Continuing with art for “We Must Boost the Signal” we have a contribution from the much-admired Frans Mensink which fairly sizzles, even if there’s no nudity (at least, as that term is normally understood). Young brain scientist Dr. Hope Montclair is allowed to visit a mysterious government laboratory, where a terrifying secret is revealed. (The G-man in the picture is named Macneil, as is thus a metafictional link to the Tales of Gnosis College.) For those of you following the script, it’s roughly Page 22,Panel One. For those of you who just like the pictures, you can download a very large (~23MB) high-definition version of the picture by clicking through the one that appears on this blog.
“Hope Montclair Sees the Brains” is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It was commissioned by Iago Faustus and executed by Frans Mensink.
Marvelously horrific illustration and well executed too. It looks more “real”, therefore the horror of the situation feels greater than a more anime approach would’ve appeared. I read We must Boost the Signal and the illustration above tells me the story will have some more ‘tube girl’ tropes, if briefly, something to look forward too.
The story itself has a nice, bleak ending. It reminded me a bit of “The Screwfly Solution” by James Tiptree Jr., (Alice Sheldon). This fine short story was made into one of the better Masters of Horror episodes on Showtime and if you haven’t seen it, I suggest you seek it out, you won’t be disappointed. Speaking of reading, the artwork reminds me of the climax of an old Robin Cook thriller, (back when I thought he was still a good writer), “Brain”. There’s a nice sort of tube girl/neurological scene at the end of the book that’s good.
Thanks!. I haven’t seen “The Screwfly Solution” but I’ll definitely take a look. Brain I have read, and it was probably an influence.