Posts from — November 2007

What predicament has poor Peculia found herself in now? The continuing exploits of Peculia were the back up feature in Richard Sala’s “Evil Eye” comic and now are available all together in a creepy-hot collection. Sala’s work is almost exclusively black and white and frankly the examples of his full color work are much less effective than the stark images and textures he conjures from black ink and white paper.

The storylines of a typical Sala comic exhibit the same kind of snaking dream logic of troubled sleep, where one bad situation leads to another bad situation according to some kind of strange rationality. And also like a dream, the conclusions are sometimes weird yet poetically fitting. Their overall feel has been described as “Gothic humor” but the mixture of high-drama elements, like girl-pirates, mad scientists and masked figures retains a matter-of-fact presentation, never slipping into cheap camp.

A brief bibliography would include:

• The Grave Robber’s Daughter

• The Chuckling Whatsit

• Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires

• Peculia

• Big Book of Horror

• Mad Night, Featuring Judy Drood, Girl Detective

• Maniac Killer Strikes Again!: Delirious, Mysterious Stories

• The Ghastly Ones & Other Fiendish Frolics: A Gallery of Gruesome Creeps

• Little Book Of Horror: Dracula (Little Book of Horror)

• Evil eye

• Black Cat Crossing

• Hypnotic Tales

• Delphine #2 (”Ignatz” Collection, Volume 20)

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(Male) It started out small. My partner and I were moving into an apartment and we were busy doing all the things necessary to make the space our own. I was fixing the frame on a mirror that would hang above the bed and my partner was meeting the neighbors who were a nice bi-racial lesbian couple. I could hear them talking through the open window. It was late spring and there was that lovely sunshine and smell of growth in the air.

The neighbors came over for a drink and I realized that the apartment also had access to a rather large first floor. In this part of the dream, in fact, it felt more like we were living in a sprawling old style farmhouse. Gradually more and more people were there, people who I only vaguely knew: the partner of a work associate, someone I think I might have gone to college with… Someone was expecting a baby so we took up a collection of spare change to buy camp pie makers from the dollar store, some thing we all thought would be a perfect gift for some reason. There was food, beer and even a couple folks off in the corner smoking marijuana, I think. The guests were all wearing somewhat shabby bohemian style clothing. This was turning into a party and I suppose I was the host.

…Then I realized that I must be the owner of the cursed mansion…

The next thing I knew, it was night. The house was now immense and very fancy. The entry way for instance had carved wood columns and carpeted steps like a movie theatre lobby. There was a huge crowd and everyone now was wearing flamboyant if not extreme evening wear, that in some cases verged on Hallow’en costumes. There was a guy there dressed like Marilyn Manson, for instance, sort of like the cover to “Mechanical Animals” but he also wore a tape measure that had been modified to indicate that he was 7′23″ tall. I asked him why and he said because that’s the day that Kennedy was shot. The food and drink had also become MUCH fancier. In an alcove, someone I used to work with several years ago was acting as bartender. He gave me a roundish glass of extremely fine Scotch. I can still remember the aroma of it as I write this. The unusual shape of the glass intensified the smell. I happened across my partner who was now dressed in evening wear as well and talking to a friend who had moved down South a few months ago. I offered a taste of my scotch which I was enjoying immensely but when I got the glass back it was nearly empty. I was furious but when I looked up from the glass, I couldn’t find my partner.

I searched the mansion. Down a steep stone corridor there was a rec room that had a ceiling maybe 30 feet high. There were leather couches with brass upholstery tacks, a sumptuous red carpet, interesting stone work on the walls. There were people lolling in here as well. My partner and friend were sitting at a fancy wooden table, each eating a huge bag of potato chips. My partner tried to hide inside the bag to avoid confronting me. I yelled a bit and then stormed off.

Then I realized where I was. I was in the family crypt of a haunted mansion. In the dream, I recalled seeing a home improvement show about how the grave stones had been covered with carpeting and how the whole crypt had been converted into useable living space. I felt very uncomfortable standing on top of what I knew were hidden bodies. I ran up the stone corridor to the main house. Then I realized that I must be the owner of the cursed mansion. The curse involved some monster from beyond the grave that claimed the owner on the first night of occupation. That would be tonight at midnight. All these crowds of people must have shown up to watch me get torn apart by the monster.

I decided to outsmart the monster. I found someone I work with, a timid secretary who at least in the dream was extremely poor. I offered to give her the entire mansion. She couldn’t believe I was making a real offer. We stepped outside. The front of the mansion was covered in ivy and there were many long black cars parked up and along the driveway which was cobblestone. The only paper I could find was the back of a handbill and the only thing I could find to write with was a black crayon. I wrote up the contract and signed it. While I was waiting for the secretary to make up her mind, I doodled on the paper and sketched this angry Aztec demon or something that for some reason I knew would be the monster that would be coming for me. She couldn’t decide. The moon started to rise, bright and full, over the trees. I knew it was too late.

This nightmare was really shocking though I don’t know if I can express that sensation. The situation was very matter-of-fact and every day and the images were VERY vivid. It was one of those dreams I realized the next day wasn’t an actual memory.

I was driving my familiar little compact car down a divided highway. It was night and I was alone. A mist started to rise up that was so thick it obscured the edges of the road but I was still able to see the yellow line down the side of the lane so I thought I was fine. But every now and then a particularly dense patch of fog would just wash up over the car and for an instant or two I’d be almost entirely blind. For the most part these patches would pass so I’d just keep driving, stay the course. Then while driving along, pleasantly daydreaming, I realized that I’d been driving blind for quite awhile. In fact, I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen the lane markers. I quickly flipped on the brights and I was able to pick out a yellow line. Gradually I could pick out the general sense of the road. But somehow, I was now driving on a two-lane highway. The trees and underbrush were much closer to the road and every now and then a car would pass. I would politely turn off my brights which would effectively blind me for a moment or two. Then a car passed and I forgot to put my brights back on. I daydreamed more and continued driving, but this time when I realized that I had been driving blind for quite some time, I wasn’t able to regain a sense of the road just by turning on the brights. Everything outside was a dark cottony grey. I couldn’t even see the hood of my car. I slowed down, a little bit afraid that someone would run into me from behind. I came to a complete stop and still could see nothing out any of the windows. It was almost as if I was underwater.

(Male, 40’s) Last night I dreamed that my wife and I were flying our own spacecraft and since we were in the right part of the galaxy we stopped in at a space station to visit an old friend. The friend seemed both glad to see us and quite worried. It seems that we had visited just hours before their moon came out of hiding from behind some planet. My wife didn’t get what the problem was but it was immediately clear to me. Everyone aboard the space station were werewolves and if we were still aboard when they changed, we’d be torn apart. There was some reason why we couldn’t just get in our spacecraft and fly away so our friend agreed to hide us in the attic of his living quarters. For some reason, we had to remove our clothing so the smell wouldn’t give us away or something. So my wife and I were sealed up in this narrow, triangular space, wearing only our underwear. And for some reason, my wife thinks this whole thing is hilarious so she is laughing uncontrollably which means that it’s really only a matter of time until the werewolf-spacemen find us and tear us to shreds.

Weird, eh?