Lives of the Great Occultists

Since the dawn of humanity, there have been individuals who want to mess around with Hidden Powers - with the Occult. Some were Mystics, some were Scientists, some were Charlatans. Some were Powerful, some were Wretched. All were pretty bonkers. From Dr. Dee to Kenneth Anger, from Mother Shipton to Madam Blavatsky, from Isaac Newton to David Bowie - centuries of eccentric, bizarre lives. Kevin Jackson and Hunt Emerson have made over 100 pages of comics dealing with the Lives of the Great Occultists. Over 40 Occultists in all, including Faust, Giordano Bruno, Strindberg, Isobel Gowdie, Kircher, William Blake, PL Travers, WB Yeats, Jack Parsons, and - repeatedly - Aleister Crowley. The comics are factual, and very funny.

Hunt Emerson (born 1952) is a cartoonist living and working in Birmingham, England. He was closely involved with the Birmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the British underground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s. Rip Off Press published his Thunderdogs title; while Don and Maggie Thompson included him in their mini-comic series, for which he created Calculus Cat. Emerson's art also appeared in the U.S. underground/alternative anthologies Commies from Mars and Eclipse Monthly. His graphic novels Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Casanova's Last Stand and other adaptations of classic novels and tales have been sold in numerous countries, and translated into several different languages. For over 30 years Hunt Emerson's strips and illustrations have graced the pages of Fortean Times, a magazine of occult and unexplained phenomena, while his pornographically humorous Firkin the Cat (written by Tym Manley) has appeared in hundreds of Fiesta magazines. Kevin Jackson was born in London in 1955 and is a writer, broadcaster, filmmaker and pataphysician. Educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK he went on to teach in the English department at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN before joining the BBC as a radio producer then a TV documentary director. As a freelance writer he has collaborated across multi-media including TV, radio, press and comics including a book-length version of 'Dante's Inferno'. He was among the founder members of the London Institute of Pataphysics and holds the Ordre de la Grande Gidouille from the college of Pataphysics in Paris, France. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Companion of the Guild of St George and was visiting professor at University College, London, UK from 2009 - 2011.