. I started doing mandalic-type art in the late sixties. There was nothing in particular that inspired me to do so. I had no real knowledge at the time about oriental art or religion or Jung’s writings. I was quite amazed when I first encountered other artists who were in effect doing similar mandalic art like that which I was doing in the late sixties. I instinctively thought that there must be a deeper reason for this synchronistic occurrence in art. I am sure it was as you mentioned a desire toward wholeness, as Jung would imply. The modern world is a very fragmented wasteland. That fragmentation is within us as people (a spiritual crisis) as well as on the temporal material level around us (environment). I saw zietgeist in the art of that period being projected in such work. There also was the prolific use of psychoactive plants and drugs which created a shared experience among a large number of people who did not necessarily even know of one another. This in itself was, I am certain, another factor in the rise of such in approach as mandalic art. I did drawings and paintings as well as shaped verse (concrete poetry; calligrams; pattern poems) also in a mandalic mode. In fact, I had a one-man exhibit in Chicago of my mandalic art and calligraphic devices. I titled the show Full Circle: Art and Poems in the Mandalic Modeâ. Today when I do anything in what could be termed the mandalic modeâ it is simply one of the ways I create and express something. I am no longer seeking totality of being or wholeness. I think I largely achieved that long ago. I have pretty much gone through the individuation process of life.

What effect would you like your visual work to have on the viewer?

A visual effect. I consider myself an op-artist and love to employ the optical in the visual art I do. I have explored, and continue to explore, ways of using optics in my art: hidden pictures, anamorphic distortions, optical illusion, geometric impossibilities alluding to a fourth dimension, chroma-depth techniques, 3-D, subliminal and other similar approaches and meldings of such. I love to play with the human optical apparatus and mind. To surprise; to transfix; to perplex. I am a bit dismayed that there are practically no real books concerning op-art that I am aware of. Plenty on pop art and every other type of art, but little relating to op. There are some books on optical illusion art, or books on actual optical illusion techniques, but nothing in print that I know of which covers the movement of op-art. I think there is a corollary between op-art and what is termed fantastic or fabuklist literature in the vein of Jorge Louis Borges, Danilo Kis, Italo Calvino, Milorad Pavic and others. I am not in any way the first artist to do optically oriented art. You will find many such optical gambits in the work of DaVinci, Durer and artists of every period and time. Dali in our own time used such devices and ploys in many of his works, as did Dutch graphic artist Escher. Especially Escher and his disciples such as Sandro. A prime similitude that artists who have done so seem to share is a knowledge and practical ability in the realm of geometry. It is a given of sorts toward crafting such art. About fifteen years ago, I came upon the subject of geometry. It all began with a project I was getting together at the time. I had a 14-foot reinforced concrete slab laid in the middle of a field on the farm I had at the time. My intention was to build an astronomical dome that would sit upon the slab. One of the ideas I had was to paint a mural time-line of the history of astronomy. To do so, I would need to know how many linear feet of painting I would require to complete the painting on the wall from one side of the door to the other. That, of course, required the pi equation. I never finished the dome and hence never did the painting except a few preliminary sketches. The same day I was figuring out the pi ratio for that project, I happened upon two people whom I knew at a local restaurant discussing pi ratios and there were other synchronicities that occurred that day on such sacred geometry. I had a volume containing both the books and propositions of Archimedes and Euclid. I spent the rest of that winter studying the propositions and working them out on paper. So I acquired something of a crash course in geometry. Since that time, geometry has become an integral part of my daily life, perhaps as much as poetry is. I am sure I am not through with it yet. Several times I thought I had gone about as far as I could with it, and then some new insight occurred and I was off and running on it again. Geometry is a very old practice, an archaic subject. There is not a lot that one can add to it today (at so distant a time from its inception). Many great minds have wrestled with the subject and added some small contribution. DaVinci was a very able geometer. His melding of the icosahedron and the dodecahedron into what is called the icosidodecahedron, which has 20 triangular faces and twelve pentagonal faces, was certainly a stroke of genius. Durer was an even more knowledgeable geometer than was DaVinci. Geometry for the artist is a challenge as to how one might employ geometric knowledge and skill in representational art. Escher was a master at this. He was able to take geometry and turn it into graphic art of a high level. His concepts and skills have always left me awed. I am still grappling with the matter of employing geometric knowledge in a representational manner. Most of my artistic efforts of the past several years have been devoted to doing that. Two of the three contributions I had in the recent Heathen Art show were eggs done with design and geometry. I think the initial inspiration for doing egg-shaped art was as a result of having investigated the visica pisces. The visica pisces is the center shape created by overlapping two circles. The curved lines of the inner arc of the circles cross at the center of one another forming what is termed a mandala at the center. It is very much similar to an egg shape; in fact, an egg shape can be created from the visica pisces, as can all the archimedian and platonic solids be created within the shape. It is termed by the classical Greeks as the womb of geometry or the womb of numbers.


Several years ago you described your construction of the Wulfing hof as “the pinnacle of my personal creative endeavors.” Do you still feel this way? What has become of the hof now that you’ve moved?

I did think so at that time. I think the Opus Dei project will transcend that project in a quantum way, though the hof project was a worthwhile one in so many ways. Most unfortunate was the fact that it was never totally completed. There was much carving and decor to be added both within the hof as well as without. It was completed in the sense of a structure and was closed in, had a roof, windows, doors, etc. I did some of the decor on the inside--mostly the wide baseboards that undulated like a serpent. I also completed a world tree and other runic devices within. The Dragon’s Head montage I had in the Heathen art show was a design for a dragon’s head to be fashioned of wood and installed in the hof. I also have designs for the dragon’s wings and tail which I may one day do as a similar paper montage. All three of these things were to grow out of or emerge from the undulating baseboard on either side of the Irmunsil Tree. It is no longer being used as a hof as far as I know. Initially, there was an agreement with my ex-wife that the hof would be set aside for Asatruars and maintained from a joint trust fund set up to pay the taxes on it, but that agreement never materialized. It was just one of many promises and agreements that were broken. Such is divorce and the parting of ways with human beings.


Do you have a less elaborate hof or similar “sacred space” for spiritual activities at your current home?

I do have plans of building another hof at sometime in the future. I have other projects I am concerned with at the moment. I think it will be very different from the previous one in the way I design and build it next time. I had an area set aside for that in my home until recently. I remarried this summer and am presently in the process of renovations and reorganization of my house. Once I have squared the main of that away, I will find an area to once again set up a sacred space or shrine.

If you could change any aspect of modern society right now, what would you change?

The people within it. Make them self-reliant and not dependent on powers outside themselves. Expand individual liberties while at the same time generating through all medias and education the responsibilities necessary in maintaining said liberties. Only responsible people can maintain any measure of liberty and selfhood as individuals.

How might your art (visual, writing, music, etc.) assist toward this aim?

In continuing to respond to interviews like this one and helping to clarify issues and reinstating sound principles that safeguard our individual lives and fortunes as a people.

The Changes song ‘Twilight of the West’ is perhaps your most challenging political statement in that you articulately address much of your frustration with modern society. Could you explain what a more ideal contemporary society might look like?

A traditional society would be best, if it were imperative, due to population numbers and the complexities of a technological society. If those considerations were absent, then I would personally prefer to live in a Free State system, much like our American West was before civilization and its expanded population caught up with it. A similar free state system existed in Iceland in its early years. Of all American statesmen, Thomas Jefferson is my favorite social philosopher and governmental architect. It was Jefferson who said, “The government is best which governs least of all.” Thoreau of course one-upped Jefferson with his paraphrase, “The government is best which governs not at all.” I think, however, that Thoreau took it a bit too far. I believe in law and justice. Without some form of fair and equitable law and justice, we end up with the sort of criminal outbursts recently exhibited by some of the residents of New Orleans in the wake of disaster and a cessation of law enforcement. Anarchy always ends up as thugism and an open invitation to criminal elements in a society to have a field day of rape, robbery and destruction as was witnessed in New Orleans. As for ‘Twilight Of The West’ I think it continues to be fulfilled in its import and meaning. Perhaps that’s why my adversaries seem to hate it most of all. It sort of rips the mask off things, on both the inner and outer plane, that are currently unfolding. As much as I hate to quote my own poetry, I feel impelled with the thought: See? I told you so! “And opponents you thought vanquished have come to take their fill as they hover on the sidelines preparing for the kill.” I think I summed up something of the current controversy of the 11 million ingratiating illegal aliens that have poured mostly unchecked across our southern border and are now demonstrating in our midst. Some of them, like the head of the Azatlan movement in the southwest, are saying that it may be necessary to start killing old white people before they get what they want. And what do they want? To take back Texas and the southwest and other areas once a part of Mexico. I foresee many little Alamos occurring in those areas in the future. And like the demonstrated reluctance of the federal government to do anything about the illegal flow into the U.S., they will, I am certain, leave all the Americans in those areas in the lurch to be slaughtered if that begins to occur. That was exactly what I was thinking of in 1973 when I wrote that while residing in New Mexico. We surely do live in interesting times and I’m sure it will get more interesting in time.

The Red Salon
Changes

Autopsy

My copies of the new Autopsy DVD arrived today from England. They look pretty nice, although the folks at Peaceville conveniently cropped my name out of the cover artwork and plastered the band logo across one of my favorite parts of the drawing. This is especially frustrating because I drew the art to accomodate the text and Peaceville was initially very professional about requesting my layout approval. But I won't complain too much because I have to admit that I'm still extremely pleased to have my art on an Autopsy DVD! Well, that and I've grown accustomed to this sort of thing over the years. I'm also not too worried because I'll soon have really nice looking 16" X 20" prints of the cover art available without any text!

As for the DVD itself, it's pretty much a no-frills homemade documentary capturing some awesome shows by this great legend of death metal. Kind of like 'Cliff 'Em All' but with more bongs and much more shaving cream. If you're a hapless poser who missed out when they toured the states in the early 90's (like me) then this is about as close as you'll ever get to the live Autopsy experience. The band sounds great and they bash out a killer collection of favorites. The one thing missing that I really hoped to see is the gory homemade video that the band recorded early on. Instead we get a 'Gummo' moment with the band rehearsing and smoking a joint in some house with little kids running around behind the amps.

I spoke to Chris Reifert last week and he told me that, in the end, about half the material didn't make it onto these discs. Which means there are still several unreleased Autopsy shows! I'm crossing my fingers that there might be a Part 2 or "deluxe edition" at some point. Anyway, I'll have a few copies of the DVD for sale at my upcoming show at Optic Nerve Arts on 6/6/06. I'll also be displaying the original art. Maybe I'll set up a TV and just have a mini screening.
Hope to see you there!