This Tentacle Tuesday is a magazine edition.
I understand that the artist left quite a lot of empty space on purpose – to be filled with pointless text – but still, was it necessary to plaster nearly every inch of the image with captions yellow, red and purple? (I do like how the WEB seems to be made out of plasticine… and likely was.) Here’s the cover without all that wordy fluff:
I’ve already covered most Warren tentacles in Tentacle Tuesday: Warren and its many tentacles and Tentacle Tuesday: Warren and its many tentacles, part II, but handsome, gun-toting, time-travelling The Rook got left over. I’d like to rectify this omission. Admire the fight to the death of the scientist-who-likes-to-dress-up-as-gun-slinger and a tentacle-bearing fish-lion!
The Rook couldn’t quite kill the fishy brute’s whole family in #4, so he had to confront its slightly more colourful cousin in issue 7:
Co-admin RG suggested I check Eclipse Magazine‘s tentacular offerings for this post, and he was correct, there was one issue involving an octopus used as a coffee table.
Marvel’s Epic Illustrated, with its 70-odd pages per issue, surely offered something for everyone. The aforementioned offerings were quite hit-or-miss, but the occasional presence of Stephen Bissette, Rick Veitch, Basil Wolverton (in reprints), Berni Wrightson, Ernie Colón, Craig Russell, et al. makes it worthwhile to go through its 34 issues (okay, maybe not all in one sitting, unless you have quite a few thermoses of tea prepared – or something stronger).
Brunner’s painting is rather nice – the mermaid and her friendly octopus both look so serene! – that here it is again. And read an interview with him while you’re at it: Legendary Feathers: Interview with Frank Brunner. (I apologize for linking to a website titled Fanboy Nation, though. Erk.)
Issues 10 to 17 of Epic Illustrated featured Rick Veitch’s Abraxas and the Earthman, a purported retelling of Moby Dick (although frankly, aside from a vengeful squid, the similarities are not striking). Naturally, tentacles abound. Really freaky, creepy tentacles, much like the rest of the story.
Veitch’s fucked-up (I mean that as a compliment), imaginative tale continues with “Man and Whale (Chapter Eight)”, the final installment. Alongside a plethora of sea-creatures (no longer in the sea), there’s this Devourer of Awareness, Bearer of Tentacles:
(Incidentally, though somewhat off topic, I’d like to mention that Veitch did a bloody good job on Swamp Thing, for which he does not get enough credit.)
Speaking of Bolton, he drew “Wizard’s Masque” (another chapter in the cycle of Marada the She-Wolf), a story scripted by Christopher Claremont.
~ ds
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