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Drawing Fort: Fort: Prophet Of The Unexplained

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comic about Charles Fort

In the arena of comics, Dark Horse is currently soliciting orders for Lenkov's upcoming Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained, based on the real-life exploits of a late 19th century paranormal investigator.

"Charles Fort was such a fascinating character -- investigating unexplained phenomena in New York circa 1900," Lenkov said. "The comic is a fun ride...with history happening in the background: Governor Teddy Roosevelt plays a big role, as well as a young street urchin who helps Fort, a kid who inspired by his Fortean adventures turns out to be a fiction writer later in life. His name -- H.P. Lovecraft.

"Must say this has been so much fun to write."

source - http://comics2film.com/StoryFrame.php?f_id=534
 
Some more on it. Caution possible spoilers

Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained! #1 (of 4)

By: Peter M. Lenkov & Frazer Irving
Cover by: Frazer Irving

Lo! A mighty prophet of the unexplained has come forward to search out the truth and light the way for mankind! It's the end of the 19th century and the city of New York has been plagued by fish falling from the sky, strange lights in the night, bizarre collections of microbial goo, and vanishing citizens! It's up to one man to expose the truth behind these events...Charles Fort! A mild mannered librarian by day, Fort seeks out the truth and exposes the bizarre to the light of day! The real Charles Fort was one of first true investigators of the unusual and the paranormal. In this series, his heretofore unknown adventures can finally be revealed! Part Indiana Jones, part Fox Mulder, his most powerful weapon is his open mind!

Published June 12, 2002
b&w, 24pg (1 of 4)
$2.99

http://www.darkhorse.com/products/pg_profile/sku_11762/sec_search/index.html

Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained! #2 (of 4)

By: Peter M. Lenkov & Frazer Irving
Cover by: Frazer Irving

A mysterious killer stalks the streets of New York City and it's up to Charles Fort, Prophet of the Unexplained, to stop the strange murders. Only with the assistance of an otherworldly being will Fort be able to close in on his prey and reveal the truth behind the killer's identity. But first the duo will have to escape the suspicion of City Hall and the clutches of the NYPD! Untold stories from the files of the father of paranormal investigation! Don't miss a single thrilling issue!

Published July 10, 2002
b&w, 24pg (2 of 4)
$2.99

http://www.darkhorse.com/products/pg_profile/sku_11765/sec_search/index.html
 
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Methinks it be purely tounge in cheek, with Fort being portrayed as a pulp action hero...

COOL!

Niles ":D" Calder
 
charles fort comicbook

I was pleasantly surprised to find this on the shelf at the comics shop this week.

FORT: prophet of the unexplained. Written by Peter M Lenkov and drawn by Frazer Irving.

I hadn’t heard anything about this comic before and I’ve heard of neither Irving nor Lenkov, but since it was a comic about Charles fort I decided to give it a try.

The premise is a funny league of extraordinary gentleman kind of thing, Charles Fort was apparently really as a Indiana Jones type adventurer and keeper of mysterious secretes that mankind is not ready to know, he merely disguised a fuddy New York city library employee who collected newspaper clippings as a cover for his secrete activities. Also young H.P. Lovecraft was his boy sidekick ala the Spirit and Ebony or Dr.jones and shortround.

In this issue Mr. fort uncovers some mysterious creature from outer space is going around murdering distinguished members of the business community. It’s kind of goofy thus far but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be goofy, it’s a 4 issue mini series, ($2.99 US, $4.99 CAN and god only knows in the rest of the world) from Dark horse comics.

Well worth taking a look at fro anyone on this board I’d say.
 
Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained! #1 (of 4):
http://www.darkhorse.com/products/pg_profile/sku_11762/sec_search/index.html

Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained! #2 (of 4):
http://www.darkhorse.com/products/pg_profile/sku_11765/sec_search/index.html

http://comics2film.com/StoryFrame.php?f_id=534
In the arena of comics, Dark Horse is currently soliciting orders for Lenkov's upcoming Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained, based on the real-life exploits of a late 19th century paranormal investigator.

"Charles Fort was such a fascinating character -- investigating unexplained phenomena in New York circa 1900," Lenkov said. "The comic is a fun ride...with history happening in the background: Governor Teddy Roosevelt plays a big role, as well as a young street urchin who helps Fort, a kid who inspired by his Fortean adventures turns out to be a fiction writer later in life. His name -- H.P. Lovecraft.

"Must say this has been so much fun to write."

Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained features artwork by Frazer Irving. It's due in comic stores in June.
http://comics2film.com/ImageFrame.php3?f_filename=images/Fort1Cover.jpg
 
Charles Fort/Hp LoveCraft comic in USA

Is the new Darkhorse comic just a reprint of the 2000ad series or a new storyline?
It wasn't bad but I would prefer to see Fort and Lovecraft in The Leaque of Extraodinary Gentleman (see Esoterica Forum) who are currently battling H.G Wells Martians......along with Gulliver and John Carter!!
 
Possible Spoilers

I have been buying the comic in question. If you want more information and buy the Fortean Times magazine it is mentioned in the North American edition (9/11 Conspiracy edition) just out. There is already a new edition out in the UK, so it would now be a back issue there.

I have the first three issues of four. It is black and white, very artsey, and the story line involves Fort, his boy-wonder H.P. Lovecraft, and Governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt battling a man-eating virus (the size of a rhino and twice as testy) with the help of Fort's alien friend.

Not exactly my usual cup of tea, but the idea of Fort, Roosevelt and Lovecraft knowing each other is cute.
 
Its not bad. Tightly scripted as the review in FT states. But a bit more room in the story for future developments would have been good. As its only a 4 parter you can't expect it to be brimming with backstory or threads for the future.

I'd be interested in seeing another set with the characters built on. He makes an odd superhero!
 
Two threads merged, and result moved into Charles Fort forum.
 
Fort

Anyone been following the Dark Horse comic-book adventurs of Charlie Fort,
or are your tastes more refined. Joking aside, the first issue was quite impressive. But the two note plus price-tag stifled my enthusiasm. Any afficianados of the panelled narrative care to divulge the rest of the rollicking
adventure. I would also urge a reading of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which, although not overtly Fortean, ought to have some appeal.
Mina Harker, Fu Manchu, Jekyll and Hyde, Captain Nemo and other victorian
icons deluge its pages with delirious pleasures. A 19thC literary trainspotter's
dream!
 
Its not exactly Fortean, but Brian Lynch's Monkey Man character is based roughly off THE Monkey Man of New Delhi.
And he has a 3 part comic book!

Monkey Man Unleashed
 
I didn't find a topic on this but as I'm working on a little feature related to this so I thought I'd get the discussion rolling.

Although he seems an unlikely hero he has been the inspiration for two comic series:

Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained by Peter Lenkov (writing) and Frazeer Irving (art)

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/18402 ... ntmagaz-21
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1569717 ... enantmc-20
Titan:
www.titanbooks.com/actionadven.html#fort

In 1899 a slim more adventorous Fort hunts down an unusual killer.

Necronauts by Gordon Rennie (wriitng) and Frazer Irving (art)

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/19042 ... ntmagaz-21
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904265 ... enantmc-20
2000AD:
www.2000adonline.com/?zone=reprint&page ... necronauts

In 1926 Houdini stumbles across something dark and calls in help from Fort, Lovecraft and Conan Doyle to help defeat the forces of darkness.

Although written by different people for different publications they are both excellent (I personally prefer Necronauts with its Lovecraftian horror) both been drawn by Frazer Irving and actually work well together.

You can see examples of the pages via Frazer's homepage (nav is a bit confusing - go to galleries [forehead] and comics [top left] and the two are on the top row third and sixth in from the left):
www.frazerirving.com

and you can buy prints from the 2000AD incarnation:
www.2000ad.org/frazer/
 
My interview with Frazer Irving and reviews of the graphic novels (and Owen's review of the first issue from the mag) is now up here:

www.forteantimes.com/exclusive/irving.shtml

Includes some discussion on a possible film - more info can be found here:

www.comics2film.com/ProjectFrame.php?f_id=243

Another interview with Frazer:

www.2000adreview.co.uk/features/irving/ ... iew1.shtml

and Gordon Rennie (who wrote the 2000AD one) explains a bit more about the influences:

NECRONAUTS:

Q: Isn't Necronauts rather similar to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kev O'Neill?

A: (From the keys of Gordon Rennie)
The LoEG comparisons kind of rankle, so I'm going to head this one off right at the start. Necronauts, in more or less the form in which it is
appearing in 2000AD - ie, Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, HP Lovecraft and (Charles Fort) team up to fight the Cthulhu Mythos - was originally something I was going to do for Tundra UK, way back in 1991, at the beginning of a then-promising career. Which means it pre-dates LoEG by, what, 7 or 8 years? I've still got some Tundra publicity stuff from that time that lists it as a forthcoming series, and I think it was mentioned in an ancient old Comics World feature or interview.

I did however steal the title from Alan Moore. In the notes to From Hell
#1he describes Ian Sinclair (whose Whitechapel Scarlet Tracings was one of the inspirations for FH) as a 'necronaut'. Great word, I thought, and
promptly nicked it. AM didn't seem to mind. At the time, Tundra UK were
trying to get him to work for them and word filtered back to me that he
noticed the Necronauts title ("I thought I invented that word." was the
exact quote, IIRC) and that, from what he'd heard from Tundra, Necronauts 'sounded like the kind of thing he'd enjoy reading.'

www.2000ad.nu/linksproject/index.php3?z ... &page=faq2

-----
Some discussion of our ideas for a film about Fort can be found here:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23349
 
Owen dug out some older mentions of this - I threw in his review of the first issue of Fort that appeared in the mag but there was also an editorial (FT145:4) which couldn't really comfortably be fitted in with the feature but it was prompted by the release of Necronauts and I thought as I had it around I'd throw it in here as it is interesting:

UP IN LIGHTS

It's always a buzz to see your name in print and, no matter how famous or infamous you might be, the fascination never really palls. Since our first issue, we have credited everyone who contributed to that issue; it means a lot to our devoted army of clipsters and is our way of saying thanks. The staff of Fortean Towers are, likewise, not immune to a puff of pride on catching a glimpse of themselves and, over the years, this literary mirror has ranged from Private Eye and New Scientist to the National Enquirer (which blamed us for their own credulity over the 'Civil War pterodactyl' photograph) and Arab News (which, in commenting on some arcane political development declared it "a development strange enough for the Fortean Times"). Even more gratifying is that, on several occasions, passages from FT have been requested for use as examples of interesting and clear writing by organizations teaching English as a foreign language.

In 1984, Ken Campbell wrote a TV play, Unfair Exchanges, about the global phone networks becoming sentient which featured FT and, in the US, Fox once requested permission to show copies of FT (all too briefly) in Mulder's bedroom in one episode of Trie X-Files. Fort and his writing were also central to Paul Thomas Anderson's acclaimed 1999 movie Magnolia. Perhaps inevitably, we've made more impact in fiction and comics. A number of books cite strange data from our pages and have recognised the cultural value of FT as a public forum for discussion of the weirdness of our existence; an example is Mark Chadbourn's recent fantasy novels about the return of ancient Celtic gods, World's End and Darkest Hour.

One of us (Bob) has fond memories of coffee with Neil Caiman, during which we mugged up an opening to an unwritten adventure that begins in the round Reading Room of the old British Museum. We imagined Karl Marx, Aleister Crowley and Charles Fort - who all worked there (though admittedly not at the same time) - each receiving books meant for one of the others. We remembered this when several readers recently brought to our attention a fortean story series currently running in the UK comic 2000 AD. Written by Gordon Rennie and drawn by Frazer Irving, 'Necronauts' features the adventures of an occult crime investigation team comprising Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, HP Lovecraft and Charles Fort. In its 'Judge Dredd' series the same comic, years back, included an Institute for Fortean Research.

The usual photo of Fort at the bottom of the editorial was replaced with Frazer Irving's gun-toting Fort in issues 145, 146 and 147.
 
I found another one - The Searchers in which Fort assembles a group of writers H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle (again) and brings their literary creations to life to form a proto-League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:

www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/searchers.htm
 
It's just about doable time-line wise, though Jules Verne was by far the oldest 20-35 years older than the others and died 1905.

You could fit in Henry Rider Haggard as well.
 
The Lenkov/Irving graphic novel leapt off the library shelf into my willing arms - I wasn't looking for it, and suddenly there it was - and I've just finished it. Fort seemed an unlikely subject for what is, let's not be coy, a comic, but there is a lot to enjoy: the enthusiastic application of comic-book tropes, the portrait of another artist as a young man, the explanation for falls of fish, the portrayal of Fort himself as a man of dauntless action. The climax of the book (not to be confused with the ending) is genuinely moving, and brings with it a sentiment that will simultaneously gladden the Fortean heart and sadden it that the words are, if anything, truer than ever today. Thoroughly recommended.
 
I`d like to see a Sherlock & Fort team up who investigate and then pursue Spring Heeled Jack.
 
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