Pete Von Sholly's Morbid

The connection between cinema and comic books has been a frequently raised subject but the separation was fairly obvious until now. Veteran motion picture storyboard artist Pete Von Sholly has created a groundbreaking publication that goes further than any previous attempt to blur the line between the two art forms. While employing the time-honored European "fumetti" format, this book goes light years beyond that simple approach. Custom-sculpted models, costumed actors, and mind-boggling computer-generated "special effects" come together to create a dynamic visual storytelling format heretofore unseen in graphic novels. Von Sholly's extensive experience working on countless sci-fi and horror-genre films (The Mask, Darkman, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Mars Attacks, etc.) as well as his experience as a Disney animation artist and conceptual designer come together to unveil a truly unbelievable leap in visual storytelling. The stories themselves run the gamut from tongue-in-cheek lampoons of '50 drive-in movies to gut-wrenching horror in the Lovecraft tradition. We no longer have to wait to see the future of graphic storytelling - it's right in front of our eyes in Pete Von Sholly's MORBID!

From Publishers Weekly

In a loving embrace of all things camp, Von Sholly presents a way-out collection that celebrates horror and science fiction in the most deliriously goofy way. The pages are choc-a-bloc full of monsters, aliens, busty cavewomen, kung fu, sci fi (or "kung fi," as Von Sholly dubs it), and other topics straight from the '50s B-Movie vault. A storyboard artist by trade, here Von Sholly abandons the drawing board for digital photos and effects, creating "fumetti," the juxtaposition of photography and word balloons. The effect is that of walking through scene highlights from some of the most lurid movies you could imagine. In "Reptitan!," the reader is informed that she is about to read "a story with an annoying kid, a screwy scientist, a hot babe, and some blood and guts! A story of many pictures and not too much to read!" (This could describe just about every piece in the book.) "The Astounding Shehemoth" chronicles a man obsessed with a gargantuan beauty from prehistoric times; the story's climax finds her battling a dinosaur somewhere near Alaska while the narrator watches the fight from a secure perch in her cleavage. The true essence of the work may best be captured in "The Tale of the Werewig," in which a bald gentleman purchases a used hairpiece that causes him to attack women by the light of the full moon. In a couple of self-referential bits, Von Sholly first sends up comic conventions, and then touts what must be his favorite childhood books from authors such as H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. The whole collection is so wildly over the top that it breaks down all attempts to remain aloof, but it's such fun that we don't mind being dragged down to Von Sholly's level.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* When are comics not stories told in a sequence of drawings? When they're fumetti, in which photographs replace drawings, as in Von Sholly's hilarious horror parodies. Not that these particular photos are mere photos. Von Sholly digitally collages them, colors them, and makes them look like frames from 1950s "sci-fi" flicks--not too fakey, not too polished, but so that, for example, the lines around inset figures show. In short, just right. Von Sholly also gets perfect actors for his characters: guys who can mug up a storm, gals who look drop-dead in bikinis, and convincingly bratty and nerdy kids. Even without the tongue-in-cheek narrative and smart-mouth-kid dialogue, these are funny, or at least wonderfully odd, pictures. With it, they're pretty paralyzing. Take "Medusa," in which the Gorgon is bearded in her cave by "the mighty Testicles" ("Pronounced TESS-ti-cleez, please"), shouting, " Let's go, baby! I ain't afraid of turning to stone! I'm legally blind and can't see you for shit anyway!" Huge creatures, star-trekking, martial arts, mad doctors, the living dead, and H. P. Lovecraft come in for similar treatment, and there's a plug (sort of) for reading books, starring 11-ish Peter Von Sholly Jr. "Funnies" don't get much funnier than this. Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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