see page history
Overview edit
Bibliography
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(2006)
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17
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(1987)
Eddy Deco's Last Caper
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(1985)
Gahan Wilson's America
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(1979)
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
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(1974)
Bang-Bang Family
Unbound edit
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Gahan Wilson (born February 18, 1930 in Evanston, Illinois) is an author, cartoonist, and illustrator in the United States.
Life and work
Wilson's cartoons and illustrations are drawn in a playfully grotesque style, and have a dark humor that is often compared to the work of The New Yorker cartoonist and Addams Family creator Charles Addams. But while both men sometimes feature vampires, graveyards and other traditional horror elements in their work, Addams' cartoons tended to be more gothic, reserved and old-fashioned, while Wilson's work is more contemporary, gross, and confrontational, featuring atomic mutants, subway monsters, and serial killers. It could be argued that Addams's work was probably meant to be funny without a lot of satirical intent, while Wilson often has a very specific point to make.
He is a descendant of P.T. Barnum. Wilson was stillborn because of the anaesthetic used on his mother, but he was revived after being repeatedly plunged into ice water. He went to the progressive Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to Greenwich Village in 1952, since he give him access to the magazine market to become a cartoonist. He had difficulty selling his cartoons at the start because editors thought audiences would find him “too far out”. When the cartoon editor at Collier's Weekly magazine quit, the Art Director Bill Chessman bought his work unaware of any controversy. Once Colliers published his work other magazines such as “Look” followed. Wilson approached Playboy in the late 1950s to submit his work to their satire magazine “Trump”. “Trump” had just folded but Hugh Hefner immediately accepted Wilson who contributed a monthly full page colour cartoon to almost every subsequent issue of Playboy.
His cartoons and prose fiction have appeared regularly in Punch and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. For the last he also wrote some movie and book reviews. Wilson’s popularity in the genre circles meant that his first collection of cartoons was published as an Ace paperback at the urging of influential science fiction editor Terry Carr. He was the movie review columnist for The Twilight Zone Magazine during most of the 1980s and a book critic for Realms of Fantasy magazine. Since 1992 he has also prepared all the front covers for the annual book Passport to World Band Radio.
His comic strip Nuts, ran in National Lampoon from 1972 - 1981. It was a reaction against what he saw as the saccharine view of childhood in strips like Peanuts. His hero The Kid sees the world as a dark, dangerous and unfair place, but just occasionally a fun one too. Wilson also published multi-page humorous essays of cartoons in National Lampoon until its closure, and many of them are collected in Gahan Wilson's America (1985).
From 1973 to 1976 he did a syndicated strip Gahan Wilson’s Sunday Comics. He began selling cartoons to The New Yorker in 1976 and continues to date.
Wilson also wrote and illustrated a short story for Harlan Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). The "title" is a black blob, and the story is about an ominous black blob that appears on the page, growing at an alarming rate, until... He has contributed short stories to other publications as well; "M1" and "The Zombie Butler" both appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and were reprinted in Gahan Wilson's Cracked Cosmos (1975).
Additionally, Gahan Wilson created a computer game titled Gahan Wilson's The Ultimate Haunted House, in conjunction with Byron Preiss. The goal is to collect 13 keys in 13 hours from the 13 rooms of a house, by interacting in various ways with characters (such as a two-headed monster, a mad scientist, and a vampiress), objects, and the house itself.
He received the World Fantasy Convention Award in 1981, and the National Cartoonist Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
Gahan Wilson is the subject of a feature length documentary film, Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird, directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe.
Bibliography
* Gahan Wilson's Graveside Manner (1965)
* The Man in the Cannibal Pot (1967)
* I Paint What I See (1971)
* Playboy's Gahan Wilson (i) (1973)
* Gahan Wilson's Cracked Cosmos (1975)
* The Weird World of Gahan Wilson (1975)
* And Then We'll Get Him! (1978)
* Nuts (strip collection) (1979)
* Playboy's Gahan Wilson (ii) (1980)
* Is Nothing Sacred? (1982) ISBN 0-312-43707-2
* Gahan Wilson's America (1985)
* Eddy Deco's Last Caper (1987)
* Everybody's Favorite Duck (1988)
* A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) (illustrated by Gahan Wilson; written by Roger Zelazny)
* Still Weird (1994)
* Even Weirder (1996)
* The Big Book of Freaks (1996)
* The Cleft and Other Odd Tales (1998) (stories and illustrations by Gahan Wilson)
* Gravediggers' Party (2002)
* The Best of Gahan Wilson (2004)
* Pop Art (2007) (illustrated by Gahan Wilson; written by Joe Hill). 52 hard covers signed by Mr. Hill, limited edition lettered from A to Z. Rare.
Children's Fantasy
* Harry, the Fat Bear Spy (1973)
* Harry and the Sea Serpent (1976)
* Harry and the Snow Melting Ray (1978)
* The Bang Bang Family (1974)
* Spooky Stories for a Dark and Stormy Night (1994)
Books edited by Gahan Wilson
* Gahan Wilson's Favorite Tales of Horror (1976)
* The First World Fantasy Awards (1977)
(source: wikipedia)
Life and work
Wilson's cartoons and illustrations are drawn in a playfully grotesque style, and have a dark humor that is often compared to the work of The New Yorker cartoonist and Addams Family creator Charles Addams. But while both men sometimes feature vampires, graveyards and other traditional horror elements in their work, Addams' cartoons tended to be more gothic, reserved and old-fashioned, while Wilson's work is more contemporary, gross, and confrontational, featuring atomic mutants, subway monsters, and serial killers. It could be argued that Addams's work was probably meant to be funny without a lot of satirical intent, while Wilson often has a very specific point to make.
He is a descendant of P.T. Barnum. Wilson was stillborn because of the anaesthetic used on his mother, but he was revived after being repeatedly plunged into ice water. He went to the progressive Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to Greenwich Village in 1952, since he give him access to the magazine market to become a cartoonist. He had difficulty selling his cartoons at the start because editors thought audiences would find him “too far out”. When the cartoon editor at Collier's Weekly magazine quit, the Art Director Bill Chessman bought his work unaware of any controversy. Once Colliers published his work other magazines such as “Look” followed. Wilson approached Playboy in the late 1950s to submit his work to their satire magazine “Trump”. “Trump” had just folded but Hugh Hefner immediately accepted Wilson who contributed a monthly full page colour cartoon to almost every subsequent issue of Playboy.
His cartoons and prose fiction have appeared regularly in Punch and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. For the last he also wrote some movie and book reviews. Wilson’s popularity in the genre circles meant that his first collection of cartoons was published as an Ace paperback at the urging of influential science fiction editor Terry Carr. He was the movie review columnist for The Twilight Zone Magazine during most of the 1980s and a book critic for Realms of Fantasy magazine. Since 1992 he has also prepared all the front covers for the annual book Passport to World Band Radio.
His comic strip Nuts, ran in National Lampoon from 1972 - 1981. It was a reaction against what he saw as the saccharine view of childhood in strips like Peanuts. His hero The Kid sees the world as a dark, dangerous and unfair place, but just occasionally a fun one too. Wilson also published multi-page humorous essays of cartoons in National Lampoon until its closure, and many of them are collected in Gahan Wilson's America (1985).
From 1973 to 1976 he did a syndicated strip Gahan Wilson’s Sunday Comics. He began selling cartoons to The New Yorker in 1976 and continues to date.
Wilson also wrote and illustrated a short story for Harlan Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). The "title" is a black blob, and the story is about an ominous black blob that appears on the page, growing at an alarming rate, until... He has contributed short stories to other publications as well; "M1" and "The Zombie Butler" both appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and were reprinted in Gahan Wilson's Cracked Cosmos (1975).
Additionally, Gahan Wilson created a computer game titled Gahan Wilson's The Ultimate Haunted House, in conjunction with Byron Preiss. The goal is to collect 13 keys in 13 hours from the 13 rooms of a house, by interacting in various ways with characters (such as a two-headed monster, a mad scientist, and a vampiress), objects, and the house itself.
He received the World Fantasy Convention Award in 1981, and the National Cartoonist Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
Gahan Wilson is the subject of a feature length documentary film, Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird, directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe.
Bibliography
* Gahan Wilson's Graveside Manner (1965)
* The Man in the Cannibal Pot (1967)
* I Paint What I See (1971)
* Playboy's Gahan Wilson (i) (1973)
* Gahan Wilson's Cracked Cosmos (1975)
* The Weird World of Gahan Wilson (1975)
* And Then We'll Get Him! (1978)
* Nuts (strip collection) (1979)
* Playboy's Gahan Wilson (ii) (1980)
* Is Nothing Sacred? (1982) ISBN 0-312-43707-2
* Gahan Wilson's America (1985)
* Eddy Deco's Last Caper (1987)
* Everybody's Favorite Duck (1988)
* A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) (illustrated by Gahan Wilson; written by Roger Zelazny)
* Still Weird (1994)
* Even Weirder (1996)
* The Big Book of Freaks (1996)
* The Cleft and Other Odd Tales (1998) (stories and illustrations by Gahan Wilson)
* Gravediggers' Party (2002)
* The Best of Gahan Wilson (2004)
* Pop Art (2007) (illustrated by Gahan Wilson; written by Joe Hill). 52 hard covers signed by Mr. Hill, limited edition lettered from A to Z. Rare.
Children's Fantasy
* Harry, the Fat Bear Spy (1973)
* Harry and the Sea Serpent (1976)
* Harry and the Snow Melting Ray (1978)
* The Bang Bang Family (1974)
* Spooky Stories for a Dark and Stormy Night (1994)
Books edited by Gahan Wilson
* Gahan Wilson's Favorite Tales of Horror (1976)
* The First World Fantasy Awards (1977)
(source: wikipedia)
