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noWizardme
Gondolin
Sun, 11:43am
Post #1 of 9
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Tove Jansson's Hobbit illustrations
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Tove Jansson (athour and illustrator of the Moomins) was commissioned to do the illustrations for a 1960 Swedish translation of The Hobbit. There's an article about it here, including some of the illustrations.
We get so used to the Howe, Lee, Nasmith, WETA visual imagings of Tolkien that it is fun and perhaps a bit startling to see something so diferent (and, in places, easily identifiable as Jansson).
I also enjoyed reading this:
‘Her Gollum towered monstrously large, to the surprise of Tolkien himself, who realized that he had never clarified Gollum’s size and so amended the second edition to describe him as ‘a small, slimy creature’. But can that be right? If Jansson was working on a translation of TH in 1960, it surely must have been the second edition. Are we talking about a later text amendment to the 2e here, or is the story fun but apocryphal?
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Felagund
Nargothrond
Sun, 2:42pm
Post #2 of 9
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love this (and the Moomins)! (plus a Latvian angle...)
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Love the Jansson illustrations for The Hobbit, thanks for posting! I don't own a copy but hope to track one down one day, if there's such thing as an affordable edition. The picture provided in the article of the destruction of Laketown is absolutely brutal and Smaug's gleeful expression is full-on!
Your posting of this reminded me of the Laima Eglite illustrated edition of The Hobbit, from 1991. A Latvian friend suggested that I check it out when it became clear that I was a Tolkien tragic. This link link gives a good overview of the job Eglite did. I love her use of bold colour, which goes nicely with the grain of how Tolkien made a fuss of the colour of the dwarves' hoods and so on. Gandalf's eyebrows are nicely over the top and there's a lovely pathos about the picture of Bilbo saying farewell to the dying Thorin, I reckon. And get ready for a very seal-like Gollum!
Give me a shout if I've made my usual mess of posting links!
As for whether the Jansson / Gollum snippet is apocryphal, I had a quick look at my copy of Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit and there seems to be an answer to be had. Rateliff says that the addition of small, slimy creature, thus giving Gollum 'scale', is a product of the third edition process (1966). So, that gives enough time for Jansson to illustrate the towering Gollum in 1960 and then for Tolkien to react to that and revisit the matter as part of his 1966 tinkering.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Sun, 6:39pm
Post #3 of 9
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Rateliff says that the addition of small, slimy creature, thus giving Gollum 'scale', is a product of the third edition process (1966). So, that gives enough time for Jansson to illustrate the towering Gollum in 1960 and then for Tolkien to react to that and revisit the matter as part of his 1966 tinkering.
That sounds like a very plausible explanation, with the article about Jansson simply saying second where it should say third.
I remember that Tolkien changed Riddles in the Dark pretty substantially in Hobbit 2e, to make it consistent with the new stuff he had invented for LOTR about Bilbo's Ring. We discussed that in readthrough here, and finding that reminded me of squire's excellent essay about the implications of Gollum's caracteristic manner of speaking before it's to do with The One Ring. All fun stuff to rediscover! And the new point I wanted to make was that (while this can't be what is going in with Jansson), 2e TH Gollum might be illustrated rather differenty from 1e Gollum.
Loved the Laima Egliteillustrated hobbuit - wow, those creepy spoders with human hands on the ends of their legs, and the illustration with the Arkenstone.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Sun, 8:30pm
Post #4 of 9
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Some Tolkien illustrations by Frank Franzetta - Not sure his Eowyn would have got away pretending to be Dernhelm though. 
Again though, something different from the visual language we've got used to for Tolkien art.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Sun, 8:59pm
Post #5 of 9
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Not my cup of tea, except Smaug--quite good //
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Sun, 9:02pm
Post #6 of 9
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Frazetta really captured the imagery well, IMO
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Especially the Wi-king vs. Eowyn. The Wi-king isn't even all that much taller or broader than her, but he *feels* so bad and terrible. She doesn't look helpless, but she seems like a mortal outmatched by the supernatural.
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Otaku-sempai
Elvenhome
1:04am
Post #7 of 9
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I can see where Frank Frazetta's illustrations might have served as inspirations for character designs for Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Ring, especially in regards to the hobbits. Bakshi did famously team with Frazetta for his animated swords-and-sorcery film Fire and Ice.
“Hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved.” - Tony Isabella
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noWizardme
Gondolin
10:39am
Post #8 of 9
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I'm going to very much agree...after a few paragraphs. I'm looking again, and working myself around from where I was with this image last time I remember discussing it.
(Which I think was when we did the last readthrough of this bit of LOTR, and squire led the discussion with a post that had many artworks as well as the usual insightful lit crit.. That post is still worth a read, but unfortunately those links to pictures appear to be broken now.)
It's worth checking when in Franzetta's career he did this work:
Commissioned by Middle Earth Publishing in the mid 70's, Frazetta put his own spin on some of Tolkien's most famous characters. The Franzetta Museum website
Of course if you commission Frank Franzetta at that point, he's an established artist with a distinct style (just as Jansson was, differently). You know what he does and presumably you want to see what it looks like done to Tolkien's work.
And that means a Franzetta look that is very much Hollywood movie posters, American fantasy book covers and American graphic art of the time. Just as if the artists of Studio Ghibli did the same scenes it would probably look very 'anime' and thence Japanese.
And therefore of course we get Franzetta's Eowyn and the other characters as if they come from John Carter (Dejah view indeed), or Eowyn is Connie The Barbarian. And I have to turn off the part of my brain that keeps saying 'armour is not beachwear' - it isn't, but the project is on the basis that we don't care about that. (Or are very interested in a skimpily-dressed feminine figure in a faint for reasons that maybe aren't Tolkien appreciation, not directly.  )
Not just sexy fantasy chicks though. Also heading for Muscle Beach I note, are Franzetta's orcs in the seventh illustration in the slide show. Apparently in trunks (which would chafe, surely?) though of course since this is line art and not coloured, they might be wearing hose. Shows off Franzetta's skill at drawing anatomy though - very classical, Leonardo legs.
Now I'm going to stop quibbing about fantasy armour. And I'll agree that, within his muscles-and-curves genre, Franzetta has captured the imagery more than well. Brilliantly, possibly.
In fact, Franzetta has illustrated a particular identifiable moment in Tolkien's text very exactly:
Out of the wreck rose the Black Rider, tall and threatening, towering above her. With a cry of hatred that stung the very ears like venom he let fall his mace. Her shield was shivered in many pieces, and her arm was broken; she stumbled to her knees. He bent over her like a cloud, and his eyes glittered; he raised his mace to kill.
Even the most pedantic asphyxionado could probably only fault Franzetta in that his WK is looming rather than bending.
So yes, this is her moment of maximum vulnerability in a fight that Tolkien has written to see-saw like anything. It's the opposite swing of the pendulum to the previous picture in the slideshow where Eowyn decapitates the fellbeast, showing off her swordsmanship (and excellent glutes), and also Franzetta's skill at dynamic poses.
We could say a lot about Franzetta's skill at composition too.
One point in the discussion squire led was how artists often don't put Merry in to the WK-Eowyn boss fight. In Franzetta's work Merry could be considered to be behind the WKs robe and so 'logically' out of sight. But the other effect I see is to strengthen the feeling of Eowyn being alone and overmastered by a foe beyond any one person on that battlefield -- the moment before the eucatastrophe sets in.
The eucatastrophe sets in, according to Tolkien, because Merry is responding to two things:
Firstly his sworn duty to the King, and his shame that he is too terrified to act now the crisis has come:
Merry crawled on all fours like a dazed beast, and such a horror was on him that he was blind and sick.
'King’s man! King’s man!' his heart cried within him. 'You must stay by him. As a father you shall be to me, you said.' But his will made no answer, and his body shook. He dared not open his eyes or look up.
Then out of the blackness in his mind he thought that he heard Dernhelm speaking; yet now the voice seemed strange, recalling some other voice that he had known.
But also pity and a sense of wonder: a response to what Franzetta is showing us (while also doing the sexy chick in scale-mail rashvest and knickers bit, coz that's the genre we're in now):
Very amazement for a moment conquered Merry’s fear. He opened his eyes and the blackness was lifted from them. There some paces from him sat the great beast, and all seemed dark about it, and above it loomed the Nazgûl Lord like a shadow of despair. A little to the left facing them stood she whom he had called Dernhelm. But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy’s eyes.
...Éowyn it was, and Dernhelm also. For into Merry’s mind flashed the memory of the face that he saw at the riding from Dunharrow: the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope. Pity filled his heart and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided.
Frankly, I do wonder what the other panels would have been like had Franzetta gone on to do the whole fight as a comic book spread. (Especially because Frank Lee would presumably be a composite of Frank Franzetta and Stan Lee.... )
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
10:51am
Post #9 of 9
(206 views)
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I think Franzetta was very influential. His orcs shout "early Citadel D&D minatures" to me, for example. And the style of early Discworld covers by Josh Kirby, which I imagine to begin with have an element of fantasy parody, just as the texts of Colour Of Magic and Light Fantastic do
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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