A twisted rider apes a classic Napoleonic pose, mounted upon the fleshy back of a unicorn, its head that of a narwhal. Such things exist in the mind of Mat Brown, an artist whose images are nearly beyond description; sprawling landscapes, lush with alien vegetation and inhabited by hideous figures. It is a fascinating, but horrific collection of sensual grotesqueries.
Be careful as the gallery is, most assuredly, not safe for work.
Here we come to yet another Friday, another end to another work week, another afternoon spent impatiently waiting for the hands of the clock to come into perfectly angled alignment signaling the beginning of the weekend. Allow Ectomo to present you with something to perhaps help the time go faster.
“The Earth was created, not with the gentle caress of love, but with the brutal violence of rape.”
So begins 1971’s The Hellstrom Chronicle. A documentary narrated by the fictitious Dr. Nils Hellstrom, played by Lawrence Pressman, an entomologist whose work has led him to a terrifying conclusion, that ultimately it will not be man who inherits the earth, but insects. Truly horrifying stuff, so horrifying in fact, that it requires Pressman to narrate the entire film in an impressively over-the-top, B-movie manner.
Dr. Hellstrom is not the reason you’ll watch, however. The real star here is the incredible footage of insects on display. Shot by a several cinematographers, they manage to get so close to their subjects that the viewer almost occupies the same space with them. It’s truly fantastic camera work, and more than makes up for the hammy, “We’re all doomed!” atmosphere that Pressman’s voice-over attempts to stir up.
Incidentally, this film would be the inspiration for Frank Herbert’s novel Hellstrom’s Hive, about a secret group of humans who model their lives upon social insects, and the unsettling events that unfold after they are discovered by the US government.
I knew this would happen. It was only a matter of time before they started reproducing; before they started to expand their territory beyond the realm of carnal delights and into procreation. As their rubbery, soulless offspring wriggle painfully from chapped and cracking wombs to march across our blissfully organic world, it is then you will know I was right all along.
Allow me to present Eric Fogel’s The Adventures of Mutilator: Hero of the Wastelands. Mr. Fogel was a staple of 90s era MTV having created both The Head and the more popular Celebrity Deathmatch. Neither of these shows is worthy to lick one of Mutilator’s boots. Animated in the crudest manner possible, Mutilator is a tour de force of constantly shifting perspectives, unnatural spacial relationships, and absurd violence. Combine thses with a classic, 80s, post-apocalyptic synthesizer soundtrack, theme song by Deth Boat and ridiculously terse dialogue — “My arm needs bandaging; your skin will suffice.” — and you have a masterpiece of schlocky toonage. Seriously, it’s worth it just for the scene in the second video where Mutilator appears to dance his way towards a nefarious enemy before plunging his hands through the fellow’s torso. His dance is the dance of death.
Most of us know the stories, both terrifying and inspiring, of the men and women who did their best in fending off the insatiable, undead horde during the inevitable zombie apocalypse. These stories and images have been reproduced and retold for generations; but what of the untold heroes? What of the children? Should we not remember their valiant contributions to the cause? Shall we forget the diminutive progeny who, baseball bat and trash can lid in hand, struck down fiends who, perhaps only moments ago, were playing left field? Will the the tales of eagle-eyed, slingshot snipers and steady handed brick slingers remain unknown? How can we let the legacy of the fine youngsters who defended our playgrounds lapse, and crumble into ruin?
Thankfully, Jason Chan has seen this glaring, historical omission and declared, “NO! No, this will not stand!” and we at Ectomo applaud him for giving voice to a heretofore all but silent minority; for weaving the tapestry of the Children’s Apocalypse.
Before you is the culmination of all my post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk fashion dreams. Oh sure, my compatriots and I clothe ourselves in all manner of garb designed with futurelust in mind, but not a stitch of those epic high-collared wardrobes is really functional. We’re simply playing dystopian dress-up.
But with this piece by Tim Smit — made of neoprene, lined with kevlar, and seemingly designed with my ilk in mind — we’re really getting into the business of being the no-nonsense, disaffected futuretots we’ve always known ourselves to be.
While it’s not specifically stated that this is just a conceptual design I can’t imagine it’s anything but. Yet simply knowing it exists helps to soothe the hurt of being unable to rush out and buy my first piece of Apocalypse Couture.
Hit the jump for a few more shots of this exquisite design.
In 2238 the first fully human-passable android was developed by the AI Underground in what historians would come to call “Genesis 2.0″. The poor confused half-breed slipped into this world from the comfort of a cozy lab-grown womb with the full weight of the world on his shoulders and a legacy of terrible, unavoidable, blood-soaked horrors he had yet to fulfill.
As you know yesterday was Brownlee’s birthday which meant that today I had to take an extra long shower. It’s no use though, no matter how long I scrub I just can’t get clean. In any event here is a nice little animated sandwich of spoof-tastic Fox Kids and Kids’ WB cartoons between two, moist slices of anime. I hope they will entertain you, our loyal readership, and I pray that, perhaps, they will help me to repress the events of last evening. Please, God…
• FLCL: We’ve entered the final half of this spectacular mini-series, and only two more to go. Will you just look at those eyebrows.
•Eek! The Cat and The Terrible Thunderlizards: Eek! did a number of film spoofs during its run and the two that stand out, to me, are “Lord of the Fleas” in which Eek is trapped in a shopping mall with some penguins — one of whom hysterically exclaims “Shut-up, Piggy!” — and this episode entitled “Eekpocalypse Now!, which thoroughly hits upon every major joke one could make about Coppola’s film. This one is for the adults, unless you were an eight year-old who loved movies about Vietnam. The Terrible Thunderlizards was its own show but was later merged with Eek! to create a variety show more like our next two entries.
•Tiny Toons: “A Quack in the Quarks” is the second episode of this seminal show and features a loose parody of Star Wars and a plethora of fourth wall shattering humor. In this episode Plucky Duck is kidnapped by aliens to Planet X to save it from the nefarious plot of Duck Vader. This was the beginning of a real golden age of Warner Brothers cartoons in the late 80s/early 90s that include Animaniacs, Freakazoid, and the Animaniacs spin-off Pinky and The Brain. Oh, and a Watchmen reference!
•Animaniacs “Super Strong Warner Siblings” is a brilliant send-up of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers which always marked the end of cartoon time. Animaniacs also did an Apocalypse Now parody which, while excellent, did not follow the plot as closely as Eek!. Next up is one of the many “Good Idea, Bad Idea” clips followed by my favorite, Pinky and The Brain. In this episode, entitled “Battle for the Planet”, Brain once again acknowledges his Orson Welles influence by attempting to fake an alien invasion ala the Mercury Theater’s broadcast of War of the Worlds.
•Paranoia Agent: Someone has some unpleasant secrets…
A bisected look inside the claustrophobic suit-and-tie apocalypse of the 1950s.
Doomsday starts well enough: the Cleavers are able to deftly dodge the superheated radioactive shockwave with a quick duck-and-cover. From there, Father abandons his half-smoked pipe and half-read newspaper, Mother quickly dries the dishes and puts them back on the shelves, the children put their toys in their toy chests. Then it’s time to trundle off to the lead-lined coffin installed by Acme in the backyard, insured for fifty years of Nuclear Winter security!
The fallout shelter has all the amenities of home, including a top-of-the-line geiger counter, a swank Radiolux with both amplitude and frequency modulation, and, the envy of all their neighbors, a swank retractable periscope, perfect for observing the shambling, mutagenic horrors of the nightmare world outside.
Unfortunately, the Cleavers forgot one absolutely vital amenity for the armageddon lifestyle: a toilet. Thus guaranteeing that a thousand years hence, when the mutated archeologists of some post-apocalyptic civilization finally crack open the Cleavers’ chthonic shelter, all they will find is a feculent septic tank full of sewage, upon which drifts a flotsam made up of a string of pearls, a reeking penny loafer and four human skulls of an excremental, nut-brown patina.
Seated high upon his faithful boiler-steed, a steam nomad scours the landscape; hoping only to find a bit of respite on the blasted heath once covered in verdant vegetation, home to horses whose hindquarters only featured tank treads after a great darkness swept the land.
In 1908, a blast one thousand times the size of the one that hit Hiroshima vaporized 770 square miles of forest in Siberia. The chap-faced Tungu natives of the bleak Siberian landscape described a sky splitting in two and filling with lakes of holocaustal fire. It is known in scientific circles as the Tunguska Event.
Scientifically, the explanation has always been that a large comet or meteor was to blame, but since no crater was ever found, the assumption has always been that it exploded six or ten miles up in the air. A team of scientists, though, have recently hypothesized that Lake Cheko — previously discarded as the crater site because of silt residue on the bottom of the lake — is the impact crater, quickly filled with melted permafrost from the heat of the blast.
Interesting fun fact: if the asteroid that caused the Tunguska Event had entered the atmosphere a mere four hours and forty seven minutes later, it would have obliterated St. Petersburg. Time to start building those orbital laser cannons.
Take a good look my friends. Stare deep into those soulless eyes, mark well that metallic rictus, and bear witness to the phallic proboscis that will surely prove to be mankind’s undoing. May our end be swift and, I pray, devoid of robotic vaudeville.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
In 1908, a blast one thousand times the size of the one that hit Hiroshima vaporized 770 square miles of forest in Siberia. The chap-faced Tungu natives of the bleak Siberian landscape described a sky splitting in two and filling with lakes of holocaustal fire. It is known in scientific circles as the Tunguska Event. 
