Justin Schultz is The Flying Chair, a freelance artist living in Jackson, MS. We enlisted Justin’s talents to help promote our Chuck Palahniuk event. He is also responsible for all of the artwork on our blog: The Devil (also used for Chuck Palahniuk), Larry the Lemur, the First Editions Club Bookmark and the Lemuria Mermaid.
guts… “Guts” was the first thing I read by Chuck Palahniuk. I was fresh out of college, and had just started working as a production artist at an advertising agency in Jackson. A talented copywriter named Jeff Pedigo had been nice(?) enough to recommend I read the short story “Guts” on one of Chuck’s fan-sites. He did warn me: “this guy makes people faint and/or vomit when he reads this in public.” Even with a mind-blowing warning like that, I was still unprepared for what I was about to read. To be honest, I’m not sure if I should really go into the details of the story (now published in the book – Haunted) but by the time Jeff walked back around to my cube, I must’ve lacked most of my color, except for maybe a faint green tinge. A sly grin rolled across Jeff’s face.
I was somewhat torn. I’ve never been a fan of excessive gore, or even relatively violent themes, but don’t get me wrong, this absolutely was NOT that… but it was… to put it lightly… disturbing. But it definitely wasn’t some sort of cheap “shock value” bullshit either. It was moving. In a good way. In a bad way. In some other way that my brain can’t even understand. I won’t pretend that I read constantly, but I felt like I had gotten enough in, to know that what I had just taken in was something special.
I won’t go much into Palahniuk’s style because I pretty much agree with how the previous Lemuria bloggers described his work (here, here, here and here) but I definitely can dig on his love for the fraying psyche… the slightly (or unmercilessly) damaged minds of people of all backgrounds… and how we have no idea what really goes on in others’ noggins… scary! strange! beautiful! and maybe will make you think about how you treat others.
Because if you treat others poorly, you may end up in hell. Which is the location where his newest book, Damned, takes place. When Zita notified me that Chuck Palahniuk… THE Chuck Palahniuk… was coming to Jackson, I pretty much *explicative a brick. Shortly followed by my begging to puhhh-leeeeease be able to do the event poster (i’m so self-centered)! Once I was given the go-ahead and started Zita’s advanced reader copy of Damned (the benefits of dating a bookstore employee!) – I became immersed in Palahniuk’s perspective of hell.
I was excited to be able to do a poster that was probably going to be much more adult-themed/darker than my typical work (If you’ve ever seen my stuff, I pretty much draw like a seventh-grade girl [I’m a 29-year-old male.]) Upon completion of the book – which by the way, was amazing, hilarious, scary, and makes you think about things you probably don’t want to think about (classic Palahniuk) but end up being all the better person for acknowledging those elements of life/humanity/existence – I struggled with what image(s) I was going to use for the poster. Palahniuk’s characters (and creatures), landscapes and objects/accessories were all described so well – what to use?!!?! dang!
I finally ended up going for the semi-obvious choice of Maddy (the main character, a 13-year-old girl) in a hero-shot during a more action-packed part of the book.
She is donning items like Vlad the Impaler’s jeweled dagger, Hitler’s mustache, the handkerchief of Thug Behram, Caligula’s Testicles and Catherine de Medici’s coronet of pearls… all items that Maddy acquires while attempting to overthrow hell.
I’m a big fan of juxtaposing a slightly darker (sometimes sad) image with a somewhat-classic American (slightly Japanese) cartooning/illustration style. The Damned image/theme went along pretty naturally with that idea (which I felt was pretty neat that it worked out that way.) Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the final product and can’t wait to see Zita’s screen-printed posters! (on big, 18 x 24 red paper!)
The more I hear about this event, the more I can’t wait to go! It is going to be unlike anything most of us have ever experienced… join us!
love,
justin
JX///RX
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cpcp
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