2024 June

Three in June...

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Postmodern Fable

In today’s post, alongside images from Wm. Yost’s unfinished graphic novel, The Last Lost Memoir of Casanova, is an excerpt of Yost’s 1998 interview from Occurrences magazine. Yost was...

New Calendars for 2025

Now available for purchase: Maskyrinth 2025 Calendar
Plus: Masquerade 2025 Calendar

A Green Weld Rusted

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2024: May

Summer Breathing Down the Neck of Spring: These are masks of two demalions that personify Hildegard von Bingen’s concept of viriditas, which is one of Yost’s favorite themes. The first one is Ethullosba from the Jack Loki adventure “A Wasteland of Linen”, the second is Ingottanyl from “Forgotten Dances of Survival and Kindness”.

The Lumenist, Part 1: By the time of her interview with Meg Gannon*, a few days before the release of The Lumenist (Glass Octopus Press, 1978), Gralie Bohe was already impatient with...

2024: April

A Mask of the Eyrillim: First off, I think this might help: Eyrillim is the plural, Eyrilmonghet is the singular. Eyrillim is the Inultaru name used for members of...

Darn It! Late Again: Yesterday morning, while browsing through files of unpublished images in the Geranium Lake Properties archive, I came across these two panels with their depictions of the moon and...

Five Carthaginian Bodhisattvas: According to Ha Kim Ngoc, there should be at least sixteen Geranium Lake Properties comics marked in some manner with the abbreviation 5CB, but it is no surprise to me that...

Spring Cleaning: A package arrived at the GLP archive last week. The archive was closed at the time. I imagine the sign on the front door said “Closed For Spring Cleaning” in a...

A Package from Terror Addams Part Two: I did not mention (in my last post) this other item that Terror Addams included in their package because it deserved a post of its own*. I am thrilled to reveal that...

Travesty Is A Verb: Missing Pages: “Triple/Triad Goddesses” was what Yost had written in the Two Teddy Bears Journal under the heading “TIAV Masks”. An arrow indicates that this is a description of a mural in the Other Space Museum on...

Three Months in 2024: January - February - March

Twelfth Night: I felt that I needed to wait until after sunset before I posted the Twelfth Night mask of Kordeyn Guhtellop, the Three Nights demalion. I also expected this would give me enough time to unravel...

Non Nostri Chaos Circulus: I have seen this Geranium Lake Properties comic identified many times as Mother Jackal in her guise as the Rescuer of Witches, so the first thing I want to say...

Dependent Arising: This is an image of Yost’s final version for the album cover* of The Empty Space, the second album from Chansons de Geste. Which was the side project of two members of...

Socrates Would Appreciate a Good Wurncheolf: Today is the holiday we call Dpajormymy, and here in this unpublished Geranium Lakes Properties comic we have Kordeyn Guhtellop, the Three Nights demalion, wearing a...

Living in a Black and White World: Digging through the mazy warren that is the Geranium Lake Properties archive, I have unearthed several files dedicated to GLP comics that appeared in various zines, amateur fanworks and...

The Height of Wit: We’ve had some funny moments on this blog in the past ten years. You may have missed them, my sense of humor can be subtle sometimes. Other times...

Harrow (Complete in 5 Pages): With this post I am continuing our journey through a black and white world, with an abstract comic I created to fulfill a request from Zeszyty Komiksawe...

It Pours: Two posts in the same day! I have been saving these coloring pages for a rainy day activity, and right now I am waiting for...

Springing Along: The equinox came and went a few days ago, but spring had been springing along for at least a month before that. We had a mild, wet winter, so...

Holy Fool: After six years of constancy, the roster of players in the band Immanis et Inanis changed several times between 1985 and 1994, when they finally broke apart and declared that the band was entering into...

Non Nostri Chaos Circulus

I have seen this Geranium Lake Properties comic identified many times as Mother Jackal in her guise as...

Dependent Arising - This is an image of Yost’s final version for...

Twelfth Night - I felt that I needed to wait until...

A Walk on the Moon - In the traditional history (which is more legend than...

Winter is Here, Officially

I hope you enjoyed your winter solstice night. We had rain and fierce gusts of wind, and I was entertained by the noisy drama of this infrequent storm. After I post this, I will make a fresh pot of coffee before I venture outside to look for damage.

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Seven Ales and Ciders

The two Geranium Lake Properties comics in today’s post were not published in newspapers. They were included with six...

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Maybe Titania, Maybe Mab, Maybe Not

These four masks are the results of Yost messing around with the character design of...

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Sharp as Holly

We are not famous in our neck of the woods for...

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Eighth Day Cake

...on the eighth day, jackalopes will tell you, He Ate Cake. Which brings us to the honored-but-not-too-revered Jackalopian tradition of eighth day cake....

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Jackalope Mask

Another fine jackalope mask designed by Alice Aroumbeyski, a mask that Yost presented as one of her self-portraits. In the “The Ringer in the Substratum”, Alice has a conversation with her childhood friend Kamlyn about the suitability of wearing this mask to the wedding of a cousin who is essentially a stranger. (Alice had not spoken to her cousin for 16 years.) The two women decide that Alice should save the mask for her own wedding to Jack Loki.

Kamlyn was actually named Alice when they first met, when the girls were four years old. They did not become boon companions instantly, but because “a lamentable conspiracy beyond our control” (Alice’s words) kept throwing them together, they agreed to an alliance. The two girls decided that having the same name was “tiresome and traumatic” (Kamlyn’s words), so one Alice became Gwynne and the other Alice became Kamlyn. After a few years, Gwynne decide to become Alice again, but Kamlyn kept her name into adulthood.

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Bat Signal

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6. Maskyrinth 2024

5. Masks For All Seasons 2024

4. Twenty-Two Variation 2024

3. Twenty-Three Masks 2024

2. Full Phiz Masks 2024

1. Masquerade 2024

The Five Masks of Aybahjee

These five masks of the person known as Aybahjee are a mixture of published and unpublished Geranium Lake Properties comics. I am not going to bother sorting out which is which in this post, for reasons that are not reasonable and somewhat inexpressible. Also maybe I wish to avoid possible adverse legal repercussions.

In the tales told by the Inultaru, Aybahjee is an entity best described (I think) as a giantess, although sometimes she has been called a troll, an ogre, or a queen of the wild. She does not seem particularly wild to me; in several stories she appears...

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Firebird

According to historical legends of the Inultaru, the Sunissan-Pessoa was the cultural analog of...

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The Gaze (& Calendars!)

“Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.” So writes Victor Hugo (Les Misérables). But do not forget that the one you devour...

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A Door Stands Open Today

The first image in today’s post comes from Jack Loki’s escapade in “The Conundrum of the Butcher’s Broom”, and the second is a mask...

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The Green Map

There have been many people who have attempted to use the Green Map to find Ulciajheyld Shain Erin, aka Near Faraway Mountain, only to discover that this map can be a perilous pathfinder. The Second House Cartographers Guild in Outer Tald Busket will adamantly refuse any commission to draw or copy the Green Map. Jack Loki was an apprentice for 13 months at the Outer Tald Busket Guild*, where he gained his Journeyman Certification. He achieved his Mastership in Mapmaking through years of practical experience and independent study. When he felt confident enough in his skills in augury, thaumaturgy, cartography and mythopoeia, Jack made his own Green Map, which led to the grievous occurrence in “The Journey to Near Faraway Mountain”, which was one of the few barely-survivable adventures Jack came to regret.

* His first choice was the Cartography, Mythopoeia and Zymurgy (CMZ) program at Gurrackelleen College, his mother’s college, until almost the last moment, when he decided he did not want to be her legacy.

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