Gallery – Strange Aeons

Ah, Strange Aeons 2. The project that launched my most read blog post. If I’d had had sense this either would have been my last project with Chaosium or I would have insisted on being paid upfront from then on. If I had had sense …

Chaosium’s assignments were always fun and they gave no significant editorial oversight so I accepted further commissions. And had to deal with further late payments. Silly me.

Strange Aeons 2 was a collection of Call of Cthulhu scenarios by different authors set in different time periods in different parts of the world published in 2010. The variety made the project fun. My complaints only occurred after I’d done the work.

Story Seed #95
The Price of Redemption

How does a monster find redemption? I’m not referriing to nonhuman monsters – King Kong, dragons,giant ants, whathaveyou. Forces of nature don’t have sins that need absolving. They can smash a city in one story and save humanity from alien invasion in the next without causing a lot of cognitive dissonance in the audience. Human monsters, villains, shouldn’t get such an easy pass. For people, hurting others is a choice. Choices are conscious decisions.

Fiction, especially the adventure genre, is filled with villains. A good villain makes the story more interesting. With series (novels, comics, television, movies) the hero usually faces a different antagonist each episode with a few “archvillains” making repeat appearances. In horror fiction, the “villain” is often the most interesting part of th story. Whole movie series are built around the villain with the hero rotating out with each new installment. Villains become “anti-heroes”.

A bad guy who becomes popular often has their sharp edges shaved off. They get a tragic back story that explains why they’re driven to do bad things. We might learn that their victims were also bad people – perhaps worse than our popular bad guy. Our bad guy might start acting more decently. The really horrible things they did when they were first introduced aren’t mentioned. Those actions get forgotten. Our bad guy “reforms”.

Except that’s not really reforming. The popular bad guy gets a pass for his bad actions because now he has fans. They themselves don’t address their own past actions. They don’t come to terms with the damage they’ve caused. “I tortured and ate your family? Oops. I don’t do that now. I only kill evil people these days. Get over it.”

There are stories to be told of how a human monster comes to terms with their past and makes restitution to, if not their victims, then to greater society. Stories less about how they are forgiven than about how they become forgiveable.

Recommendation

Yes, I did the cover illustration for this book. Buy it for that reason if you like. I’m recommending the book because it’s well written and very funny. For more info and a chance to pre-order, click here.

Local News

The cold and the wet has returned to the Pacific Northwest. Our station manager managed to get our start time moved back to 7 am from the 7:30 we’d been stuck with for the past few months. Maybe I’m getting a cold. Maybe my body is just complaining.

When I started working at USPS I Ididn’t have time for much other than the job. I did very little art. I put a hold on commissions because I had no idea when I’d be able to finish them. I didn’t post here for a year. As I got used to the job I started working on black and white images to get used to drawing again. Quite a few of those featured the Mighty Nizz aka Little Red.

I’m currently adding color to those illustrations and adding them to my portfolio at Redbubble. They are a bit of an odd size. When I originally did them I was thinking about getting art done not where that art might end up.

This:

Becomes this:

This:

Becomes this:

I’ve got another half dozen in process. I will post them as I finish.

Thank you for dropping by. May you have good books to read, good food to eat and good friends to keep you company – even if you can’t see them in person. See you next week!