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by Pamela Auditore

Anyone familiar with Spike TV Scream Award Winner and New York Times Bestselling Artist/Writer Ben Templesmith’s work knows he is profoundly influenced by HP Lovecraft. Even a cursorary glance at his art makes this apparent. Lovecraft’s influence is most directly on display in Templesmith’s most recent graphic novel Squidder.  A tale of a one time warrior doing battle and eluding the common place acolytes who’ve accepted the Dark Cephlopod Gods as their own.

But now, the marriage is official!

Templesmith will be tackling Lovecraft himself, the horror master who has influenced creators for nearly a century, including Mike Mignola, Nic Pizzolatto (“True Detective”) and GRR Martin.

In an e-mail yesterday, Templesmith, announced he is temporarily forgoing a sequel to Squidder, for an adaption of HP Lovecraft’s “DAGON.” “A proto-Chuthullu story,” as the Kickstarter page calls it.

Dagon

As Templesmith tells it:

“‘DAGON’ is the first Lovecraft story I ever read… and is just oozing in mood and fear [sic]…so I figured I’d turn the visuals it gives me in to a deluxe graphic novella. I finally get to handle some of the unspeakable horrors of Lovecraft, especially because it’s the 125th anniversary of his birth.”

Templesmith also says he will be working on Fell, and is in talks with Warren Ellis for more issues of Wormwood.

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Well, $412 seems absurdly low to us, anyway. 

Renowned horror/fantasy artist Templesmith has been experimenting with hand-painted covers for several books, and this is an original one of a kind oil painting done on a copy of The Walking Dead Volume 1. The painting was varnished, and I don’t know if you can read the book inside, but it seems to me that this is a pretty darned sweet collectible…especially for Halloween.

Also…Christmas is coming.

More Templesmith stuff at the 78Squid retail website.

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Fall is in the air, bringing a crisp step and the crunch of leaves under foot, and the inevitable—perhaps inescapable—presence of Pumpkin Spice everything all around us! Yes, it’s time for 31 Days of Halloween, The Beat’s annual tribute to our MOST FAVORITEST TIME OF YEAR. And let’s get things going with probably the most obvious link possible…but I have ever written about painter/cartoonist/musician Menton3 on The Beat before so here goes!

Based in Chicago, Menton3—aka Menton J Matthews III—is a painter of atmospheric and disturbing images. While you can find a lot of his work at his website, he’s probably best known these days as a partner in 44Flood, a publishing company that has teamed with IDW to put out art books and comics. Along with fellow artists Kasra Ghanbari, Ben Templesmith and Nick Idell, 44Flood has put out Tome, an artbook which was mostly Kickstarted, Templesmith’s The Squidder, the comic Monocyte, which you see on this page, and Libretto, an anthology of eerieness centering on vampirism. A new volume of Tome is on its way or already here (I couldn’t find a lot of solid news about the bunch.)

Collectively they also do a thing called Monster Mondays, available on the 44Flood webstore, but I’m warning once you start poking around there you’re gonna want to buy something from Menton, Templesmith, Jonathan Wayshack or any number of talented spooky colleagues.

Yep, Halloween is on its way.

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The Bat office continues to break the mold! FINALLY a Bat book drawn by Ben Templesmith!

People in my comic book circle have been suggesting this as a no brainer for about five years. His creepy, moody work is tailor made for Gotham.

It’s a horror book natch, called Gotham by Midnight, featuring a bunch of DC’s supernatural characters, written by Ray Fawkes. So Templesmith on The Spectre? You con’t even need a cerebral cortex to know this is a great idea!

Enter the Midnight Shift, Gotham City Police Department’s answer to The X-Files — and the team called in to handle cases outside the depth of the Caped Crusader. Led by Detective Jim Corrigan, they debut in DC Comics’ all-new supernatural/horror adventure book, Gotham by Midnight, on sale Nov. 26.

Spearheaded by a horror comic superteam of writer Ray Fawkes (Constantine, Batman Eternal) and artist Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Ten Grand), Gotham by Midnight spins off from the pages of Batman Eternal but operates independently of that title. And while Bats will be around, because this is set in Gotham, after all, his main function in the book is to liaise with Corrigan.

In this Blastr exclusive, we caught up with Fawkes to discuss the world of Gotham by Midnight, the supernatural sickness that plagues the city, and Fawkes’ own connection to the horror genre. And make certain to check out our exclusive peek at the first cover of GBM, along with Templesmith’s character sketches for the book.

 

More with Writer Fawkes in the link.

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An interesting story’s been picked up by Multiversity today, as it appears that artist Ben Templesmith has been replaced on Image’s Ten Grand series with CP Smith. The reasoning appears to be because Templesmith has allegedly gone MIA, and stopped responding to emails from writer J Michael Straczynski or his Joe’s Comics team.

In a statement made on the Fans of JMS facebook page by the writer, Templesmith is alleged to have stopped responding to emails about the series, with Straczynski receiving no contact regarding the progress of the artwork. The message also announces that, following the decision to drop Templesmith, Ten Grand will from now on be drawn by artist CP Smith.

Here’s an extended extract from the post:

As I’ve stated many times in the past, I’m a massive fan of Ben Templesmith’s work. He’s one of the truly unique voices working in comics today, and we’ve been blessed to have him on board for the launch of our flagship title.

With Ten Grand, once the script went out to Ben, we would often hear nothing back, despite repeated requests for updates. Most recently, we gave Ben a full script on July 26th. It is now September 4th, and we have still not heard anything back from him, despite repeated emails asking where things were, nor have we gotten any pages. I even tweeted him on August 25th just to make sure he was okay, and though we still didn’t hear back from him, we did hear through others that he’s all right, which is the important thing.

From time to time, every artist and writer falls behind or runs into trouble with the work; I am not only marching in that parade, I am carrying a banner. But there still has to be some level of communication so that all parties can plan out publishing schedules and make adjustments where needed.

So on August 27th, I emailed Ben to say that if we didn’t hear something back by the end of that week, even just a text to say he was underwater, that we would have to find another artist. I wanted to give him every possible opportunity to come back and make this work. No reply. Finally, and with tremendous reluctance, I sent him a note on the 31st saying that we were moving on. Our obligation to our readers and the retailers has to come first.

To be clear: we are and remain big fans of Ben’s work, and wish him every best. His art was magnificent and a perfect fit for the storytelling. If we were doing a graphic novel we’d hire him again in a heartbeat.

It’s a very strange case indeed, especially so soon into what has thus far been a well-received series. As noted in the post, Templesmith appears to be fine and well, but has cut off all communication. His social media presence has died down over the last month, with his Twitter page last updated at the start of August.

There certainly appears to be something going on here – we’ll see if we can get in contact with Templesmith regarding this.

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TweetIDW’s first volume of the collected DOCTOR WHO OMNIBUS is a compact but substantial little tome gathering two long story arcs (“Agent Provacateur” and “The Forgotten”) and six one-shots that appeared in single issue form featuring, for the most part, the adventures of the 10th Doctor. The production values on the collection are reasonably high, [...]

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Against all odds, it is happening! Come out to congratulate the Bens and see what devilry they have planned for the future!

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“Black Sky” is a new “illustrated film” project by Ben Templesmith from Halo-8 Entertainment, the production company that seems to have a hand in a lot of interesting comics-esque related things, like the Grant Morrison documentary and so on. The first teaser image have just been released:

Black Sky Teaser – 120110 from Halo-8 Entertainment on Vimeo.

Is an “illustrated film” better than a motion comic? According to Matt Pizzolo, who will direct the film, it is. “The difference between an illustrated film and a motion comic is kind of the difference between a movie that was shot in 3D versus a movie that was shot in 2D but got a 3D post-conversion. We’re not repurposing an existing comic book here, we’re building something unique from scratch.”

You can check out Pizzolo’s earlier “illustrated film concept, Godkiller, on Hulu.

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I do love the Looking Glass Wars series.

I also like how the series goes beyond the actual trilogy without getting into heavy marketing tie-ins.

First off, there's the soundtrack which is an awesome concept, and an awesome album (but won't be everyone's cup of tea. Listen to the samples before you buy.) Then there are the games. Some are your basic on-line tie-in games that aren't completely unusual for books. But! There's also a role-playing game and a card game. And, there are the spin-off books.

Princess Alyss of Wonderland Frank Beddor

This is Alyss's scrapbook and journal that she kept while trapped in England. Lots of drawings, pictures, and even letters (that come out of the book) and a deck of playing cards. It doesn't really add to the series, but is a fun addition for mega-fans.

Yes, this is way below 100 pages, but I'm mentioning it because I thought I was going to use it for a paper I wrote in grad school but decided not to.

Hatter M: Volume 1 Frank Beddor with Liz Cavalier, art by Ben Templesmith

As far as I can tell, this was originally published as a series of comic books and then gathered and printed in an omnibus edition.

This graphic novel tells the story of Hatter M, while he's searching for Alyss in our world. Due to his awesome weaponry and martial arts skills, it's a great adventure that works really, really well in a graphic novel (full color!), almost better than it would in plain text. The only thing is that I think the graphic novel is aimed at adult readers of the series, even though the series (in the US) is published for middle grade readers.

I don't like talking about art, because I feel like I can't do it intelligently, but Templesmith makes awesome use of color.

AND! In October we finally get the last book in the trilogy, ArchEnemy, and a new volume of the Hatter M graphic novel, Mad With Wonder.

I'm super excited!

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