This is one of the most visually disconcerting issues yet. The Birth of the Magician is a blood red memento mori tapestry or perhaps a “dance of death” accompanied by the deranged exhortations of an occult minister of some sort or another. It certainly feels like being yelled at!
This month’s Romonde has something appropriately Chaucerian about it (it is April after all), almost satirical, and populated with strange archetypes and folk figures like SADMAN, Grey Caleb, the NEWSPOPER, etc. The coffin ship! Isn’t that some medieval Dutch allegory somewhere? It oughtta be.
In WHAT THE DEMON FOUND IN THE SCIENTIST’S we finally find out the proverbial “what the butler saw” but in this case, what the MACROSCOPE saw. Blakean premonitions with Newtonian teasers, this is the quieter piece of the issue, which says something because it ends with a huge bomb going off.
I was also stoked to see the primordial stirrings of a nascent Shelleyan cartoonism (however microscopic or alien!) in the final lonesome image. Much as if a New York Times cartoon caption contest was run by a cabal of deranged alchemists (moreso).
WELL SCREAMED SHEM, WELL SCREAMED