Alan Robert’s The Beauty of Horror Tarot Card Set has 12 Hours to Fund on Kickstarter
IDW and Alan Robert are expanding the bestselling line of coloring books, The Beauty of Horror, with a devilishly delightful Tarot Card Set — available to order right now as part of a Kickstarter campaign! The campaign has just 12 hours to go to reach its funding goal.
This first-ever Beauty of Horror Kickstarter gives fans of coloring books, mystical predictions, and macabre monsters the opportunity to acquire the Tarot Card Set as either a fully-colored card deck or a black-and-white deck perfect for coloring! And, of course, there’s also the option for the most dedicated devotee of divination to get both sets — because why should you have to choose?
- The “Fear Your Future” Deck is a traditional tarot set featuring art by Alan Robert and pre-colored by Jay Fotos, measuring the standard tarot card size of 70mm x 120mm and including a guidebook.
- The “Color Your Destiny” Deck follows the Beauty of Horror adult coloring book tradition by offering tarot cards, printed on premium cardstock paper, with line art by Alan Robert. Oversized for best illustrative results, these cards measure 90mm x 154mm and come packaged with a guidebook.
Inspired by the classic Rider-Waite tarot deck published in 1910, Alan Robert has fashioned the Beauty of Horror Tarot Card Set with 78 cards per deck, with 22 Major Arcana cards (featuring such classic cards as The Magician, The Lovers, The Hanged Man, and more, plus a special appearance of Beauty of Horror icon Ghouliana as The Empress) and 56 Minor Arcana cards.
Supporters of this crowdfunding campaign will receive several free “Ghouliana’s Ghastly Gifts” as a reward, many of which will be exclusive through Kickstarter! In addition to these special gifts with purchase, fans will have an opportunity to upgrade their experience with a Beauty of Horror themed tarot cloth as well as a “Draw Your Own Terror” deck.
We’ve also been provided exclusive commentary from Robert about Beauty of Horror and its terrifying influences.
Q: Where do all of these fantastic gory images originate from? Do you picture these images in your dreams (or nightmares)?
Alan Robert: I think I’ve always had a bit of a twisted sensibility… it’s in my DNA, and I have definitely had some vivid and extremely graphic dreams in my life that have influenced my art over the years. I can think back to my high school days of drawing horrific monsters in my notebook sitting inside the school cafeteria. My friends would hover around me to see what gory scene I’d draw up next… Man, I’ve been into horror for as long as I can remember. I’m also a product of all the 80s horror flicks… which certainly didn’t help the situation! My favorites back then were A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser, Evil Dead, The Thing, Chainsaw Massacre, and all the zombie Living Dead movies. Later on, I got into the more psychological horror like The Shining and Jacobs Ladder. But, the one movie that really got me into horror… the one movie that made the biggest impact on me was The Amityville Horror.
I begged my parents to watch that movie when it came on HBO for the first time in the 80s, but I had never seen an R-rated movie at that early age. It came on and I literally lasted about 30 seconds. The opening title credits with the haunting chants scared the pants off of me and I ran back to my room to hide under the covers. The thing that scarred me the worst was that I was forced to listen to the entire movie through the thin walls of our Brooklyn home! I think my imagination went wild and proved to be WAY scarier than the actual movie. I STILL remember how scared I was that night. I think that one event triggered my entire fascination with horror.
Q: When you were little, what were you afraid of?
AR: Living in a rough part of Brooklyn in the 70s and early 80s, I think I was probably most afraid of getting robbed or beaten up by street gangs in the neighborhood. A bunch of my friends had been jumped by that point, waiting for the bus, and my bike had been stolen from my backyard shed, so I remember feeling pretty scared about that… especially riding the subway to school.
Q: Can you share a quick story about Halloween in your own life? Is there a page in your newest book (The Beauty of Horror: Tricks and Treats) that reminds you of that?
AR: I can remember a few times as a kid, watching a horror movie in my room and seeing something strange out of the corner of my eye, as if I was being watched. Sometimes it turned out just to be my own reflection in my pet lizard’s tank. But there was this one night around Halloween… I was like 16 or so, where I was in bed, getting ready to doze off and I felt a finger touch my nose. I immediately jumped out of bed and turned all the lights on. I tore the place apart looking for someone hiding in my closet or the bathroom. I was absolutely convinced that someone was there and was messing with me. But once I came to the realization that I was alone, I got really scared. Was it a ghost that was trying to connect with me? It makes me wonder what really happened that night. Everyone knows the feeling of a touch… this was not the feeling of a blanket or a pillow that accidentally touched my face… it felt like a finger!
There is a page in The Beauty of Horror “Tricks and Treats” coloring book where Ghouliana is seen grabbing a doll out of the hands of an unhappy girl through the reflection in a mirror. This ghostly connection of an evil spirit reaching through a mirror into the human world kind of reminds me of that night.