{"id":30671,"date":"2024-10-09T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T08:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=30671"},"modified":"2024-10-08T17:29:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T17:29:47","slug":"ghosts-and-ruins-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/10\/09\/ghosts-and-ruins-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts and Ruins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Ben Catmull<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-60699-678-2 (HB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

If you know the works of Sidney Sime and Edward Gorey, the horror comics of Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta or simply love to peep through your interlocked fingers at the films of Tim Burton or the creepy backgrounds in Charles Addams\u2019 creations, you\u2019re clearly an aficionado of silly, spooky business and know mordant fantasy plays best when played for laughs.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, you might be interested in this macabrely monochrome inconceivably un-famous coffee-table art book from cartoonist Ben Catmull (Monster Parade<\/strong>, Paper Theater<\/strong>). It classily celebrates the stuff of nauseating, stomach-churning terror and sinister, creeping suspense in a series of eerie illustrated plates crafted in scratchboard on Masonite – for extra-spooky darkness!<\/p>\n

All that audaciously arcane art is wedded to epigrammatic prose snippets to comprise tantalising skeletons of stories best left untold and consequences safely ajudged as unimaginable…<\/p>\n

The engrossing landscape hardback (268 x 222mm but digital views may vary!) combines gloomy gothic imagery with wry & witty updates on uncanny situations in a procession of locations best left well enough alone, commencing with six views of the dank domicile of diabolical \u2018Drowned Shelley\u2019<\/em> and a single ghastly glimpse of \u2018The Buried House\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A queasy quartet then divulges the doings of the \u2018The Disgusting Garden\u2019<\/em>, after which one sight of \u2018The Secluded House\u2019<\/em> leads inexorably to a triptych revealing \u2018The Woman Outside the Window\u2019<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Four frightful frames of \u2018Wandering Smoke\u2019<\/em> miasmically meander towards \u2018The Order of the Shadowy Finger\u2019 – <\/em>five in full – before giving way to three glimpses of \u2018The Lighthouse\u2019<\/em>; a visit to a domicile all \u2018Hair and Earwigs\u2019 <\/em>and thence to numerous views of the monstrous masterpieces hewn by horrific revenant \u2018The Sculptor\u2019<\/em>…<\/p>\n

On view is the \u2018Labyrinth of Junk\u2019<\/em> once concocted by a demonic carpenter, but that is as nothing compared to the sheer terror of \u2018The Crawling House\u2019<\/em> and the ghastly practises of a \u2018Lonely Old Spinster\u2019<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Mordantly blending bleak, spectral dread and anxious anticipation with timeless scary scenarios, this terrifying tease – a kind of IKEA Fall Catalogue of the Damned – is a sheer delight no lover of Dark Art could conceivably resist…
\n\u00a9 2013 Ben Catmull. This edition \u00a9 2013 Fantagraphics. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Catmull (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-60699-678-2 (HB\/Digital edition) If you know the works of Sidney Sime and Edward Gorey, the horror comics of Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta or simply love to peep through your interlocked fingers at the films of Tim Burton or the creepy backgrounds in Charles Addams\u2019 creations, you\u2019re clearly an … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ghosts and Ruins”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[81,102,66,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-books","category-fantasy","category-horror-stories","category-mystery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7YH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30673,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30671\/revisions\/30673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}