Cover experiment for Shah-Azir

An experiment in digital painting - had hardware issues but oh well. Trying to imitate 70s Pyramid book covers, moderately successful - and the ink/simple color of early Dillon artwork - pretty crude there, oh well.

Book I'll someday write in the stories of Shah-Azir Exile of Irem. This story will bridge the earlier, murderous amoral Shah-Azir with his later self a more principled mercenary.
As it is I'll probably release it as a comic book though I've written the first chapter and much of the major plot. Maybe both. It'll come after "At the Hand of the Lizard King" this image done a while ago with computers - maybe try to paint but make Dillon/Pepper like?  (Leo and Dione Dillon and Bob Pepper for the sincerest form of flattery)

Won't ruin the plot to those that later see this and hopefully become interested.  However, the plot is not always the story...

The best movie never made

This is an old topic - and I don't give a F---



Way way back there was this project to make a movie of a suddenly popular Science Fiction novel, Dune.  Lots of awesome names.  H.R. Giger  Moebius Dali Pink Floyd...

And headed by filmmaker/writer Alejandro Jodorowsky.
In short, Jodorowsky's Dune project.
 "Best movie never made" look it up - worthy movie to buy on GooglePlay

Sadly, it got cut and later on they made that 82 movie that was awesome but somehow a bit diminished...

Then the SciFi channel made a longer running series.  That adapted the book better but was dry as the sands of Arrakis, something the 82 movie wasn't...  Both fell far short of Jodorowsky's vision.

The thing with his movie:

A - it would have been a ruinous nightmare, destroyed at the box office, destroyed whatever theatre made it.

B - it should have been made.


Oh, it would have been a 14 hour movie.  As reviled short term but long term brilliant as "Greed".  It would have deviated from the novel, but captured its spirit the same way the 82 Conan movie with the Governator starring as him.  Not REH's Conan, but true Blood and Thunder and helped keep REH's works alive by drawing many people to him.


This movie...  I can only imagine if made.

I imagine my Father dragging me to it.  There'd be a "Cult" following of the movie, the reels "Ordered to be destroyed" rescued by fanatic fans.  Later they'd buy huge 100lb "Blocks" of Laserdiscs and even later get a suitcase size VHS collection, a big box DVD collection, finally a digital omnibus, likely sold on several 32 Gigabyte SD cards...  (as I write this you can get a 128Gig SD card cheap like $20, I meant a few years back)


But it wouldn't be the movie, it'd be like "Rocky Horror Picture Show" - the cult around the movie.  There'd be Dune costumes, likely rooms setup in Arabesque setup.  We'd watch the movie for hours, have an intermission to eat and stretch out and bratty kids like me would play with each other, looking like some wild swirl of crazy Arab kids (this is alternative universe 80s I imagine this) then back to another showing, another intermission, another showing, then we'd go to sleep in a room of bean bags and cots...  Several days...  Well visitation contract I'm in Dad's household for a while, and I do that or we go to church and church camp...really debatable...

I'd probably not have appreciated it back then as much as I should have.  My early sophomoric self was skeptical of Dune.  Yes, I read even as a young, bratty kid, including science fiction/fantasy works.  As science fiction it'd fail the Gernsback/Campbell era - it's essentially "Bolognium" (1) to max powered by magic and G-d...   Makes even "Star Wars" more plausible - the latter being a decadent near Level 4 Civilization that is retrograde and pretend to be a near Level 3...

BUT - as storytelling, analogy, vision, message it's perfect...  I mean, I have strong issues with the "New Wave" scifi which this is one of the champions of, but rather its with what it mutated into.  As an adult I do recognize its brilliance.

In this alternative history I'd be eagerly going back to the "Dune Parties" dressed appropriately, having read the novels fully and ready to discuss, play act, etc.

So, what do I think of the new movie upcoming...?

Sorry, but I am a bit skeptical.  I've seen nothing but any memory of past years swallowed, chewed up, regurgitated or excreted.  It's insane.  They do it again and again, even when they flop one after another.


Now, times change and move on.

And I think Jodorosky did best by himself using the obsession of years of his life preparing for the movie to make his own lifetime work - the Incal series - not as famous as Dune but science fiction of a theme both tributing and transcending...

 Not going to waste my life pining for what should have been.


Just putting this message out to seize the moment and do your best to do what you can when the moment is right, be it art, a project or anything that needs to be done - and if you sanely can go out of your way to help if something is right.  The world is made a better place for it.



1 - Bolognium is a Larry Niven term.  Look it up if you care.