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So, here are some photos I took of my Father's Day Tome.
As I said in the last post, A LOVECRAFT RETROSPECTIVE from Centipede/Millipede Press, is very large and very heavy. Here is a comparison between it and one of my old HPL paperbacks (a 1970 Panther edition of 'The Horror in the Burying Ground' with artwork by Bob Fowke... sadly, not featured in the Tome).
The dust-jacket features Michael Whelan's "Lovecraft's Nightmare" diptych used originally in Del Ray's 1980 Lovecraft collection. As you can see, it barely fits across a dining room table.
Inside, the reproductions are almost overwhelmingly excellent. A few early images don't come out too well, but I can understand that. They're pretty old and printed on pulp paper not meant to last. Any sort of reproduction of these rare images is welcome, but it isn't until about 10 or 15 pages in that the images start to take on a real clarity. That's where you first hit artists such as Virgin Finlay - Google Image Search (one of my personal favourites) and the amazing Lee Brown Coye (image shown below).
The pulp covers for 'Weird Tales' and 'Astounding Stories' are pretty fabulous too.
Possibly my favourites in terms of pure design are the various single-tint dust-jackets with hand-drawn lettering produced by Richard Taylor for Arkham house during the 50s and early 60s:
That single wash of colour is just amazingly effective. There is also a green cover with Deep Ones invading Innsmouth, and a yellow one with bizarre otherworldly architecture and the Great Race of Yith.
Whelan's diptych is also given a double fold-out all of its own... so big it was too large to spread across the dining room table, and even standing on a chair I could barely fit it all in frame.
I was also happy to see quite a lot of 'Call of Cthulhu' roleplaying material in there. Especially the Les Edwards ones that graced many a rule and companion book.
And, last but not least, the amazing Bob Eggleton has a section which includes the image I have as my desktop wallpaper at the moment (the fold-out one on the right):
And this is really only just scratching the surface of the Tome. It has some great text introductions to many of the illustrators, and the thumbnail section in the back of the book is a good way to browse for selected images and their publication detail (artist, date, where published, etc). Plus, it has two cloth bookmarks (a black one and a gold one) so you can mark your spot in the book, as well as your spot in the thumbnail gallery that has shows all the information.
This is the sort of book that I'm going to relish browsing for many, many years to come. You can just get lost in a page and not come up for ages, it is that amazing to look at.
I'm so happy with my Father's Day gift :)
As I said in the last post, A LOVECRAFT RETROSPECTIVE from Centipede/Millipede Press, is very large and very heavy. Here is a comparison between it and one of my old HPL paperbacks (a 1970 Panther edition of 'The Horror in the Burying Ground' with artwork by Bob Fowke... sadly, not featured in the Tome).
The dust-jacket features Michael Whelan's "Lovecraft's Nightmare" diptych used originally in Del Ray's 1980 Lovecraft collection. As you can see, it barely fits across a dining room table.
Inside, the reproductions are almost overwhelmingly excellent. A few early images don't come out too well, but I can understand that. They're pretty old and printed on pulp paper not meant to last. Any sort of reproduction of these rare images is welcome, but it isn't until about 10 or 15 pages in that the images start to take on a real clarity. That's where you first hit artists such as Virgin Finlay - Google Image Search (one of my personal favourites) and the amazing Lee Brown Coye (image shown below).
The pulp covers for 'Weird Tales' and 'Astounding Stories' are pretty fabulous too.
Possibly my favourites in terms of pure design are the various single-tint dust-jackets with hand-drawn lettering produced by Richard Taylor for Arkham house during the 50s and early 60s:
That single wash of colour is just amazingly effective. There is also a green cover with Deep Ones invading Innsmouth, and a yellow one with bizarre otherworldly architecture and the Great Race of Yith.
Whelan's diptych is also given a double fold-out all of its own... so big it was too large to spread across the dining room table, and even standing on a chair I could barely fit it all in frame.
I was also happy to see quite a lot of 'Call of Cthulhu' roleplaying material in there. Especially the Les Edwards ones that graced many a rule and companion book.
And, last but not least, the amazing Bob Eggleton has a section which includes the image I have as my desktop wallpaper at the moment (the fold-out one on the right):
And this is really only just scratching the surface of the Tome. It has some great text introductions to many of the illustrators, and the thumbnail section in the back of the book is a good way to browse for selected images and their publication detail (artist, date, where published, etc). Plus, it has two cloth bookmarks (a black one and a gold one) so you can mark your spot in the book, as well as your spot in the thumbnail gallery that has shows all the information.
This is the sort of book that I'm going to relish browsing for many, many years to come. You can just get lost in a page and not come up for ages, it is that amazing to look at.
I'm so happy with my Father's Day gift :)