The Apocalypse According to John Martin

Fall of the Rebel Angels

English painter and inventor John Martin spent much of his time depicting lavish feasts, epic plazas, angels, demons, and, of course, The Apocalypse. When he wasn't blowing people away with scenes of epic epicness, he was playing chess.

His fame spread like a tsunami and he his work was sought out by royalty from all over Europe.

Among his greatest accomplishments are 24 gorgeous, kick-ass engravings for Paradise Lost, which some see as the definitive set.

I wouldn't argue.

A man of 70mm widescreen vision, one can only wonder what he'd have done with a two hundred million dollar budget.

I tried to incorporate aspects of his work into the graphic novel.

Great Day of His Wrath

Sodom and Gomorrah

Pandemonium

The Deluge

Satan rousing his followers

Pandemonium (Etching)

Satan lurks by the Stairs of Heaven. Epic epicness!

First page of the book; a bit Piranesi, a bit John Martin

You can zoom in on the details of his engravings here.

History of Hell Part II

Babylonians worshiping demon posers. By John Martin.

Satan tasked favoured demons to travel to earth and set themselves up as false gods and engage in the Eternal Psychomachy; members of the Magisterium were allotted the Holy Lands, where they cheekily had their temples built next to Yahweh's. They made catcalls, threw fruit, wrote obscene graffiti, drank too much, and generally stirred shit up and lowered real estate values. They also passed knowledge on to man, much to the consternation of God, who didn't like a bunch of gaudily dressed posers loitering on his turf, passing out memetic firecrackers to mischievous little kids who didn't know better.

Satan battles with Death while Sin watches with concern; by John Martin

When the temples of the false gods were finally thrown down, indescribable rage swept through the Magisterium, and Beelzebub launched a rebellion, blaming Satan for letting the indignity happen. Really he was just pissed at not being included in the Magisterium. Many demon aristocrats and their legions joined him, including Rimmon and Basher Thammuz, who were unhappy with Satan being a such prick all the time and not sharing the tastiest souls or his 10,000 succulent succubi harem.

Reinforced by huge, castle-crushing beasts from the wastelands, Beeze and company waged a thirty year war against Satan's high-handed rule, a war which weakened the empyrean essence of everyone involved. For the first time, weaker demons could be permanently dissipated. Rubbed out, in other words. Vaporized. Killed. Scrubbed.

A city fortress in Hell, lit by a bubbling magma pool; by John Martin

The war ended with Beelzebub's defeat by Abaddon and 'Mofo' Moloch. His fortress of gold and iron, Beelzegrond, was razed to the ground and Beelzebub fled back into the wastelands, where it is said he was murdered by his sons, who were understandably displeased with having a loser for a dad. Satan declared the House of Beelzebub a criminal organization; members were sentenced to death. Contests were held to come up with new, innovative, and extremely painful means of execution for them.

During this turbulent period the main political factions of Hell crystallized. They complicate loyalties within the Major Houses, as no house aligns with them perfectly; Satanists are an obvious exception to this, being a one-note personality cult.

The bridge leading out of Hell, through Chaos, to the material world; by John Martin

During the Harrowing of Hell, Satan denied Moloch's request to unleash his teeth gnashing legions upon The Little Enemy. Peeved, Moloch resigned as Marshall of the Infernal Armies, and began to secretly plot to bring about Armageddon prematurely by kidnapping the Anti-Christ and transporting him to earth in 1000 AD. Many members of the military, particularly Abaddon and the officer corps, supported him.

The Walls of Dis

They marched upon the Gates of Hell, but were stopped by the Garrison, and were forced to lay siege. In the meantime, Satan raised a vast army to oppose the rebels, calling them 'a bunch of idiotic Upist douchebags'. The threat in the rear forced Moloch to march upon Pandemonium. He was defeated at the Battle of the Styx and sentenced to be diced for all eternity; Abaddon was cast into a pit with his followers, not to be released until Judgement Day, by which time he'd be ready to break lots of stuff.

The Third Civil War came about when three demons, Ozeroth, Orut, and Izooze, formed a Supreme Triumvirate within the Magisterium. They claimed Satan had become incapable of governing, being morbidly obese, immobile, and senile. Some said Satan had also developed Tourettes, although he may have just been pissed at being stuck in the ice of the Cocytus.

Satan, however, was not as senile as he seemed, and used his influence to start a mass counter-movement using teenage demon zealots. He founded the Lightbringers, an organization dedicated to proselytizing in his name, spreading the Satanic Shizz, and loyal to him above all else.

On Satan's instructions, The Watchers initiated an inquisition against supposed Heavenly agents, who were coincidentally found among followers of the Triumverate. Coincidence? Not likely.

This era became known as The Great Cull, which lasted from 1467 to 1583 AD. During it, over 88,881,440 demons were killed, either in mass purges or open warfare with the Armies of the Triumverate. A host of new memes and hideous abominations were created out of the fevered nightmares of twisted demonic minds and unleashed without thought of consequence upon all of Hell.

The Fall of the Triumverate was closely followed by the execution of Droogas 'The Dread', the Grand Inquisitor, and the establishment of a new Magisterium, composed of a bunch of pussified puppets closely controlled by Satan. It would be periodically purged as members grew too powerful, or developed a spine.

Angels and demons fight during The Rebellion 

Hell 101: Prisons of Piranesi

Nobody designs prisons like Giovanni Piranesi. Known for his meticulous etchings of Roman ruins (in which he exaggerates the scale of buildings by a factor of three, the deceptive devil), he surpassed himself with a series of prints of fantastical prison interiors. The Carceri d'Invenzion series consists of 16 prints depicting cyclopean interiors. Soaring vaults, barred windows, gargantuan stone blocks, and torture devices pepper the scenes. The scale itself is oppressive.

There's no sane reason for them to be built in such a manner. It's Gargantuan Aesthetic Dysfunctionalism (GAD) run amok. Just who was being housed in these dark, spacious pits is a mystery. King Kong? Balrogs? You can see the influence of Piranesi on the underground halls of Moria in the Lord of the Rings films.

Roman ruins by Piranesi.

Just the sort of look you'd want for Hell. The initial pieces I did for the book were even more inspired by Piranesi than the ultimate result. The sensibility he brought to the Prison series permeates Hell Lost, and I would have made the buildings even bigger, and the figures smaller, if I weren't concerned about scaling line weights and how they would hold up when printed. I intend to push farther in volume two.

Balthazar rises.

Scale to crush the soul.

Totalitarian states are especially fond of architecture that overwhelms the individual with scale, to make people feel insignificant in face of the might and majesty of the state. Hitler, for example, had Speer design a great hall for Berlin so ridiculously massive, rain clouds would have formed within it. Stalin, too, was fond of gargantuan monuments, as was Ramesses II. Colossal architecture: dictators dig it!

Great Hall, Berlin; planned but never built.

Palace of the Soviets, Moscow; planned but never built. Those are crowds at the bottom, not ants.

Ramses II: the statue that inspired Percy Shelley.

Immortality through architecture. Cow the individual and subordinate the citizen. Can't help but think of Ozymandias by Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Carceri Plate XI - The Arch

The series of prints was published in 1750. The Inquisition sadly didn't take notice.

Piranesi's designs will remain in the realm of imagination until some mad dictator decides to base his dungeons on them. But you can fly through them. The etchings have been mapped onto 3D geometry, allowing viewers meander through these incredible scenes for the first time, thanks to the Caixa Forum in Madrid.

Flying through Piranesi's Prisons

Check out the animation here.

Emily Allchurch and Nigel Warburton have updated the prisons with modern trappings in a striking series of paintings.

The original Piranesi...

...and Emily Allchurch and Nigel Warburton's contemporary version.

 They quote Aldous Huxley, who had this to say:

"Beyond the real, historical prisons of too much tidiness and those where anarchy engenders the hell of physical and moral chaos there lie yet other prisons, no less terrible for being fantastic and unembodied---the metaphysical prisons, whose seat is within the mind, whose walls are made of nightmare and incomprehension, whose chains are anxiety and their racks a sense of personal and even generic guilt."

Balthazar falls into the prisons of Thermidor

For more on Piranesi's work, particularly his drawings of Rome (and how the sites appear today) see the comparison photos.

Rob Ford Does Not Exist!

Ford and two members of the Second City Troupe. 

In a shocking twist, Rob Ford, ostensibly the mayor of Toronto since 2010, has been revealed as one of the greatest inadvertent media hoaxes of the 21st century.

Television producer and writer Ken Finkleman gave a press conference at the Canadian Broadcasting Building in downtown Toronto earlier today to reveal the truth. Flanked by 'Mayor Ford' and David Miller, he admitted to inventing the character for an unscripted comedy pilot for the CBC.

Ken Finkleman reveals the truth about 'Rob Ford'. 

Chagrined at how everything spiralled out of control, Finkleman said, "We couldn't believe how long we were able to keep it going. It was just a stunt for my new CBC show, The Candidate, exploring the absurdity of municipal politics. Rob Ford, the character, was a Joe Public version of Jim Walcott. I emphasize that we never expected to win the election. We had a joke candidate. But once we had, we found ourselves in a real conundrum, both legally and morally."

Jim Walcott was a character on Finkleman's most successful show, The Newsroom. Played superbly by Peter Keleghan, he was a shallow, manipulative, and appallingly stupid anchorman who later ran for public office.

"Politics is a vein of humour too good to ignore. It's like professional wrestling: if you're going to do it, go all the way. So we made it as real as possible," says Finkleman. "Best of all, we didn't need sets. The city provided them. There are only two professional actors on the show. TV has never been cheaper or more legally actionable."

Fulbrow in the role of fictional character Rob Ford

Consultations with civic authorities led to former mayor David Miller taking over behind the scenes, in order to keep the city running. In the meantime, Dick Fulbrow (Rob Ford), continued to improvise comedy routines in front of the cameras. Footage includes 'Mayor Ford' unsuccessfully trying to throw a football, and walking into a camera with his face. Finkleman has rarely explored the pain of slapstick, and this represented a change of pace. Like his other shows, it focuses on unsympathetic lead character who's hypocritical and frequently acts without thinking.

"Now that the cat's out of the bag," exults Finkleman, "I have no doubt we'll be able to get funding for the series. The key was in the casting. Dick's a comedy genius. A new Chris Farley. Honestly, the crack smoking was pure genius. Dick will go to any length for a laugh. No matter how painful. He personifies the struggle for truth through the celebration of ignorance."



The Mayor will be hitting the small screen in 2015 on CBC.

It's a satire.

Catastrophic Hollywood Implosion?

Steven Spielberg's predicting major shifts in the film industry.

"That's the big danger, and there's eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown… Three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm."

He says it is already in a state of major upheaval. He had to co-own his own studio to get Lincoln into theaters. Incredible. This is Speilberg!

Definitely worth a read.

Looking for an art blog? Look no further: Lines and Colors

A superb art blog by Charley Parker. Highly recommended.

"Lines and Colors is a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it's fair game."

Many of the artists he looks at I'd not heard of. He's got posts on everything from the Symbolists to Mike Davis' Boschean paintings and Nate Simpson's comic.

Schweet!

The retrospective on Moebius is good too.

I feel like I don't need to bother posting about art anymore. That's a load off my shoulders.

Remedios Varo reminds me of Blair Drawson. William Timlin of Arthur Rackham. All fabulous. Check them out.

What is Koan TV?

Ongoing television stories can present us with delightful mysteries, enthrall us with fully realized characters, and whisk us away on thrilling journeys of discovery that barrel towards emotionally meaningful finish.

Except that doesn’t happen very often. Not on TV. Not over multiple seasons.

They say no plan survives contact with the enemy; same thing goes for television series with multi-season story arcs.

TV series are all about the beginning, and that's the problem.

Film scripts begin with the ending. The ending is king. Everything builds to a carefully crafted climax, which is why they’re worked out backwards, from the crescendo to plausible beginning. Every thread, every character’s journey, is carefully crafted and plotted for maximum emotional impact.

The end state determines the starting position.

Ongoing series are the reverse. They have a beginning, but no end. Titillating confections sprung on audiences before they’re finished, they need a spectacular start to be green lit. A great, intriguing concept that will hook viewers is a necessity. But that’s it. Endings are out of scope.

Indeed, show runners hope the end will never arrive, because then they’ll have to look for a new job. And job searching sucks. Try it.

True, there may be a glimmer of a conclusion in the writer’s mind, roughly if poignantly imagined. Yet as the show responds to the audience, the series changes and as it does so, the original concept becomes less and less relevant. It morphs into something new, shaped by ratings and feedback.

J'Accuse! The Pretense of Meaning slathered over Nothingness

Sometimes series are often affected for the better by audience. Ingenious minor characters can be dialed up, bad ideas dumped.

But this cuts both ways, especially with ambitious shows that pose a central question or mystery.

Everything in TV is subordinated to ratings, particularly ambitious, big budget ones: to justify their cost, shows have to keep a certain number of eyeballs glued to the screen. If necessary, plot, character, and logic will be thrown under the bus, so long as it keeps the Storytelling Express going. For television, the end is an afterthought, rather than climax. Something that the writers never wanted to write, something that the cast never wanted to play.

Which is why Great Television Show Mysteries often go MIA.

What was The Plan of the Cylons in BSG? Why, the sound of one hand clapping.

Who needs a plan when you can have the illusion of one? It’s a lot less work and a lot more malleable. Let the rubes read into it. The pretense of meaning’s more flexible than the real thing. The suggestion of depth easier to rewrite. Who wants to get locked in?

Battlestar Galactica and Lost presented us with genuine Koan TV: mysteries without solutions, plots without endings, content without real depth.

Losing ratings?

No problem: throw in something nonsensical.

Faeries, for example. In business suits. How’d they get there? Madness? Magic? Why are they wearing Armani?

Who cares? Let the audience wonder. String the gullible fools along just long enough to reach the end of the season. Then you can hit them with something else: flying, sentient potatoes from the far future! They’ll forget all about the faeries, no explanation necessary.

The showrunners don’t believe the audience have any critical thinking skills anyway.

BSG started out strong. It expanded the horizon of sci-fi on TV. Then it began a long, slow descent into irrelevance and luddite loving fantasy. Faux meaning was slathered on top of illogical plot twists, forcing retroactive character changes.

You can just hear Ron Moore cackling, “No one will notice!”

Sense was thrown out the window. Themes of the show, such as the diversity of human views and the impossibility of complete unity were jettisoned. Complexity vanished. Depth evaporated.

These ongoing, multi-million dollar Koans are filled with mighty sound and fury signifying only the imminent arrival of a commercial break.

That’s been true all along for network shows. Yet at least their less ambitious programming brethren had a beginning, middle, and end. They reached a destination, provided the audience with answers. Fulfilled the compact between storyteller and audience. It can be done. Buffy, for example, wrapped up quite nicely.

Perhaps there is a Buddhist agenda here, and it’s all an insidious attempt to get us to clear our minds for meditation.

God knows there’s no point in trying to answer a TV show’s central mystery. 

It’s like the secret of the spoon in the Matrix films:

There isn’t one.

And They Have A Plan: Secret Buddhist agenda in grand arc television?

Is Print Sinking?

Over the last ten years, the revenue generated by print publications has dropped dramatically, by roughly forty billion dollars, as you can see from the graph (below).

Craigslist has eviscerated the Classified sections, from which papers generated roughly a third of their revenue. Interns are now doing work reporters used to do, and cash is being funneled into online ventures. The Times, they are a-changing.

But it inspired a piece:

History of Hell Part I

John Martin's rendition of Pandemonium.

After the completion of their kick-ass capital Pandemonium, the swaggering Princes and Kings of Hell spread out across the blasted wastes of the Infernal Realm to establish their own fiefdoms, building holdfasts over thermal vents for warmth. Contrary to popular belief, much of Hell will freeze your balls off.

Although seemingly indestructible (they could reconstitute themselves from information wave alone-- structure that organizes matter), without God's aura, they became lethargic and damn hard to get off the couch.

So for a quick mana boost, they turned to eating their neighbours. Cannibalism became de rigueur and dinner invitations took on an added meaning. Finally a primitive agricultural system was established, and everyone chilled out. Importing human souls to feed upon began with the giant and ornery Nephilim, offspring of Watchers and human females.

Angels wallow in the Lake of Fire

Hell stretches out from the balmy shores of the Lake of Fire into the frozen continent of Sobor. Populated by choleric chimeras, scheming gorgons, bad-ass basilisks, scyllas, and uber-territorial dragons, it was a dangerous hood for individual demons. It had to be tamed like an unruly head of hair. Mowed. Paved.

Fallen angels survey the wastes of Hell; drawing by Dore

Satan, being preoccupied with Eden and screwing God over, sent his trusted lieutenant Beelzebub 'Fly-Face' to pacify it. In his absence the First Magisterium was formed, consisting of 12 of the most powerful demons: Moloch, Dagon, Chemos, Rimmon, Thammuz, Baalim, Ashtoreth, Astarte, Izooze, Ozeroth, Orut, and Belial; Satan was the unofficial thirteenth member. These were the biggest, baddest, scenery-eating demons, and Satan wanted them were he could see 'em. Each founded a Royal House and began begating at a frightening pace; the little hellions sired then set about expanding the fief of their progenitor.

The Magisterium rashly adopted the Animus Creed, which affirmed evil as Hell's good ('Evil be Thou My Good'). This made cooperation impossible: it became screw or be screwed and all order collapsed. Servants stopped serving. Guards made off with the silverware. Thinking better of it, the decree was rescinded and the more restrained Pandemonium Creed, advocating opposition to God 'The Fascist Father', was adopted in its place.

Satan addresses Hell's Parliament

Next time: Demons stir the shizz!

Discover the Ceilings of the Louvre

There are 35,000 objects in the Louvre, most of which are thoroughly awesome. So awesome, in fact, that the magnificent ceilings of the Louvre are often overlooked. Take a look at the decoratian orgy you may have missed.

 

So remember, next time you're at the Louvre, look up. From time to time.

Jett Lagrange: Grumpy Space Hero!

Hero Jett Lagrange has saved an ungrateful galaxy a thousand thousand times. He's asked for, and gotten, nothing in return; except lawsuits for property damage and noise complaints.

Now he saves planets for cash. No credit. And he's backed up by a fleet of Space Lawyers and sponsors.

Next planet he saves?

He's plans to keep it...

The Geography of Hell: Resources

You can find Inferno online at World of Dante, your one-stop-source for everything Dante, including extensive galleries of artwork that tackle The Divine Comedy, from Dore to Dali.

Dante's World includes art, audio, and notes on the text.

Dante Today tracks mentions of his work in contemporary culture. It's still influential.

Concept art for video game version of Dante's Hell

For Milton, see the website Paradise Lost. There's annotated text and even a sample of the great poem in plain english, for people like me who are easily confused.

William Blake's take on the big bad

William Blake, John Martin, and Dore's work can be found here. Considering the fun you can have with the visuals, it's amazing more artists don't tackle the material. It's not just for goths and video game developers.

John Martin's vision of Pandemonium, capital of Hell

John Martin's pieces are particularly magnificent. A 19th Century Roland Emmerich, he owned epic disaster scenes.

Best of all, there is Lego Hell by Romanian artist Mihai Marius Mihu, who created scenes from every circle of Dante's Hell. Just what you want for Christmas! I'd buy a set. More on the project here.

The bottom of Hell: Satan embedded in the ice.

IV Ledge: Greed

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's 1976 novel Inferno throws a sci-fi writer into Dante's Hell, but updates the Infernal Realm to incorporate our latest sin innovations. Rather than meeting Italians from the 14th Century, he meets contemporary Americans. Fabulous book. The sequel's not as interesting, but still worth a read.

Some insightful commentary on Inferno can be found here.

Bartolomeo's Inferno

Airport!

The illustration, not the film. For EnRoute magazine.