Collectibles

It is the story of dragons and demon-lovers, of werewolves  and Walpurgisnacht, of unlikely umlauts and the power of power chords. It is the story of Metal. 

For All Known Metal Bands (the latest triumph in design from McSweeney's), Dan Nelson has descended into the Metal underworld to single-handedly collect the names of nearly 51,000 bands, presenting his research in silver ink on black paper--a treatment sometimes difficult to read in natural light, but one that will glow evilly in the black light of a sunless, suburban bedroom. Cloaked in its Necronomicoid binding, AKMB seethes with ancient magic: a volume which may have been “unearthed from a tomb … or from a metal box submerged in desiccated mud.”

Open it at your peril, gentle reader.

All Known Metal Bands lists these groups of “Ur-men” in alphabetical order, without comment, and repeats the names in the case more than one band shared the name.  From the heroes of Viking Metal (Thor, Thor’s Hammer, Thorr’s Hammer) to Gothic Metal (Black Wytche, Black Witchcraft Savagery, Black Wolf Sacrifice) and beyond, Nelson has assured “those whose ears are never touched by songs of love and weakness” permanent placement in the record of their cülture, and perhaps more importantly, oürs. More of the immortals: 

• Ultra Vomit (2 entries)
• Dark Morbid Death
• Guardians of Profane Secrets
• Lord Goatwarr
• Lucifer in Love
• Ulan Bator (?)
• Violent Marv
• Leatherwolf
• Lazarus Sin
  
• Necrolust (6 entries, included in nearly two pages of Necro/Nekro variants) 

AKMB  serves as an impressive and indispensable tribute to the “quarter of a million humans have undertaken this quest—to unearth, embody, aim, and deliver power itself.” Amen and T.G.I.F., my Metal brothers and sisters. --Jon

Check out my latest Pop Culture Report (#4), in which I look at some great graphic novels, coffee table books, and one huge art book on an iconic dark fantasy figure. This time around, visual reviews of work by Greg Broadmore, Taylor F. Lockwood's Chasing the Rain, Out of Picture 2, Andrew Bolton's Superheroes: Fantasy and Fashion, First Second's Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, Centipede Press' The Art of Lovecraft, classic reprinted Moomim comics from Drawn & Quarterly, and a Fog Mound children's book featured in this week's upcoming Graphic Novel Fridays. As always, this is a DIY, come-into-my-home-and-look-at-some-books kind of video...

Every once in awhile you receive a book that displays true evidence of genius. This month that book is A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft from Millipede Press. The vision of Millipede Press founder Jerad Walters, it features over 400 pages of art either influenced by the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft or directly commissioned over the years for various editions of the iconic writer's work. With several full-color fold-out pages, essays by Harlan Ellison, Stuart Gordon, and Thomas Ligotti, among others, and a clear mission to provide variety (the art styles vary from pulp to pop to avant garde), this is the kind of tome that people leave as an heirloom to their children.

Millipede Press's mission is to bring "the finest in horror and crime fiction back into print. Our books are printed on acid-free, recycled paper, and are all, hardcover and trade paperback alike, sewn rather than glued. Millipede Press books are known for high quality printing, binding and interior design. They are painstakingly proofread."

I asked Walters how long it took to bring this amazing project to completion--his answer displaying a refreshingly fanatical approach to the details. "It took about two years. The hardest part was simply contacting all of the involved artists and narrowing down the range of material. It was physically demanding, too, in that hours and hours were spent color correcting all of the scans. Many images took upwards to 20 hours to get just right."

As for his own favorites in the book, Walters told me he likes it all, but "perhaps the Lee Brown Coye section and some of the fold-outs. The thumbnails section is useful. With any project of this size, of course there are going to be small details that you wish you could change. However, I feel very fortunate in that everything I wanted to be in the book is in the book, and everything I wanted to do has been done. I do miss the presence of Wayne Douglas Barlowe, whose Old One would have been a good inclusion. However, I feel very privileged to have made a book that includes at least one work of every major fantasy and horror artist of the last 50 years. Wrightson, Frazetta, Whelan, Giger, Morris, Potter, Fabian, Coye, Rowena, Palencar, Eggleton, Bok, Finlay, Ian Miller, Tim Kirk--they are all in here."

Millipede Press has several other books scheduled for the next year or so, and I'll keep Amazon readers in the loop as they come out.

Has the Rinehart/Sabuda-led pop-up-book moment peaked? It's been one of the most fun trends to watch in bookmaking (the legal kind) the past few years, and perhaps it's a sign of maturity that, along with the increasingly baroque constructions from the masters, some artists are stepping back toward simple elegance. Via Paper Cuts, you can see (read?) the complete three-dimensional text of Marion Bataille's ABC3D, which despite a release date still half a year away has already made an appearance in our Top 100 (at least according to Paper Cuts: it's at the still-respectable #1,257 as I write). The pleasure and the playfulness of the demonstration speak for itself: