It wasn’t that Mr. Whittingham thought his youngest daughter’s fiancé an idiot per se, but it must be said that the young man’s affinity for the incestuous musings of a certain doctor of Austrian citizenship made him wonder if, perhaps, the gentleman had been shaken a bit too roughly as an infant.

2 portraits [vintagephoto]

We’ve featured the work of Boris Artzybasheff before but ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive recently put up some new scans from his book As I See, from the section titled “Neurotica”. The pieces are, from left to right: Anxiety, Schizophrenia, and Hypochondria and each does a fantastic job of illustrating their namesake. I find Schizophrenia to be especially well executed and haunting.

Illustration: Artzybasheff’s Neurotica [ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive]

Lovecraft written by Hans Rodionoff and Keith Giffen with art by Enrique Breccia, is a fictional take on H.P. Lovecraft life, combining it with his fiction. It supposes that Lovecraft’s father actually possessed a copy of the Necronomicon which gave him visions of very real, otherworldly horrors and allowed him to travel to an alternate Providence, known as Arkham, where he was known as Randolph Carter.

The graphic novel has received some harsh criticism for its portrayal of Lovecraft, specifically his sexuality which, in turn, leads to some mis-dated references to events in his life. The authors seem to take Lovecraft’s inferred, underlying misogyny and expand it into a fear of women and sex, turning his creations into psychosexual representations of feminine nether-regions.

This seems only as annoying as the reader makes it, in much the same way that the film Amadeus can be enjoyed as fiction or reviled as an affront to historical accuracy and Mozart’s legacy. Personally, I find it more interesting that the authors felt the need to change the name of Lovecraft’s cat from “Nigger Man” to “Necro Man” in an attempt to seemingly clean up his image. Needless to say that they do not quote his poem On the Creation of Niggers either.

Lovecraft (Paperback) [Amazon] : The Groovy Age of Horror : Thanks, Asa!

We have presented odd theremins before but those had a special charm, an air of frivolity distinctly laking in this offering on ebay. Fashioned from the leering, demonic head of a child’s doll, its eyes alight with an unholy crimson glow, truly this is an instrument for an emotionally stunted and traumatized sociopath or, perhaps, a high-school goth.

DOLL HEAD II LPC THEREMIN SCI FI SYNTH EFFECT (NEW) [ebay] : Gizmodo : boingboing

Due to my own deeply Freudian psychological baggage, this was the creature that would prance out of my bedroom closet at midnight when I was a boy, to float horrifically above my bed, pink cape splayed between pale, stretched finger tips, and profusely vomit blood all over me. These days? The slippery slope, one thing leads to another, and somehow, I’ve ended up dating my own personal Dracula.

Via Warren Ellis