It Was A Graveyard Smash

The original Graveyard Smash drawing was a commission for a “Monster Mash” themed art show my friend Robin put together at the Fantagraphics Bookstore a few years ago. It was my attempt at conjuring the most Halloweeny imagery I could think of: Max Schreck in Nosferatu, Elizabeth Siddal, the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti whom he had exhumed when he realized he'd buried his only draft of many of his poems with her, tombs from Lone Fir, Highgate Cemetery, and Boulder's Columbia Cemetery, Elvira, Boris Karloff out of makeup, the little demon guy ready to drag the Wheel of Fortune down into Hell in the Waite-Smith deck, Queen Elizabeth's holy pelican brooch, and Joseph Smith's personal Jupiter talisman (because what's freakier than the early history of Mormonism?). The various botanicals also have Halloweeny associations: those creepy, pale autumn crocuses that always look kind of undead, blackberries, which are invasive and also belong to the Devil after Michaelmas, anemones, which can be worn to ward off evil, nettles for Scorpio and jasmine for the tail end of Libra season.

The drawing was lost in the post on its way back to me after the exhibition. Luckily I had scanned it before mailing it off, but my scanner can't handle fluorescent paper, so the resulting image is a lot more ghostly and desaturated than the original, which is actually kind of appropriate. Now in the collection of Amy Bee and Travi Dee.