The Collectible Clive Barker
I wanted to start this thread because I think there are quite a few fans of Clive Barker here. I have been collecting Clive Barker books, etc., since 1987 or so; although to be fair I was buying books back then to read, not to display on a shelf in my bedroom. I do not have a massive or ultra-rare collection of Barker related items, but what I have I am happy with. I know there are some of you out there who have some fairly rare or unique items, and I wanted this to be the perfect place to share them.
I'll start things off by posting items from my collection. I'll add to this thread periodically until I've covered most everything that I have. My hope is that others will chime in and post Clive Barker items as well. Anything and everything is welcome, there's no entry restrictions here!
Why Clive Barker?
I came to discover Clive Barker in the same way I'd imagine many others did as well: through Stephen King's famous blurb, "I have seen the future of horror fiction, and his name is Clive Barker." With an endorsement like that, I knew that I had to track this guy down and see what the hubbub was all about. Unfortunately that was easier said than done.
In 1987 -- in the US at least -- Clive Barker was still unknown and it was virtually impossible to find anything written by him in the bookstores of the day. The Books of Blood collection had only just been published -- and only in mass market paperback at that -- so looking in the Barnes & Noble was fruitless. Thankfully, my saving grace was my local comic book shop where I spent so much of my childhood corrupting my mind. This was the same shop where I first laid eyes on a Donald M. Grant edition of Stephen King's The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger less than 2 years before. That holy grail was out of my price range at the time, I believe the shop keeper was asking a hefty $60 for the trade edition. To me, it may as well have cost eleventy-billion dollars; the difference between that and sixty being not that much when you were as broke as I was at fourteen.
The shop keeper listened intently as I rambled on to him about this amazing new horror writer -- that I'd never read -- and how he needed to stock these books immediately! Perhaps it was the passion in my voice -- or the money in my wallet, what little of it there was -- that touched something in him and he agreed to "see what he could do."
A few weeks later during one of my standard Wednesday reconnaissance trips, he called me over to the counter to show me something. When he pulled them out from behind the shelf, they were as beautiful as anything I'd ever seen. You can obviously see how twisted I was as an adolescent if I thought that these covers were "beautiful!"
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/cb_bbus.jpg
Needless to say, I scraped up whatever cash I could find -- I remember running through town checking all of the pay phones and vending machines for spare change -- to buy these beauties and I absolutely devoured them. It was the most incredible horror fiction I had ever read; at once shocking, repulsive, intriguing, and it scared me shitless -- I had to have more. I of course noticed the conspicuous "By The Author of" under the title, and so my next venture was to find a copy of The Damnation Game, but I'll save that story for another time.
Let's start the collection thread! :rock:
Clive Barker's The Books of Blood
I'll start with the collection that made Clive Barker famous; the one that caused both Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King to sit up,
take notice, and fawn over Barker in their blurbs. Ramsey Campbell -- being a fellow Liverpudlian -- even offered to pen the introduction for the Volume I-III omnibus edition.
The Books of Blood have a long, sordid publishing history, but the starting point was the publication of the first three volumes in mass-market paperback by Sphere in 1984.
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/cb1.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/cb2.jpg
These paperbacks touched off a firestorm of controversy and catapulted Barker from a relatively obscure playwright with The Dog Company to an international horror icon.
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/cb3.jpg
The Great and Secret Show
Now we arrive at my single favorite Clive Barker book, The Great and Secret Show. It is very difficult to accurately describe this "First Book of the Art" in general terms. It is a massive story, imaginative and fantastical; not horror, not fantasy, not alternate reality but rather some incredible amalgamation of the three.
There was a lot of publicity behind this book and it was released simultaneously in the U.S. and the UK. Clive Barker signed a lucrative deal with Harper & Row for this novel and four additional novels after this. That contract would cause some consternation many years later.
The first editions of both the U.S. and UK books:
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gss1.jpg
I attended the book signing for this at a Barnes & Noble in New York City. Of course, I brought the UK edition for him to sign as well!
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gss2.jpg
The signed and limited edition of The Great and Secret Show is quite the presentation. Traycased and lined in purple velvet, the book itself almost looks like scripture. It is bound in leather with foil stamped titles and full gilted pages. The endpapers are illustrated by Barker and the book just has a solid, wonderful feel to it.
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gss3.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gss4.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gss5.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gss6.jpg
A story this rich with vivid description called out for a graphic adaptation. IDW published a 12-part comic adaptation of The Great and Secret Show in 2006. With the incredibly talented Gabriel Rodriguez providing the art, Chris Ryall wrote a very faithful adaptation and managed to tell an incredibly complex story eloquently in the graphic format.
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gsscjpghttp://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/gssc.jpg
The Hellbound Heart / Hellraiser
Now we've come to what perhaps is Clive Barker's most famous creation: Hellraiser.
The story behind Hellraiser began as a novella written for the Night Visions anthology series. Titled The Hellbound Heart, the story was published in Night Visions 3, edited by George R. R. Martin and containing stories by Lisa Tuttle and Clive's friend and townsmate Ramsey Campbell.
The limited edition of Night Visions 3:
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/nv1.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/nv2.jpg
20 years later, Earthling publications would revisit the novella by publishing The Hellbound Heart in a limited edition. Sadly, I missed out on the lettered edition, but I am on the lookout for one!
Here is the signed and limited edition:
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/hhl1.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/hhl2.jpg
Clive had optioned five stories from the Books of Blood earlier in his career because he thought the idea of having movies made from his stories was interesting and exciting. Well after two complete disasters in Rawhead Rex and Transmutations, Clive swore that the next time he would make the movie himself. He did exactly that with Hellraiser and the rest, as they say, is history.
Apart from the film franchise, Hellraiser also spawned an incredibly successful comic book series. It ran for quite some time and was one of the top sellers for Epic comics in 1992 and 1993. Graphitti designs released gorgeous hardcover limited editions of the collected issues in 1993:
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/hrl1.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/hrl2.jpghttp://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/hrl3.jpghttp://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/hrl4.jpg
Checker publishing group also released a "collected best" series of graphic novels containing selected stories from the Hellraiser run. I had Clive sign all 3 of them at the San Diego Comic Con a few years ago:
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/hrc.jpg
And of course, how can you talk about Hellraiser without talking about the ubiquitous Lament Configuration Box that was such an iconic image in the films. Here is a custom replica I acquired directly from the same company that did the production design for Hellraiser IV: Bloodline.
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/lament_box.jpg
http://www.ricperrott.com/pictures/cb/nv.jpg