Citizen Undead

My name is Jay Truant. I've been a zombie for the last eight years, and it really, really sucks. This blog is dedicated to the (very few) elements of human life that interest me: punk rock, comic books, and horror movies. All content contained herein was created by me unless otherwise stated.

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Jordan Croke Tattoos (10 Images)

Jordan Croke is working at Second Skin tattoo studio in Derby, United Kingdom. He specializes in realistic tattoos, both in color and black and grey styles. But Jordan Croke's tattoos are closer to classic oil paintings than of usual photorealism. His portraits are full of creativity and paying a tribute to fantasy art and movies.

Bio courtesy of Tattoodo

Website

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Idle Hands (1999) | Rodman Flender

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10 Years of Cloverfield: Part Two

By Jay Truant

I love monster movies. When I was a wee prehumous lad, my dad spent many weekend afternoons introducing me to classic monster movies such as Toho’s Godzilla series, King Kong, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them! and many more. My fascination with giant city-destroying monsters developed quickly and would follow me into adulthood – so when I saw the first teaser trailer for the JJ Abrams-produced found footage monster flick Cloverfield, I was all in. I followed the movie’s Alternate Reality Game (ARG), bought a Slusho t-shirt and even took the day off of work to catch the earliest showing of the film on 1-18-08. I was excited by Abrams’ desire to make the Cloverfield monster America’s equivalent of Japan’s Godzilla, and patiently awaited further sequels. As it would turn out, it would be nearly a decade before a sequel arrived in theaters – and once it had, it completely defied any and every expectation that fans had for it.

Cloverfield was a huge success for Paramount Pictures and producer JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions. On a production budget of $25 million, the film quickly turned a profit during its opening weekend, debuting in 3,411 theaters with a final weekend gross of $40 million. Rumors that Paramount were eager to push a sequel into development were the talk of the Internet that Monday morning, and director Matt Reeves addressed the possibility of a follow-up in an interview with Coming Soon:

There’s a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that’s been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy’s briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another.

Over the next eight years, Reeves and Abrams would discuss the sequel in interviews, despite Abrams’ confirmation of the monster’s death at the end of the original film in an interview with Rolling Stone. In January 2016, Cloverfield fans would have their patience rewarded when a surprise trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane debuted ahead of Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.

10 Cloverfield Lane was conceived as its own original story independent of the Cloverfield universe in a spec script by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken titled The Cellar. In 2012, the script was sold to Paramount Pictures and earned a spot on the Tracking Board’s year-end hit list.

In the script, a young woman named Michelle wakes up in an underground bomb shelter with a man named Howard who claims to have rescued her from a nuclear attack that has rendered the air outside the shelter contaminated. Howard’s claims are backed up by Nate, who arrives at the shelter in a hazmat suit and quickly forms a bond with Michelle. Throughout the script, Howard and Nate’s credibility is repeatedly called into question and the reader is left to wonder if an apocalyptic event has truly taken place, or if Michelle has been the victim of an elaborate kidnapping.

Paramount hired Bad Robot to develop The Cellar for their fledgling Insurge Pictures division. Based on Paramount’s success with 2009′s found footage horror flick Paranormal Activity, Insurge was created to focus on the development of micro-budget films. Whiplash director Damien Chazelle was hired to further develop the script, and Dan Trachtenberg signed on to make his feature directorial debut. Chazelle made several updates to the script which included further development of the film’s characters. The character of Nate was changed to Emmett, and retained none of the sinister qualities he possessed in the original spec script. Howard subsequently became a more cagey and volatile character, while Michelle is much stronger-willed than she appears in the script.

During the film’s production, producer JJ Abrams began to feel a kinship between Trachtenberg’s contained science fiction thriller and the original Cloverfield.  In interviews, Abrams explained that while 10 Cloverfield Lane wasn’t a direct sequel to Cloverfield, it was a ‘blood relative’, stating that the series would take on an anthology approach similar to Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone where each film would be connected in tone only.

“The spirit of it, the genre of it, the heart of it, the fear factor, the comedy factor, the weirdness factor — there were so many elements that felt like the DNA of this story were of the same place that Cloverfield was born out of. It just became clear that as we were working on the movie, this could be something that is not the sequel that anyone might expect. It’s not the continuation of the story that people might think of, but it was so clearly associated.”

–JJ Abrams, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

A large portion of the success of the original Cloverfield can be attributed to the film’s innovative viral marketing campaign. In-game websites such as the now defunct 1-18-08.com and Slusho.jp (temporarily down) were initially discovered by fans who obsessively analyzed the film’s teaser trailer looking for potential clues that would help them understand the nature of the film’s monster. The teaser for 10 Cloverfield Lane was similarly picked apart upon arrival, though fans would have to endure a certain degree of misdirection before the official ARG started.

At one point in the teaser, the film’s characters can be seen drinking Swamp Pop, a Louisiana-based soft drink. Fans immediately began scouring Swamp Pop’s official website for clues, believing the cola to be 10 Cloverfield Lane’s equivalent of the fictional Slusho that appeared in the original film. Swamp Pop, however, is a very real product that can be purchased in stores and was likely featured in the film to pinpoint the story’s regional location. This didn’t stop the company from having a bit of fun with fans, however, as their online store offered a “long-term shelter supply” for a brief period of time.

Fans also began investigating Tagruato’s website for potential updates that would point them in the direction of the film’s ARG. Several fans began e-mailing Tagruato with in-game questions, hoping to illicit a reply from the fictional Japanese mining company that played a key role in the Cloverfield ARG. While this tactic initially seemed far-fetched, fans would eventually begin receiving replies from Vanessa Gwon, Tagruato’s employee of the month for January 2016. This would lead to the discovery of Tagruato’s “Employee of the Month” page, which featured a picture of John Goodman as Howard Stambler. Howard is listed on the page as a Telemetry Analyst for Tagruato’s subsidiary company Bold Futura whose work had resulted in a significant breakthrough diagnosing transmission complications with two of Tagruato’s governmental clients’ orbiting satellites. Fans also noticed that he was wearing a shirt containing the phrase “Radioman70″. Visiting radioman70.com redirected fans to FunandPrettyThings.com, the first and only original website of the 10 Cloverfield Lane ARG.

The homepage of FAPT features a number of images that directly reference the film’s teaser trailer. One of those images is a screenshot from Pretty in Pink that prompts the entry of a passphrase when clicked upon. Entering the phrase “Do you want to talk?” leads to a message board with posts from Howard Stambler.

The first post on FAPT’s message board is used to set up the premise of the film’s ARG: Howard Stambler is posting these messages for his daughter Megan to warn her of an impending danger, and instructing her to get to his underground shelter as quickly as possible. Towards the end of his message, Howard insinuates that Megan’s mother has been keeping her from him, potentially due to her belief that Howard is mentally unstable. Further updates from Howard would reference his disdain for Megan’s mother, as well as his longing to reconnect with his estranged daughter. 

Fans soon discovered another page on FAPT titled “Life Preserving Information”. The page featured a survival guide that Howard put together for Megan, complete with tips on how to put together a bug-out bag or hot-wire a car. Howard also provided links to other (real) survival websites and included widgets that provided weather updates and train schedules. Subsequent updates featured a link to a real news article about a train track fire in New Orleans.

Similar to the original Cloverfield ARG, FAPT also provided fans with some background information on Howard. In one of Howard’s message board posts, he mentions that he used work with spy satellites. He references a discovery that he and his team made while in space and explains that the government is now trying to cover it up. Howard also mentions that he worked on Seasat, the  first Earth-orbiting satellite designed for remote sensing of the Earth’s oceans. Conspiracy theorists believe that the military shut down Seasat when they discovered it could also be used to track submarines, using a short circuit as a covering story. Finally, Howard explains that his mentor was accused of spying and sent to prison for 365 years. It is assumed that Howard’s mentor was a real life Navy Radioman named Jerry Whitworth, a member of the Walker Spy Ring who was sentenced to 365 years for selling secret information to the Soviets.

Howard also designed a text-based survival simulation game for Megan to help her practice surviving inside of the bunker. Fans were able to interact with the game, and could even post their high scores. One user was able to pass 1,000 days inside the bunker, and was rewarded with a secret message from Howard revealing the location of a dead drop in Chicago. Reddit user helveticatt went to the locker at the HI Chicago hostel and found a Paris bag containing a cellphone. The phone had one voicemail, which was a message from Howard to Megan:

“Megan, as promised - a phone just for you and me to talk. Keep it hidden so your mother doesn’t ruin this too. I put my number into your contacts. Call me as soon as you can. I need to hear your voice, and I gotta get you out of Chicago before everything happens. Your life is in real danger, Radiogirl. But I promise to keep you safe. Call me please. Love, dad.”

After the discovery of the dead drop, FAPT continued to be updated regularly. In one message board post, Howard made reference to his estranged wife Denise selling their family heirlooms. Fans quickly found a listing from Denise on Craigslist that contained a picture of the heirlooms with one of Megan’s school notebooks visible to the side of it. Fans e-mailed Denise to ask about her husband, and her replies relayed frightening stories of Howard’s “extreme prepping” and suggested that something terrible may have happened to Megan:

Howard was always worried about emergencies. I used to think it was just how he’d learned to see the world from when he was in the Navy. But things got so much worse when he started working at Bold Futura. He used to come home at night and sit through dinner without saying a word. He became obsessed with building his fallout shelter, putting all our money into it. I didn’t even think he’d mind too much when we left. That way he could keep building his bunker without anybody to get in his way. But reading everything you’ve shown me on this site. I can see that it’s just made him more obsessed. This is not the first time he’s done this. Every few years there’s some new danger that’s going to kill us all. But the disaster never happens. And then he just finds something else to obsess about. During one of his panics, he made us hide in the cellar. Megan must have been about 11, and she wouldn’t stop asking him why we were hiding. So he put his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet, and kept it there so long that she couldn’t breathe. That was the moment I knew that I needed to get us away from him. Maybe if I’d realized it sooner, things wouldn’t have turned out so badly.

The last update on FAPT came from a message board posting by Nikolia Roza, a fellow employee of Bold Futura. Linked in the message is a strange audio file, which starts out as haunting music, but appears to contain some sort of encoded message. Playing the audio file, while running a decoder program, generated an image of one of the alien spaceships from the film approaching the earth.

The trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane would return to theaters ahead Deadpool. Depending on which theater fans attended, a brief image would quickly flash at the end of the trailer, containing random numbers. By combining the numbers featured on each of the five images, fans were given geographical coordinates to a second dead drop.

Reddit user MugensKeeper discovered the dead drop, which contained survival gear, dry food, a puzzle piece and a USB drive. The USB drive was loaded with an audio file that contained a recording of a Mission Control conversation concerning a large burst of unexplained magnetic energy. At the end of the conversation, they are instructed to cover up the incident.

Shortly after the discovery of the second dead drop, the outgoing message on Howard’s cellphone was changed:

This phone belongs to my daughter. I don’t know how you got it, but it doesn’t matter much anyways. It’s happening… and, I wish everyone just listened to me. I could have helped you all if you just listened.

Howard also texted Megan’s phone, instructing her to delete all the messages in her voicemail box so he could leave her a new message. The final message from Howard arrived a few days later:

“It’s my fault, I see that now. Now it’s too late for you to leave Chicago. I was never going to see you again. You were my little girl, and it was my job to protect you. I failed. I’m going to make it up to you, I know how to make it right, I promise.”

10 Cloverfield Lane yielded another success for Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot Productions. The film was met with critical and commercial acclaim, earning a 90% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and $110 million at the worldwide box office. Some fans, however, felt as though the movie was marketed under false pretenses; at the end of a TV spot that aired during the Super Bowl, a clear variation of the Cloverfield monster’s roar can be heard, leading them to believe that this movie would be a direct follow-up to the original This roar would make its way into the film as one layer of the sound the alien spaceship makes after its blown up by Michelle. Despite their disappointment, these fans nonetheless admitted to enjoying the film as a standalone movie, praising the performances of John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher Jr.

After the release of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Paramount and Bad Robot announced that they would be adapting a screenplay from writers Doug Jung and Oren Uziel called God Particle with Julius Onah set to direct. The synopsis of the film described a crew aboard a space station finding itself alone after a scientific experiment caused the Earth to disappear. Fans immediately began speculating that the audio file contained in Howard’s dead drop was a reference to the crew and station set to appear in God Particle. A leaked synopsis from the online survey website Swagbucks also made reference to an alien attack, leading many to believe that the next film in the Cloverfield franchise would be a direct follow-up to 10 Cloverfield Lane. As they would discover two years later, the next film in the series wouldn’t be quite so easy to figure out.

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The Shining cuckoo clock by artist Chris Dimino. At the top of every hour, Jack Torrance breaks through the door and says “Here’s Johnny!”, followed by the piercing scream of his wife Wendy!

Website

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10 Years of Cloverfield: Part One

By Jay Truant

Over the fourth of July weekend in 2007, audiences lined up at the box office for the first live action Transformers movie from director Michael Bay. The film was a huge success, grossing over $700mil at the worldwide box office, and has subsequently spawned four sequels over the last decade. Online discussion about the film, however, took a backseat to a mysterious teaser trailer for a nameless film depicting an attack on New York that aired in theaters before Transformers. Filmed on a handheld camera from the point of view of one of the film’s main characters, the only information the trailer revealed was a production credit for LOST co-creator JJ Abrams, and a release date of January 18, 2008 (1-18-08). 

A year before the trailer debuted, the producers of LOST launched The Lost Experience, an online Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designed to engage fans and expand the storyline of the hit science fiction drama during the hiatus between seasons two and three. Cryptic websites related to the ARG were soon discovered by fans, and an in-game novel related to the ARG was even released in stores. It didn’t take long for fans to realize that a similar viral marketing campaign would be employed for Abrams’ new film and, by adding a dot com to the end of the film’s release date, the first website was soon discovered.

Screenshot of the now defunct 1-18-08.com

1-18-08.com was the first in-game website discovered by fans. It contained a stack of photographs of the going-away party featured in the trailer, as well as several photographs from the ensuing attack. Fans were also able to flip two of the photographs over, the second of which revealed a hand-written note from one of the party-goers:

Lascano, Platt and Robbie - Jan 2008: “Robbie, Here, use this photo to send a message of my hotness far and wide!!! I’m gonna miss the hell out of ya!! Love, Jamie”

Fans began scouring the Internet for Jamie Lascano, and a MySpace profile that appeared to be in-game was soon discovered. Jamie’s friend list also included Hudson Platt, Rob and Jason Hawkins, Lily Ford, Marlena Diamond and Beth McIntyre, characters that appeared in the film’s trailer. During the ARG, the profiles were active with blog posts and comments between the friends, and fans were also able to establish a correspondence with the characters by sending them private messages. One key blog post also revealed that the reason for the going away party was because Rob was leaving New York to work as vice president for Slusho in Japan.

Screenshot of slusho.jp, the second in-game website discovered by Cloverfield fans.

Eagle-eyed fans soon discovered another clue in the film’s trailer that would further advance the ARG’s storyline: Jason Hawkins was wearing a t-shirt adorned with a logo for Slusho, a fictional soft drink that debuted in an episode of JJ Abrams’ Alias. A quick Google search yielded the discovery of slusho.jp, the second in-game website.

The flash-based Slusho website contained a number of bizarre pages such as Happy Talk, where a large mouth would open to reveal a Slusho character hidden inside of it. A thought bubble appeared next to one of the characters with the text “am I a whale?” written inside of it, leading to speculation that the monster in the film would be a giant mutated whale. There was also a link to a webstore where fans could purchase a number of Slusho branded clothing items, including hats and t-shirts. During the ARG, Slusho also released an official commercial.

Jamie Lascano opened JamieAndTeddy.com as a way to communicate with her boyfriend remotely.

Following the discovery of the characters’ MySpace pages, Jamie wrote a blog where she talked about Teddy Hanssen, her boyfriend who was away on a secret mission. This blog post led to the discovery of JamieAndTeddy.com, a password protected website containing video messages from Jamie to Teddy. At first, the videos seemed harmless enough; Jamie missed Teddy and was recording these videos as a way to correspond with him while he was out of town. However, the videos soon took a rather dark turn.

In the fifth video, Jamie opened a package from Teddy that contained a Slusho hat, a piece of food wrapped in aluminum foil, and a tape player with a recorded message from Teddy:

Jamie, listen to me, alright this is not a joke. If you’re hearing this before we’ve spoken, then it means that I’ve been captured by the company called Tagruato. Ok, TAG-RU-ATO. Now listen. You, this is important. Don’t call the authorities. It’ll screw everything up. Just sit tight and wait to hear from Randy. He knows to call you. We’re on their station ok, and it’s like they’ve found something, or they’re making something, but the point is, I can’t, I’m not going to be calling you again. You’re not gonna hear from me again. I just want you to wait for Randy.. he will explain.

After stopping the tape, Jamie became furious, believing that this message was Teddy’s way of breaking up with her. She soon unwrapped the aluminum foil and ate the contents inside (later revealed to be Seabed’s Nectar, a highly addictive key ingredient in Slusho that appears to affect the human mind if eaten in its raw form), which lead to her mood and behavior becoming increasingly erratic.

Tagruato’s official website circa 2007.

In September 2007, 1-18-08.com was updated with a picture of a chef pulling something that resembled a pizza out of a freezer. Flipping the picture over revealed a list of ingredients in Japanese that was quickly translated by fans. Among the ingredients was "Kaitei no mitsu” which translates to “deep sea nectar/honey”. A Google search for the mysterious ingredient yielded only one result: a restaurant review by “deliciousmacdoob” on Menuism.com. The reviewer made reference to the ingredient, which he referred to as “Seabed’s Nectar”,  and revealed that it came from a company in Honshu, Japan called Tagruato, which lead to the discovery of the next in-game website.

Tagruato is a Japanese mining company with oil rigs in the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and Indian oceans using what the company calls “groundbreaking deep-sea drilling technology”. Tagruato’s CEO is Ganu Yoshida, who was previously mentioned on the history page of Slusho.jp. Along with Slusho, Tagruato owns subsidiaries that deal in deep-sea genetic research (Yoshida Medical Research), advancing technology (Bold Futura), and paraffin wax byproducts from their Petroleum reservoir (ParafFun! Wax Distributors).

Tagruato’s website was hacked in November 2007 by an organization called T.I.D.O. Wave, an eco-group that despises Tagruato for mining oil from the Earth’s oceans. The T.I.D.O. Wave website is a front for an environmental activist group called Les Guerriers de Mère-Terre (The Warriors of Mother Earth). LGMT was founded by notorious conservationist Les Bandit Vert (The Green Bandit). Teddy’s friend Randy works for T.I.D.O. Wave and was in charge of authoring the website’s blog posts. Several posts made reference to an ‘event’ which was later revealed to be a raid on the Chuai Station, a Tagruato owned and operated deep-sea drilling station located in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Chuai Station moments before it collapsed.

Videos of the destruction of the Chuai Station were soon released on the video sharing website LiveLeak. The videos were framed as reports from German, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Russian, and Japanese news  stations. At one point in the video, several members of the station’s crew are seen fleeing the wreckage on a raft. The roar of the monster can be heard, followed by a shower of debris falling down upon the crew. These videos heavily insinuated that Tagruato’s drilling was what awoke the monster. 

Around this time, orders from the Slusho web store began arriving with handwritten notes from “The Whistle Blower”. Among these notes were printouts of sonar images that revealed the monster’s presence in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Tagruato’s discovery of the Cloverfield monster on the ocean floor.

In November 2007, the second trailer for the previously untitled film was released and the title of Cloverfield was revealed. The Matt Reeves directed monster flick opened on January 18, 2008 to critical and commercial success, recouping its budget of $25mil during its opening weekend. The film would eventually gross over $170mil worldwide and Paramount was said to have ordered a sequel from Bad Robot over opening weekend. However, it would be nearly a decade before another Cloverfield movie debuted in theaters.

The ARG continued on through the release of Cloverfield on home video. Teddy Hanssen’s sister Alyse opened a blog called Missing Teddy Hanssen which was first discovered by the appearance of a missing poster on the main 1-18-08 website, as well as a comment on one of T.I.D.O. Wave’s posts. On her blog, Alyse makes reference to USGX8810B467233PX, a password protected website that supposedly contained information related to Teddy’s whereabouts. Fans who bought Cloverfield on DVD and Blu-Ray were able to login to the website by entering the numbers found on the home video’s sticker. The pictures on the website revealed the discovery of the Cloverfield monster and its parasites by Tagruato submarines, deep on the ocean floor, near the Chuai Oil Drilling Station. 

In press interviews for Cloverfield, JJ Abrams revealed that the monster had laid dormant in the Atlantic Ocean for thousands of years. Through information that fans were given over the course of the Cloverfield ARG, it can be decided that Tagruato’s deep sea drilling led to the monster’s awakening and subsequent destruction of New York City. Ten years after the film’s debut, however, Netflix’s The Cloverfield Paradox now has fans questioning everything they thought they knew about the ‘Cloververse’.

Check back later in the week for parts two and three.

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The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) | Julius Onah

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Jigsaw (2017) | Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig

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The Art of Christopher Lovell (9 Images)

Christopher Lovell is a UK based artist who specializes primarily in illustration for clothing companies and band merchandise. Christopher is self-taught and his influences started very early on in his childhood where he developed a deep interest in fantasy and sci-fi. He was captivated by toys, cartoons and films which helped to fuel his imagination and which still inspire him to this day.

Christopher is currently limiting his client work while he concentrates on building on his personal portfolio. Christopher feels his best work has come from when he has no restrictions on his creativity and he can let his imagination thrive. He has a rapidly growing fan base online with people all over the world acknowledging his work and his personal pieces are those that are best received.

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SLC Punk! (1998) | James Merendino

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The Joker (9 Images)

Artist Credit:

1. Jason Edmiston 2. Jason Edmiston 3. Jason Edmiston 4. Phantom City Creative 5. Orlando Arocena 6. Joel Robinson 7. Lee Howard 8. Mike Mitchell 9. Rocky Davies

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Street Art by JPS (10 Images)

In 2009, the street artist known as JPS was on a downward spiral- then a visit to the Banksy exhibit in Bristol turned his life around.

The 37-year-old street artist from Weston-super-Mare, said “Five and a half years ago, I was homeless from drink and drugs, Two of my friends were murdered when I was 19 and I went down a bad path.”

“I’m from a tough estate and I lost a lot of friends. I hid my grief through drink, and wasted 12 years of my life” – This seems to be the foundations that have created this great artist!

“Then in 2009 I went to visit the Banksy show in Bristol and I though “hey I could do that. I was into fine art when I was younger, but Banksy inspired me, he saved my life and I respect him.”

JPS credits seeing the Banksy exhibit to helping him get his life back on track: “My life was in the gutter and it’s been a long journey out of it. But I feel like my mind has come back.” His work has been featured at the Tate Modern and in a Hyundai advert.

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Punk Rock Portraits & Posters by Shepard Fairey (9 Images)

Bio courtesy of Street Art Bio

Frank “Shepard Fairey” is a very famous graphic artist, muralist, and overall artist. He was born on February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina in the United States. In 1988, the artist graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy in Palm Springs, California. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island in 1992.

As a young adult, Shepard Fairey became very interested in art. He soon began to use his drawings in T-shirts and skateboards. He was a skateboard-obsessed art student. While in school, Shepard Fairey held a part-time job in a skateboarding shop. Soon after, he hit the skateboard community hard by pasting homemade stickers all over the place. It was then that he realized his desire and interest in the street art culture and graffiti movement. Another strong influence was his love for punk music, which he demonstrated stencils.

One of the first images he ever used was that of Andre the Giant. Shepard Fairey found this image in a newspaper ad and he chose to introduce it to the streets.

Shepard Fairey is one of the most influential street artists of our time. Shepard Fairey’s work has been used in screen-prints, stencils, stickers, masking film illustrations, wheat paste, collages, sculptures, posters, paintings, and murals. Shepard Fairey enjoys working with the colors black, white, and red. Fairey has constantly shifted between the realms of fine art, commercial art, street art, and even political art. His most famous art includes images of Andre the Giant, the Obey trademark, the propaganda poster of Barack Obama, and many more.

Shepard Fairey’s work combines elements of graffiti, pop art, business art, and Marxist theory. His work has been seen in galleries around the world and even museums. Not only that, but is often recognized in graphic designing and signature apparel. One of his most famous works includes his portrait of Barack Obama. In fact, this portrait drew national attention to Fairey and his work quickly exploded after that recognition.  This poster also received the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award in 2009.

Shepard Fairey has held solo and group exhibitions across the world. Some of his more famous ones include Capsule, Birmingham, England in 2000, Kantor Gallery Window in New York, New York in 2003, OXOP Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2006, and Merry Karnosky Gallery in Los Angeles, California in 2007.

Shepard Fairey currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California in the United States.

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“Ghoulish” Gary Pullin (10 Images)

A horror fan since he could stick a tape into a VCR, “Ghoulish” Gary Pullin has grown into a monster-making machine. As Rue Morgue magazine’s original art director, the London, Ontario-born artist created the famous look of the publication, which currently hosts his art column, The Fright Gallery. In 2009, Gary was voted Artist of the Year in the Rondo Hatton Awards. Now a full time creature creator, his colourful signature style has graced numerous magazines, books and movie posters. He’s had his work featured in galleries across North America, created highly sought-after screen-prints for the likes of Mondo and Skuzzles, album covers for WaxWork and Death Waltz and created key art for various films, including Grabbers, Birth of the Living Dead, Why Horror? and The Babadook. Both Gary and his art will be seen in the upcoming documentary Twenty-Four by Thirty-Six.

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Misfits Artwork (7 Images)

Artist Credit:

1. Rhys Cooper 2. Ghoulish Gary Pullin 3. Jason Edmiston 4. Jason Edmiston 5. Basil Gogos 6. Rhys Cooper 7. Christopher Lovell

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Artist Transforms Black Mirror Season Four Episodes Into Golden Age Comic Book Covers (8 Images) 

By Jay Truant

Last month, the fourth season of the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror premiered on Netflix and gave us six new tales examining the codependent relationship of modern society and technology. Debuting on the British television channel Channel 4 in 2011 before moving to Netflix in 2015, series creator Charlie Brooker and his collaborators have burrowed their way under our skin by presenting an only slightly exaggerated version of our world, and the potential dangers of technology being allowed to run away with itself. Now, Brazilian artist Billy Butcher has re-imagined all six episodes of the show’s fourth season as old school comic book covers titled Tales of the Black Mirrors.

Originally posted to the portfolio website Behance, each episode is captured in a single striking image by way of pre-Comics Code comic book cover art. Beginning with the Star Trek-esque USS Callister and finishing with each segment of Black Museum, Billy Butcher has left with a serious craving for a Black Mirror comic book series. 

Be sure to stop by Billy Butcher’s RedBubble store to purchase prints of this series, as well as t-shirts, phone cases, and more.

See also: Artist Transforms Stranger Things Season Two Episodes Into Pulp Novels

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Mondo Gallery Presents: Universal Studios Monsters

Artist credit:

1. Bride of Frankenstein by Ken Taylor 2. Frankenstein by Francesco Francavilla 3. The Mummy by Stan & Vince 4. Creature From the Black Lagoon by Gary Pullin 5. The Wolf Man by Eric Powell 6. Dracula by Phantom City Creative 7. The Invisible Man by Jonathan Burton 8. Frankenstein (Variant) by Jessica Seamans

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