A bit of Soul 2

 

The 7th episode in my ongoing series of articles about The Bumper Book has been posted on the Italian web-magazine (Quasi) few days ago.

Below, you can read the extra info that John Coulthart sent me, included in the Italian piece. Enjoy! And... Grazie, John! 

The Soul episode 2. I really like the rounded shape of the "strip" images... and the psychedelic feel. We have a Lovecraft reference in the title. And we have also recurring things, like Adeline on the background of "The Discovery of the Archetypal World" illustration seen in a previous section of the book...
John Coulthart: I was also left to my own devices with the Soul illustrations so I decided to vary the presentation slightly for each episode. Since the second one involves a psychedelic ritual I started out with black-and-white line drawings which colour creeps into before exploding in the ritual sequence. I'm not sure where Alan got the title "Discovery of the Archetypal World" from, I think it may be a misattribution since the drawing originally appeared in one of Camille Flammarion's books about astronomy as an illustration showing how the medieval world regarded the cosmos. It does work as an occult illustration, however, so I don't think the misattribution is a problem.

The Book of Magic: The Soul's evolution

The Soul. Art by John Coulthart.

As you know, I am writing a series of articles, diving into The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic section by section. They are serialized on the Italian web-magazine (Quasi) and so far four episodes are available: the last one is Ben Wickey's interview, in Italian; more to come.

 

In writing the pieces I contacted some of the contributors to get, if possible, behind the scene info about the grimoire. In the following you can read what the amazing John Coulthart revealed about... The Soul's evolution!

Special thanks to Coulthart for his availability and for the permission to share his answer on this blog!

I highly recommend to visit Coulthart's official site and to follow his amazing { feuilleton } entries! 

Let's talk about The Soul. It was originally a series intended for the ABC line, wasn't it? Was any story or page fully realized, in comics form I mean? I think that back in the day they described it as "a decadent, partly computer-generated occult strip". Then it was "transformed" for the Bumper Book. Can you talk about The Soul's evolution? :)
John Coulthart: The Soul was one of three new series slated to appear in ABC Cascade, a title which Alan described as being based on the DC Showcase comic of the 1960s. The other two stories would have been Pearl of the Deep, an undersea adventure to be drawn by John Totleben, and Limbo, a story about a dead character to be drawn by Shane Oakley. Alan wrote an 11-page outline of the proposed stories for the ABC/WildStorm people; I did a few sketches to rough out ideas for the character, I think Shane did something similar for his story but the Cascade title never materialised.

Showcase #61, 1966. Cover by Murphy Anderson.

The Soul in her original incarnation was named Isla Pascal Lamb, a woman who would have been a female equivalent of the occult detectives who flourished for a while in the written fiction of the Edwardian era, characters like John Silence and Thomas Carnacki. The idea was for the writing to be a combination of detective fiction and weird tales, while the art would be an amalgam of my interest in Art Nouveau, Decadent culture and the illustrators of the years from 1900 to 1925. I was getting heavily involved in computer art and design at the time, hence the interest in pursuing this in the new story but I never developed things to a stage where the amalgam of hand-drawn art and digital art was working to my satisfaction. She would have been slightly older than she is in the book, probably mid-40s, and looking like a silent film star or one of the flamboyant aristocrats of the era, women like Ida Rubenstein and Luisa Casati. Isla was definitely more of an aristocrat than she is in the book. Alan wanted her driving around in a huge luxury automobile like a Duesenberg, with a decorative scarab beetle on its bonnet.

Luisa Casati in 1922.

Adeline Carr, The Soul in the Bumper Book, is obviously a scaled down version of Isla Lamb, a younger woman who lives in a flat above a bookshop. The story retains some of the earlier characteristics of the Cascade outline--the chapters and the story itself are all titled like weird tales--while the scarab-clad Duesenberg became Alban's smaller motor car. The original Soul had already had occult experiences whereas Adeline's story is all about her first journey into the world of magic.

John Coulthart and... waiting for The Soul

Alan Moore portrait by John Coulthart.

Excerpt from an interview with John Coulthart conducted by Eroom Nala in 2004.

Eroom Nala: Are there any future collaborations with Alan you can tell us about? For example a quote from an old Previews magazine "John Coulthart, who will be doing a decadent, partly computer-generated occult strip called "The Soul." The Soul is an occult investigatress who operates in or around 1910 – but it's a very strange 1910, a very beautiful, Art Nouveau world." Can you tell us any more about The Soul? Do you know when and by whom it will be published when it is finished?
John Coulthart: There's not much to tell at the moment since the whole idea remains at a very early stage of development. There are several distinct spheres of influence that it should bring together: early 20th century occultism of the kind seen in many of the "psychic detective" stories of the '20s and '30s, lush and exotic post-Decadence Art Nouveau and the cosmic horror of the early pulp magazines, especially Weird Tales.

The complete interview is available here. 

The Soul could be included in The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic book (coming soon from Top Shelf Productions).