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I promised yesterday a peek at the extraordinary Alexander King illustrations for William Seabrook’s 1929 tome The Magic Island, and here you go. The above illustration is among my personal favorites from the book; the art director/publisher at Harcourt, Brace and Company must have felt the same, as a portion of the illustration was used on the cloth cover of the first edition.

Alas, that’s among the least of the accomplishments in his lifetime, which sadly ended in suicide — but such is history.

Just as A.A. Milne would have been appalled to know Winnie the Pooh would be his lasting mark on the culture, Seabrook undoubtably would have considered introducing zombies to the world as a footnote, at best.

After all, he trafficked with the likes of Aleister Crowley, the Bedouin, Druses, the Dervishes and the Kurdish Yazidi; his exploration of the Haitian Culte des Mortes was just one adventure among many, including his self-incarceration in Westchester County, NY’s Bloomingdale (which he wrote about in the best-seller Asylum, 1935).

As you can see yourself, Alexander King’s illustrations reflected the racial archetypes of their era, but they’re still absolutely stunning works.

King (1900-1965) was as colorful and outrageous a character as Seabrook, in his way –

Well, I don’t know about the more flamboyant claims made about King and his life — definitely a subject for further research. I love his art and his books, and wish I could find more; I don’t care what’s said or written about him by others, sans any means of determining truth from fiction (or slander).

Though his stylized Magic Island illustrations remain his best-known work, as an artist he worked in a variety of media and in many styles.

His color paintings were quite lavish and utterly unlike the bold, primal black-and-white art he created for Seabrook’s seminal voodoo tome.

It’s sad that so little is known of King or his work today. A proper retrospective volume is long overdue, and would be an eye-popping treat.

King was also a fairly prolific and very entertaining writer, having authored a quartet of sardonically humorous autobiographical books (May This House Be Safe from Tigers, Mine Enemy Grows Older, I Should Have Kissed Her More, and Is There Life After Birth). I’ve read two of them, and they’re pretty amazing reads, highly recommended.

Like Seabrook, though, King must have been an unusual fellow to deal with on any sane level. What a character!

Striking and iconic as the King illustrations remain, The Magic Island is also peppered with memorable (indeed, indelible) photos — the first photographs of voodoo culture ever published.

These are still fascinating images. Only much later, in the 1950s, would another American artist — the great Maya Deren, godmother of the American underground film movement — explore this religion, its people and its beliefs with similar zeal. In fact, Deren went much, much further, adopting the religion as her own. She shot extensive film footage of her experiences — though never edited into a coherent whole in her lifetime, the posthumously assembled The Divine Horsemen is currently available on DVD from Mystic Fire, and recommended — and wrote a remarkable book, The Divine Horsemen, about that period of her life. I recommend Deren’s book to anyone seriously interested in this religion; it is absolutely the best book ever written on the subject.

Deren, however, was a more enlightened and devout explorer than Seabrook ever was or could be. It was Seabrook’s unabashed and utterly shameless yellow journalism that fueled the voodoo and zombie pop culture to follow.

The Magic Island, for all its racism and sensationalism, remains an essential text. It’s worth owning a copy just to savor ground zero of all pop zombie culture, which has grown into the 21st industry it is today.

It was Seabrook and King who established the archetype for all time.

Those of you who are Saga of the Swamp Thing fans out there may recognize the Alexander King illustrations as the images I worked into the two-part zombie story Alan Moore scripted for John Totleben, Alfredo Alcala and I to illustrate back in 1985.

You see, I grew up with The Magic Island among my most prized possessions, and when Alan, John, Alfredo and I took our stab at telling our own zombie tale, I couldn’t resist incorporating King’s emblematic illustrations into the pages of our story. Only two fans I’ve met over the years ever noticed this — hopefully, this long overdue showcase and brief essay will rectify that once for all time.

This is where zombie pop culture began… and so much more.