It’s actually an update of the original cover painting I did back in
’94, which was taken from a sequence where our hero-Mortimer-references a
dream he’s had where all the babies have been born with a congenital
absence of eyelids. Its a really short passage, but at the time I think I
felt it was symbolic of this internal life, a sensory inflection where
the only point of reference is the womb. I was probably also thinking of that razor meets eyeball scene in Buñuel’s Un ChienAndalou, but here its a surgeons scalpel about to shock the little tot into what amounts to a kind of rebirth.
At the time, Fantaco-the company that originally solicited the
series-were so concerned by the image, the editor called me to ask if I
could change it to something more “T & A” such were the times then. I
wouldn’t, they cancelled the series, and the rest is 25 years of
forgotten history.
It’s up and available in my store for purchase along with the 25th Anniversary edition. BABY BLIND
Here it is at long last then, unfinished business, a monkey on my back, 25 years in the making.
I even knocked a special little trailer together, in the vintage
style of all those late night thrillers from the period 1979. Such were
my ambitions back in the days of 1995, I envisioned David Croneberg
would direct if it had been optioned to film, and Gary Oldman would have
played the old pathological pathologist, Sue Johnson his wife Joan, and Nicole Kidman the luscious visage of Lucinda.
While
we can dream what that might have looked like, here’s the completed
graphic novel, cleaned up,completely re lettered digitally, and
available for the very first time, in its 86 page glory.
“Any progress toward the salvation of humankind will
probably begin from the bottom—when our gods have been devalued to the
status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments.” ― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror
Oil on canvas
9″x 12″
(2019)
The title actually comes from a David Sylvian/Robert Fripp track of
the same name, which contains the lines;”Born in darkness-Built on
shame-And hurting”. Wow. Potent stuff.
The painting was borne out of quite an old pen and ink drawing from
2015 I think, resurrected as a sort of lodestar for my next series, but
it struck me recently whilst eliciting research, that the meat and
sandwich of the whole end quest, was going to be some sort of reckoning
with God-a visual trial by fire if you will, and by that same task= man,
since y’know…chicken and egg.
Like I say, potent stuff, so our primate here is a little totem of modern piety, a paradox of hypocrisy and sanctimony.
It’s available in my store for a different kind of song from the following link. HERE
