Description

Richard Corben’s NeverWhere          Over-sized Paperback
Foreword by: Fritz Leiber
Writer: Richard Corben
Artist: Richard Corben
Cover by: Richard Corben

For Mature Readers: Book contains explicit images

The art traditions which Richard Corben drew on in creating this remarkable book go back thirty thousand years and more – to Late Palaeolithic man’s cave paintings of hunters and their weapons, witchdoctors and their rituals, and a profusion of animals feared and revealed: the mammoth and the aurochs, the reindeer, wild horse, bison, rhinoceros, and elephant, and perhaps by way of dimly recalled racial experience the sabertooth tiger, the dire wolf, the dragon, and kindred monsters. The dry caves sought out by the artists of the Aurignacian and Solutrean culture preserved their vivid work from sun, damp wind, and weathering and many of their techniques were curiously modern – big posters expanses of color, dramatic stick figures, the effect of air brush got by blowing through hollow bones to break up paint fed through a similar tube into a fine spray.

Correspondingly, Richard Corben reaches far back into time for his fundamentals: a great desert landscape in cave browns and reds and in it the single figure of a powerful naked man – one more statuesque and entirely nature animal, but a brooding one, imaginative and feelingful and lonely, wondering about the mystery of his existence. To him come other primitives: a mysterious woman-girl with exotic head-dress and facial stripping (the use of body paint is another odd link between ancient and contemporary); the beast-man (primitive often guised themselves as their totem animal, both hunted and worshipped); and then the trek begins, whipped on by curiosity (the mythological theme of spying on the naked goddess is a common one), toward the arena of the story set amongst temple ruins suggestive of the Incan, Aztec, and mysterious Mayan – the whole wealth of archeology and anthropology is at the artist’s fingertips. Thereafter bursts of action savage, dramatic and humorous, more animal men, magical women, strange monsters, then escape and the weaving into the tale of its science fiction and occult elements, that notion of inter dimensional doorways between worlds which haunts the imaginations of fantasy writers, speculative scientists and mystic alike.

World acclaimed artist Richard Corben has spent over five years creating more than 500 individual panel paintings for his masterpiece, NeverWhere. This enchanting visual epic will be ranked among the great classics of fantasaty for all time.

Story/Spoilers
Thrust into a bizarre fantasy world called Neverwhere, the muscular adventurer Den goes on an exotic adventure through ancient ruins meeting an evil queen, her sacrificial doppelganger, bizarre lizard men, giant insects, and more strange and dangerous madness in this legendary saga brimming with horror, magic, and violence.

The second Den appears in Neverwhere without any previous memories of his childhood there. He believes his uncle, the first Den, left him directions on how to recreate the machine that opens the portal to this world. There he meets the Red Queen, whom he has sex with after being captured by her; Kath (brought to Neverwhere to be sacrificed to Uhluhtc, like Merya in the prequel), whom he rescues and with whom he falls in love, having a brief idyll with her; and Gel, whom he eventually kills. He also receives a visit from the first Den, who materializes and then disappears. At the end of the story, the second Den saves Zeg (called Zek in the comic) from certain death at the hands of the Red Queen, although Den is himself captured. The Red Queen orally rapes Den, but he is ultimately rescued by Kath. During his rescue, Den fatefully chooses to save the Red Queen from falling to her death. Four years will pass until the return of the Red Queen in Den 2.

Paperback is bagged & double boarded and will be carefully / securely packaged then shipped via USPS Priority Mail to ensure that it arrives to you perfectly and quickly.

First Edition
Publisher: Ariel Books / Ballantine Books
Publication Date: February 1978
Format: FC, 112 pages, PB, 11.75″ x 9″
ISBN: None Stated

Collectible Entertainment note: Over-sized Paperback is in Very Good to Fine – condition. (wear) Overall… Very Nice Reading Copy!  Please See Scans!!  A must have for any serious Richard Corben collector and/or enthusiast.  A fun & entertaining read.  Very Highly Recommended.

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