Mr Jonathan L. Howard's Depository of Stuff

The Necromancer: Johannes Cabal and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Year

The Detective: Local Criminal Gets Upset that Other Criminals are doing Crimes

The Fear Institute: Johannes Cabal and the Bad Acid Trip

The Bros. Cabal: Johannes Who?

Time of the year to re-read Exeunt Demon King

“Christmas comes around but once a year. To Johannes Cabal, this showed shocking over-familiarity and ill-breeding.

All the Cabals from “Ouroboros Ouzo” (tag yourself I’m zombie Cabal)

In order of appearence (from left to right):

• Johannes Cabal - a necromancer of some little infamy

• Old Cabal - he’s sarcastic

• Tough Cabal - lost an eye and swears a lot

• Ghoul Cabal - “No Pope?”

• Zombie Cabal - meh

• College Cabal - graduated at the Miskatonic University, right?

• Morphine Addict Cabal - poor boy

• Semi-mechanical Butler Cabal - probably Monsieur Samhet‘s fault

Barbara Bach and Deep Ones

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer | Ω |1:25 scale. Sculpted by Incognitopi⌛

King Kong - the lost spider pit sequence

So November got away from us. The elections hit J and I hard. That’s not an excuse, but a statement of fact. There are things to be done. But that’s not what I want to talk about. Right now let’s talk about the Johannes Cabal books.    Honestly? There has never been a better time to read them. 

All 5 of them are great and worth reading whenever. But there are some things that make them great for now. Cabal is practical. He cuts through all the things you suppose a necromancer should be. He doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks he should do, he just moves forward and gets things done. This is a character who literally goes to hell and back, and is CONTINUOUSLY unimpressed by what the world throws at him. He begins as an amoral character, but that changes. Which is another amazing thing. Cabal is a character that grows. He never stops being a cold bad ass, but he learns how to be better. Especially to the people he cares about. Best of all? Johnathan L. Howard is a great writer and these books are EXTREMELY funny. I’ve literally laughed out loud while reading each of the books. And the humor isn’t stupid. It’s arched, witty, and fits wonderfully with the over all tone of Cabal himself. 

It’s not just Cabal that’s good too. All the major characters are incredibly tough, persistent and full of complexity in their own way. And they don’t always win. But they’ll sure as hell get right back up again to fight more. 

Sunday Strip Watchmen

It’s pretty much a very short parody of Watchmen with news paper comic characters instead of superheroes. Somewhat inspired by Bartkira, I made this sampling of pages both as a joke and to see what it would look like if newspaper characters got the same dark treatment superheroes did in the 80s. There was no copy/pasting in any of these pages, I redrew them by looking intimately at my copy of Watchmen and pictures of each character I was using.

Credit:

Based on “Watchmen” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, owned by DC comics

“Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz “Garfield” by Jim Davis “Dilbert” by Scott Adams “Calvin & Hobbes” by Bill Watterson “Cathy” by Cathy Guisewite “Beetle Bailey” by Mort Walker “The Family Circus” by Bil and Jeff Keane

Also, enjoy this bonus:

Here I read my favourite poem ‘The Memories Live On’, the worst printing disaster in newspaper history.