PULP WAVE (6)
By:
December 13, 2022
We are pleased to present a 10-part series, by Canadian semiotician and HILOBROW friend Charles Leech, sampling the recombinant artwork that he sells via his Etsy shop RecombinantCulture.
PULP WAVE: INTRO by Charles Leech | PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, LET ME GET WHAT I WANT | PLANET CLAIRE | ONE OF OUR SUBMARINES | LET ME GO | PERFECT KISS | BELA LUGOSI’S DEAD | JUST LIKE HEAVEN | HAPPY HOUR | SHOUT | FALL ON ME. PS: Here’s a Spotify playlist. Also see: QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM series | POPSZTÁR SAMIZDAT series | FILE X series | SURVIVAL SAMPLER.
Bauhaus was a super-trendy band in my undergrad circles, and I tried really hard to like them. They’re a hard go, though, most of the time. ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’, however, was and is magical — true lightning in a bottle. There was an iconic poster made from the single’s album cover, showing not Bela Lugosi as Dracula, but Adolphe Menjou as Prince Lucio de Rimanez, from the 1926 D.W. Griffith movie ‘The Sorrows of Satan’, and it was one of the first texts that exposed me to the idea of intertextuality and narrative congruence. How could they name the song after Bela Lugosi and then not have him on the poster?
This cover, however, is the Modern Library’s 1932 edition of Stoker’s Dracula, and I love the subtlety of it — it takes a moment to realize that his cape is bat’s wings. Sourcing the right font for this cover was deeply satisfying.
CURATED SERIES at HILOBROW: LINOCUT 2022 by Lawry Hutcheson | PULP WAVE by Charles Leech | DRAWING TABLE WORLD by Theo Ellsworth | PARAMAX by Max Glenn | YUKO ODA by Yuko Oda | PLAGUE YEAR by Rick Pinchera | NOOSFERA by Charles Glaubitz | A SILENT HALLUCINATION by Alex Gerasev | BUNNY CITY by Gary Panter | HOP UP by Lucy Sante | HERE BE MONSTERS by Mister Reusch | DOWNTOWNE by Bradley Peterson | OUTBOUND TO MONTEVIDEO by Mimi Lipson | STERANKOISMS by Douglas Wolk | COOLING OFF THE COMMOTION by Chenjerai Kumanyika | UNFLOWN by Jacob Covey | ADEQUATED by Franklin Bruno | PINAKOTHEK by Lucy Sante | BIGFOOT ISLAND by Michael Lewy | DAILY DRUMPF by Rick Pinchera | WINDS OF MAGIC by James Parker | MUSEUM OF FEMORIBILIA by Lynn Peril | ROBOTS + MONSTERS by Joe Alterio | ANNOTATED GIF by Kerry Callen | NOMADBROW by Erik Davis | & many others.