Lord Horror #5
Script by David Britton. Art by Kris Guidio and John Coulthart.
A Savoy Ionesco Psychodrama Production.
52pp.
Hard Core Horror 3 — Horror Time for Hitler (Wir Nichts Wissen Können).
'And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.'
- Goethe, The Holy Longing
1939: The eve of war. Lord Horror broadcasts on the BBC with Arthur Askey and makes love to Jessie Matthews one last time before heading for Berlin. While James Joyce razors policemen in Soho, Horror begins his broadcasts for theNazis as the bombs start falling. Horror and Unity Mitford indulge a homicidal passion and Adolf Hitler gives the Lord a new assignment — broadcasts from Auschwitz.
Also includes text stories by David Britton: The Lung In Niggertown, The Lung Of God and The Lung Of Dreams.
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A stark work, the grey tones and fine shading of the previous issues are pushed aside and Black And White comes to the fore, as befits a story of moral and political Manichaeanism. Horror's journey through the heart of National Socialist darkness is rendered as an unholy miscegenation between Aubrey Beardsley and Leni Riefenstahl, Guidio's art reinforced once again with Expressionist iconography from Coulthart.
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"David Britton's preoccupation with the unpleasant realities and absurdities of our recent history are shot through with cross-media, literary and minutely local references, lightly seasoned with camp humour and a little personal bitching. All this realised in Kris Guidio's powerful doom-laden decorative and explicit art demands that you pay attention to this product." - COMICS INTERNATIONAL
"The scope of Britton's achievement bears justifiable comparison with Hans Jürgen Syberberg's magnum film opus, Hitler: A Film from Germany. There, too, there is an exacting cultural reclamation of theme and material previously considered intractable to creative expression." - COLIN DE SUINN, Speakeasy
"A base, sordid, corrupting evil that perverts our nation... It is a so-called 'comic' book of filth and degradation in the name of art." - SUNDAY SPORT
"A considerable achievement in graphic art." - BYRON ROGERS, The Sunday Telegraph
"The Lord Horror comics certainly go beyond the bounds of public decency. They should be banned." - TEDDY TAYLOR, Tory MP
"A rapacious alternate history of Lord Haw-Haw filled with violence and vitriol." - DOUGLAS E WINTER
"The artwork is dizzyingly forceful, standing head and shoulders above almost all other comics." - RUSS KICK, Psychotropedia
"Executed (by Kris Guidio) in a Beardsleyesque 'yellow' manner — showers of blood and offal mingling deliriously with art nouveau backgrounds; eroticism and elegance merging seamlessly with ultraviolence and sadism." - D M MITCHELL, Rapid Eye 2 (1995 edition)
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John Coulthart
John Coulthart (born 1962) is a British graphic artist, illustrator, author and designer who has produced book covers and illustrations, CD covers and posters. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Lovecraft-inspired book The Haunter of the Dark and Other Grotesque Visions which contains a collaboration with Alan Moore entitled The Great Old Ones that is unique to this book (and also has an introduction by Alan Moore).
He was nominated for a British Fantasy Award, for Best Artist, in 2005. In 2012 he won the Artist of the Year award at the World Fantasy Awards.
Lord Horror
To find out more information the Lord Horror series, please visit the Savoy Books website.
Lord Horror consists of fourteen primary books, and includes one additional book that complement the series but is not considered mandatory reads. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
