I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

I’m busy doing the traditional post-Christmas Japanese tradition of cleaning the house. Frankly I prefer the American tradition of spring cleaning, because when you open the windows to air everything out, snow doesn’t fly into the house. And if the gas shuts off, you can survive without hot water for a day or two in the spring… but it’s freezing cold and I have to wash everything in half-frozen tap water! All the same, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as a clean house.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a quick post about the latest update on Nevermet Press — another post featuring my artwork for the upcoming book, The Dead Queens of Morvena. Check out the web enhancements and previews for the book at nevermetpress.com!

And of course, there are countless reasons!

For example, Grýla, a terrifying ogress native to Iceland who comes down from the mountains at Christmas time in search of delicious children!

Grýla is one of those legends that are just too good to be made up — like Krampus of the Alps. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction, but even considering that it’s hard to believe that this legend could have come to be. Apparently she goes way way back in Norse folklore, as she is even mentioned in the 13th century eddas. At some point, Grýla became associated with Christmas as the mother of the Yule Lads.

The Yule Lads themselves are a terrifying story. There are 13 of them, and their names are as colorful as they are descriptive: Sheep-Cote Clod, Gully Gawk, Stubby, Spoon-Licker, Pot-Scraper, Bowl-Licker, Door-Slammer, Skyr-Gobbler, Sausage-Swiper, Window-Peeper, Door-Sniffer, Meat-Hook and Candle-Beggar. Each one is associated with one of the 13 days before Christmas, and they perform varying levels of mischief related to their names — ranging from licking bowls all the way up to eating children.

If the Yule Lads are that bad, you can imagine what their mother must be like! (Probably something like Mama Fratelli from The Goonies, only bigger.) As a testament to her scariness, there was actually a public decree issued in 1746 in Iceland prohibiting the use of Grýla and the Yule Lads to frighten children. I guess the earlier Viking children were made of tougher stuff…

So have a Merry Christmas! And remember, when you hear someone whining that the original meaning of Christmas has been lost, or that there is a war on Christmas or some other nonsense like that, give them a slap in the face and tell them about Grýla!

You may remember that Frank Frazetta passed away this year, on May 10.

For those of you who don’t know Frank Frazetta — seriously??? — he was one of the greatest illustrators of all time, and even if you’ve never heard the name you must have seen some of his art work. Or if not his directly, at least the countless derivative works which were spawned from the incredible ideas he put onto canvas. He made the world of sci-fi and fantasy illustration what it is today, and defined the look of a number of icons, such as Conan the Barbarian.

In honor of his memory, many artists are doing tribute pieces, re-imagining some of this master’s most famous pieces. He has always been one of my favorite illustrators and painters, so I put together a little tribute as well. The following piece is a reworking of his amazing painting for Edgar Rice Burrough’s A Fighting Man of Mars, done in a quirky ukiyoe style with some Japanese themes worked in, and influences from my favorite printers (you may notice Yoshitoshi’s moon in there). I hope it evokes his memory without being too derivative.

The rest of the pieces, which are being hosted by Gallery Provocateur in Chicago, and can be seen on their website: http://www.galleryprovocateur.org/frazetta.html. The best of these ones will be displayed in the gallery and at Chicago Comic Convention next year.

I’ve kind of left everyone hanging this past month after doing daily posts in October… I’m sorry about the recent quiet.

One of the big projects I have been working on since November is another Nevermet Press project called The Dead Queens of Morvena. It’s an RPG book with a dark/gothic horror setting to it, detailing an isolated village that has been tainted by demonic influences. I won’t go into too much detail, because you can actually read a lot of the story and its supplements for free on Nevermt Press’ website, nevermetpress.com. They’ve been doing blog posts about the story for a few weeks now, and today the first one featuring some of my interior artwork was posted.

The picture is below, but check out the original post on Nevermet Press too. There will be a few more of these in the coming weeks, I’m sure, leading up to the book’s release. More on that later.

Big news! Nevermet Press has released its (our?) 2nd big adventure setting! This one is called Brother Ptolemy and the Hidden Kingdom, and it features a town overrun by an undead cult. Very cool!

This book has been in-the-making for about a year, and it was put together entirely by freelance writers and artists, originally publish online at Nevermet Press and then expanded over the past year with additional art and content.

I have a few pieces of art in there (four total), some of which you’ve seen on this blog, and some which you haven’t (see the update at the bottom). There are a number of other talented artists in there who you should definitely see, too. The writing is top notch too, and not to toot our own whistle, but for a bunch of folks collaborating entirely on the internet (thus the “never met” part) I think we did a great job on this piece.

The basic story revolves around a cult that has infested a number of towns by replacing the bigwigs with undead — sort of a necrocracy. The players find themselves in such a town and have to decide what to do. The book contains NPC’s, hooks, adventures, heroes and villains, side quests, locations — basically everything you would want to run a kickass game, but not so much information that you feel railroaded into one particular style of play. The stats are all for 4th edition D&D, but the story is easily adaptable to any setting.

If you’re not into roleplaying games, then you probably have no idea what I’m talking about by now. But anyway, check out the Nevermet Press site (link below) and if you’re a gamer you owe it to yourself to get this setting!

Update:

I realized it was kind of lame to mention the art without linking to it, so here are the links to my previous posts with artwork from The Hidden Kingdom:

The City-State of Corwyn
The Bastion of the Hidden Kingdom and Soul’s End

And then the one that you haven’t seen: Zombie Attack!