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Warren's Pub Table: REMAKE/REMODEL: Moris Klaw

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  1.  (5374.1)
    There was, back in 2007, a recurrent meme among several comics art blogs. Reclaiming characters from their owners, I guess it could be broadly described as... people were reimagining abused characters (chiefly Supergirl) as artistic call-and-response in various places, chiefly LiveJournal. In the aftermath of that, I did a similar thing on old messageboard The Engine, called REMAKE/REMODEL. They were embraced as technical exercises, bits of fun, ways to get the brain moving. I think most people's favourite was the dear late Mike Wieringo's wondrous retro-aristo Buck Rogers...

    I thought it might be an interesting thing to bring back here. So, once a week, I'll call a character, and you art types here can post images of your reinterpretation of that character.

    Photography and digital art is also fine, before anyone asks.

    The point is REinterpretation: remake/remodel.

    ----------

    Now I'm just being evil:

    Jess Nevins, patron saint of REMAKE/REMODEL:

    Moris Klaw was created by Sax Rohmer (better known as the creator of Fu Manchu) and appeared in a series of stories in 1915 in the All-Story Cavalier Weekly and which were later collected in The Dream Detective (1920). Klaw is something of an occult detective, ala Dr. Silence and Carnacki, but most of his cases dealt more in psychic than in overtly magical phenomena. Klaw is a tall man, stooped and gaunt with age, usually wearing threadbare clothing and looking unkempt. He lives in a poor part of London, not far from Wapping Old Stairs, in a "decayed curio shop" of most unpleasant seeming. It is also inhabited by a parrot, which shrieks "Moris Klaw, Moris Klaw, the Devil's come for you" when someone enters the store. Klaw is an antiquarian, full of oddball information, but his true advantage, and the thing that is of most use to the police (who are welcoming of his help), is his clairvoyance, which is heightened when he sleeps. It is not uncommon for Klaw to sleep at a crime scene. When asleep, he is more receptive to psychic impressions; when he sleeps, Klaw takes in all sorts of information, and uses it to explain things to both the other characters and the readers. Klaw is full of self-regard, and his speech of is full of self-satisfaction and affectations.

    Klaw is helped by three other characters. Searles, the narrator… Detective-Inspector Grimsby of New Scotland Yard works as Klaw’s contact with the police. And Isis, Klaw’s daughter, lithe, dark, and mysterious, aids him; she is the one with access to Klaw’s notebooks, and her French accent and smoking of cigarettes indicates what other aid she might be able to give in the service of Klaw.


    From another essay about Klaw:

    A very old man who carried his many years lightly, or a younger man prematurely aged. None could say which. His skin had the hue of dirty vellum, & his hair, shaggy brows, his scanty beard were so toneless as to defy classification in terms of colour. He wore an archaic brown bowler, smart, gold-rimmed pince-nez & a black silk muffler. A long caped black cloak completely enveloped the stooping figure; from beneath its mud spattered edge peeped long-toed continental boots.


    And:

    one cannot help but think that Rohmer intends for us to take Moris Klaw as some ancient time traveller come to enlighten the ignorant modern man with secrets from cultures of the past. His eccentric inverted syntax; his habit of continually spraying himself with verbena ("such a refreshing habit -- from ancient Roman times"); his curio shop overflowing with musty relics...; his exotically named daughter (who herself seems other-worldly) all lead the reader to the conclusion that Klaw is something more than a just an odd man. His theory of "The Cycle of Crime" also hints at a knowledge that goes back centuries. Although Klaw claims to record the history of ancient objects in a journal in his shop, the intricate lore of things like Grecian harps, crusader battleaxes, ancient Egyptian pottery sherds & mummies is so vast that it is easier to believe that Klaw came in contact with the relics himself & witnessed the original evildoers using the items for their nefarious purpose rather than to accept him as a scholar & researcher of such things.

    And what of this Cycle of Crime & that odically sterilized pillow I mentioned earlier? Simply put: Klaw believes that valuable curios have histories which will often repeat themselves...



    ----

    Your task, as ever, is to re-invent that into something a 21st Century audience could enjoy.

    I look forward to seeing what you come up with, but bear in mind this is an ART thread. No pen-portraits. This is ART ONLY. Posting just a bunch of text, or a scribble and a vast number of words, will get the thread closed and your account banned.

    You have one week. Go.

    -- W
  2.  (5374.2)
    First! Teeheehee! Ta, Warren.

    To your pencils and wacoms, my comrades!
    • CommentAuthorOxbrow
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2009
     (5374.3)
    Hmm.

    I normally hew close the original brief here, but I don't think I can do that in this instance. It's all too... something...
    •  
      CommentAuthorchris g
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2009
     (5374.4)
    useless tip: Just use the name as reference, and go nuts on the rest ^_^
    • CommentAuthorOxbrow
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2009
     (5374.5)
    First picture! First three in fact. Moris Klaw as he might appear in The Beano.

    Moris Klaw by Oxbrow
  6.  (5374.6)
    My first take pretty much follows the instructions -- a clairvoyant who dresses like he just came out of a time machine and sleeps on crime scenes. Next takes will try to stretch this concept.
  7.  (5374.7)
    But before I get to that:

    Right, now on to the next takes.
    • CommentAuthorLani
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2009
     (5374.8)
    Ah ha ha ha ha, fantastic!
    •  
      CommentAuthorLokiZero
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2009
     (5374.9)
    He keeps his pinky out, like a Gentleman.
    • CommentAuthorScottS
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2009
     (5374.10)
    @Andrenavarro

    I declare you the winner. Until Warren gets hold of you, in which case I'm sure arse eels will be the most pleasant thing you can expect.
    •  
      CommentAuthoroldhat
    • CommentTimeMar 23rd 2009
     (5374.11)
    hahaha

    of course he's naked.
  12.  (5374.12)
    I'm gonna call mine a placeholder, because I was upstairs and didn't want to fuck around with my Wacom at this hour. So I put all this together with found photos on the internet and played around with them a bit...
    Photobucket
    Basically, it's Bill Nighy and Alice Liddell (of "...In Wonderland", etc.) 'shopped together as Moris and Isis Klaw, with an X-ray overlay to give Nighy some "psychic energies", a weird page out of what I'm assuming is a foreign pulp mag version of Moris Klaw (note the Sax Rohmer credit at the bottom...), an old letter to someone that mentions Scotland Yard (although you can't see that part...), and a coffee stain.

    I'll try and get to a proper piece later. Enjoy!
  13.  (5374.13)
    frequentcontributer - I like the child prodigy nature of Alice being the bilingual, cigarette smoking assistant to the mad detective.
    •  
      CommentAuthoragentarsenic
    • CommentTimeMar 23rd 2009 edited
     (5374.14)
    Andre- It's win for us, but fail for you because a bucket of arse eels will surely be released into your colon.

    Great job! You keep getting better every week.
  15.  (5374.15)
    the biggest archenemies of Klaw...
    insomnia, incest, insolent children, indian food...
    moris

    edited it for the colored version without the text bubble
    •  
      CommentAuthorlordmitz
    • CommentTimeMar 23rd 2009
     (5374.16)
    ...holy mother of god we just turned into 4chan.
  17.  (5374.17)
    Barnabasabrai: That's what Don Quixote would look like as rendered by Todd McFarlane...
  18.  (5374.18)
    This one took a little longer to come up with something (usually I'm done about an hour or two after seeing the thread).

    klaw

    Went with the oddity store angle. And, you know, his last name, Klaw. Dropped the daughter and made him a chainsmoking salesman in a crappy tophat. There you go.

    Thought about coloring it, but I think it looks good enough in b&w if not better.
    • CommentAuthorLani
    • CommentTimeMar 23rd 2009
     (5374.19)
    @Aurora - "Necro-kamasutra"? Wow!
    • CommentAuthorbadbear
    • CommentTimeMar 23rd 2009 edited
     (5374.20)
    I'm struggling to draw anything that doesn't look a bit like Alan Moore. :)

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