mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Feb 6, 2012, 6:00 am
Our Snark hunt has entered the ultimate phase of its prosodic peristalsis, the infamous Fit the Eight, the Vanishing. Big paradox, huh? The final product of the greatest Nonsense Epic Ever Written will be the Nothingness of being Vanished Away. That's pretty Heavy, so Heavy that it's plunged all the...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jan 30, 2012, 6:00 am
The press of deadlines has addled my inky brain box plus I'm just darn tired … so, no Snark explications this week, but instead this drawing from the files, a portrait of Johannes Brahms, the Noble Savage of Wilhelmine Germany. That sleek, burnished, savage sound of his … grovel, Lady Gaga, grov...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jan 23, 2012, 6:00 am
My Newt Gingrich illo (see last posting below) possessed so much mojo that this Snark illo of mine is probably going to break the internets. Sure, to some people it's just a picture of the Fellowship of the Snark girding their loins for the heavy-going of Fit the Eighth but to some other people it's...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jan 18, 2012, 7:16 pm
If you're a political junky and a devotee of Unadulterated Nonsense, the Republican primaries in the USA are pure catnip. Newt Gingrich seems poised (once again, yawn) on achieving total world domination of some sort and I cannot resist posting this illo that I did many years ago, in his salad days ...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jan 16, 2012, 6:00 am
... each frontispiece, vamping it up in the cunning disguise of an Unsleeping ... Vanishing but a visual Vanishing, a Vanishing away of the poet Lewis Carroll (upon whom the soon-to-be-Vanished Baker ... Carroll AKA Charles Lutwidge Dodgson AKA The Baker More sober-minded readers ... to his pu...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jan 9, 2012, 6:00 am
Leaving someone to their fate is all the rage in certain philosophical circles. The smart set calls it a feeble-minded tautology but we think it's a splendid excuse for yet another obsessively cross-hatched depiction of Karl Marx shaking his fat German booty in a tight-fitting Hindustani harem outfi...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jan 2, 2012, 6:00 am
This stanzel is jam-packed with jolly bits of scrumptious, Nonsense-soaked Carrollian references. Would it interest you to know that — 1. mimsy is a portmanteau of miserable and flimsy. The word is current throughout the Carrollian Multiverse, ranging from Snark Island to Looking Glass Land. The ...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Dec 26, 2011, 6:00 am
What better way to celebrate Boxing Day than to ogle this salacious image of Karl Marx in blackface doing a disjointed, Nonsensical Carrollian bump and grind? Lesser-minded readers will reach for their politically correct smelling salts or even their attorneys but well-oiled Carrollians will heave a...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Dec 19, 2011, 6:00 am
Alas, dear readers, but the press of deadlines this week forces me to be an utter cad and skip the usual Snark commentary … instead, I must offer you a re-run, an earlier episode from this GN version of the Snark in which the HMS Snark set sail for Snark Island in a billowy puff of surrealist stea...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Dec 12, 2011, 6:00 am
In an earlier stanzel we subjected The Banker/Karl Marx to the indignities of vamping as a perfumed houri in the lascivious environs of a Turkish harem but that is nothing to his current employment in a Carrollian minstrel show.  Yes, the Bandersnatch has worked its magic at last, the hypnotic spel...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Dec 5, 2011, 6:00 am
A sudden outbreak of paranoid Orientalism has overwhelmed every drop of precious ink spilled upon this stanzel. Where once we saw pleasantly buffoonish Snark Hunters disporting themselves against a backdrop of English garden parties and nursery room labyrinths, we are now confronted with the raw ani...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Nov 28, 2011, 6:00 am
A brief break from hunting Snark … Alice in Wonderland is the Admirable Carroll's most famous work and I thought it high time to discuss some of its lesser-known translations, in particular, Áloþk's Adventures in Goatland (Áloþk üjy Gígið Soagénliy). It's available from Amazon here, UK b...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Nov 21, 2011, 6:00 am
There are times in one's life when one realizes that one has simply drawn too many lines for one's own good. Not in the above stanzel, of course, which has precisely the number of lines and squiggles necessary to evoke the horror of a fat, timorous Banker (played here by Karlos Marx) being done away...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Nov 14, 2011, 6:00 am
The Banker’s annihilation, or rather, impending deracination, at the hands of a Bandersnatch provides an excellent opportunity to shift the entire setting of this Snark into the farther reaches of the British Raj. We are in Old Delhi now and in the background of this Fit one can spot the distincti...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Nov 7, 2011, 6:00 am
We've arrived at the central conceit of this particular Fit of the Snark. The Banker, played here by the Eminent Continental Steamer, Karl Marx, is about to be assaulted by his nemesis, the Bandersnatch. You can see the latter's oddly mishapen hand clutching at the rotund Teuton's bloated ankle. Ka...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Oct 31, 2011, 6:00 am
Framing devices are the very meat & drink of this illustrator's Snark, the very fritter-my-wig, as the Great One, Lewis Carroll, would have said. Careful examination of the above stanzel will reveal that the previous stanzel (72/1) is embedded within this one and that both of them are themselves the...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Oct 24, 2011, 6:00 am
  For five panels now we've been tootling merrily along on our Snarkic Soul Train, through English garden parties and homunculi-haunted jungles into the depths of Page 72, where our train has debouched at last into the jumbled contents of a cigar box. These contents are nothing less than the raw m...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Oct 17, 2011, 6:00 am
... -1952) “Miracle of Training”, 1911 Our drawing of a Snark Hunting train in the jungle was spawned by a vague visual memory I had, an ... furnished me; it led me to eventually depict the training of a train by a jungle homunculus magician, a personage which fit perfectly into the earlier de...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Oct 10, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel, squiggle by squiggle … right now we're in Fit the Seventh … the Banker, played by Karl Marx, will soon discover that a certain pesky specter haunting Europe is none other t...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Oct 3, 2011, 6:00 am
Fit the Seventh of my GN version of The Hunting of the Snark … the Banker, played by Karl Marx, will soon discover that a certain pesky specter haunting Europe is none other than the dreaded Hindustani Bandersnatch! Meanwhile, back at the paan-shop … See the Snark Hunters run. Run, Snark Hunters...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Sep 26, 2011, 6:00 am
At last, we've reached Fit the Seventh of this graphic novel version of Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark. I drew a frontispiece for the first page of each Fit, each one usually involving a feeble pun and all of them concealing in some manner the All-Seeing Eye which I chose to represent the Snar...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Sep 19, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel, squiggle by squiggle … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … We've been wandering the Carrol...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Sep 12, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel, squiggle by squiggle … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … Fit the Sixth has reached an ap...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Sep 5, 2011, 6:00 am
Patient readers, please endure one more week of hiatus from Hunting the Snark. In lieu of the usual daft blather, I present a comix page which I did for the Wallace Stevens anthology at the Hooded Utilitarian. There's much to see and read there … I usually avoid making political comment...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Aug 29, 2011, 6:00 am
In between hurricanes, earthquakes, repairing leaking wells, attending weddings and doing some illos for Byron Sewell's Alothk in Wonderland, time is a bit short this week. So here's another colorized re-run from my GN version of The Hunting of the Snark, a frontispiece, entitled … ...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Aug 22, 2011, 6:00 am
I apologize in advance but this week's posting must be a re-run, something from Fit the First of our GN version of The Hunting of the Snark. This is a colorized version, so do not adjust your sets … Yet still, ever after that sorrowful day, Whenever the Butcher was by...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Aug 15, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … Transportation for life … it's not a pre...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Aug 8, 2011, 6:00 am
A brief break from Carroll and comix and Snarks … a sample from an on-going translation of Jacques O'Bean's acid-tongued, Juvenalian update of Voltaire's classic … American Candide. “Dear children,” Doctor Pantone would say, “always remember that although you’re the freest pe...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Aug 1, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … When drawing a dream in which the dreamer not only pl...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jul 25, 2011, 6:00 am
Even Snark hunters need a hiatus from time to time, so this week we'll eschew (temporarily) Carrollian verse for something a bit less Nonsensical … The Hooded Utilitarian has launched a series of postings, combining the verse of Wallace Stevens with the artwork of 20+ artists. There's an intro her...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jul 18, 2011, 6:00 am
"… what Lewis Carroll would say about the goth niche … I suspect he would have grabbed a riding crop and delivered some hearty blows to the heads of the lower classes … We can’t have pond scum or bottom of the pond scum crawling to the top and making cultural choices … if we visual and ver...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jul 11, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … If you've ever had the pleasure of a boozy, slobberin...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jul 4, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … Wipe the smirk from your face, dear reader, stifle th...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jun 27, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … The coin of the realm these postlapsarian days seems ...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jun 20, 2011, 6:00 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … This particular panel is dedicated to the ubiquitious...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jun 13, 2011, 6:30 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is dreaming of prosecuting a pig … If you’ve been assiduously following our nonsensica...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jun 6, 2011, 6:30 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is having a dream … Melodramatic courtroom scenes are the crack cocaine of modern cinema...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Jun 6, 2011, 6:30 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … right now we're in Fit the Sixth, where the Barrister (played by Martin Heidegger) is having a dream … Melodramatic courtroom scenes are the crack cocaine of modern cinema...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - May 30, 2011, 6:30 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel … And on the sixth Fit, the Barrister slept. Played here by the notorious Continental philodopher, Martin Heidegger, (right Zeit up and left Sein down) the Barrister has been ...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - May 23, 2011, 6:30 am
The Hooded Utilitarian very kindly posted a eulogy I did for the late Jeffrey Catherine Jones, here. I remember poring over her work in the National Lampoon in the seventies, stunned and delighted that such things could happen on paper. Her run in Heavy Metal was equally daunting for a young wanna-b...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - May 16, 2011, 6:30 am
I have to change the frequency of my blog postings, from now on I'll post once a week on Mondays, at least until I devise a system for earning more money by doing less work for less money. THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and here explained page by page, pane...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - May 11, 2011, 7:20 pm
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and here explained page by page, panel by panel. Today's panel is the last panel of page 59 and the last panel of the entire Fit the Fifth … The preternaturally alert reader will instantly recognize the decor of this panel a...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - May 9, 2011, 6:30 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and here explained page by page, panel by panel. Today's panel is part of page 59, the final page of Fit the Fifth … The attentive reader will notice that in this panel, as in the last two panels, we have been undergoing wha...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - May 5, 2011, 8:02 am
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and here explained page by page, panel by panel. Today's panel is page 59, nearing the end of Fit the Fifth … May we conjecture that in this melodramatic passage of verse (redolent of Tennyson’s more sentimental confection...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - May 2, 2011, 6:30 am
Thanks to everyone who wrote in about my previous rant concerning cross-hatching. I plan more rants as soon as my medication runs low again. It's somewhat ironic because my GN version of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (which we are explicating here, panel by panel) is mostly hatching, not ...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Apr 28, 2011, 6:30 am
It's time for a brief hiatus from my Snark GN and instead … a rant! A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking to a young writer who showed a surprising interest and knowledge of the finer points of mechanical reproduction, cross-hatching and illustration. His questions made me realize how much...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Apr 25, 2011, 7:03 am
This explication of my GN version of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark resumes its Jubjubian subplot for yet another stanzel … we are in the midst of Fit the Fifth and discussing the ways of the Jubjub Bird … Lewis Carroll regales us here with a spirited description of a Jubjub being tort...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Apr 22, 2011, 6:30 am
This panel of our GN version of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark brings the story to a fever pitch of culinary suspense. Let's have a look, shall we … One can never have enough of a jolly, good Snark hunt, don’t you agree? The fresh country air, the Protosurrealist scenery, the anapaesti...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Apr 19, 2011, 6:30 am
This picture of a giant bee chasing an English bride through Tom Quad is a classic example of what we like to call the world's first and only GN version of Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark. If you wish to read a lengthy and quite interesting essay upon the relationship of this rather unsettling ...
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mahendra s. posted an article on The Hunting of the Snark - Apr 16, 2011, 6:30 am
We're explaining this GN version of Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark, every panel and page. We're in the midst of Fit the Fifth, the so-called Antonine Fit of which the scribbler Gibbons made so much of. Harrumph … anyway, today I present you with two entirely different interpretations of the ...
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