Penny Dreadful
- sensation novel cover
- shilling shocker
- yellowback
A lurid wood-engraved scene at the worst possible moment, under a screaming title.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
Penny dreadfuls were the first mass entertainment aimed at people with almost no money, and everything about the design shouts for attention on a crowded stall.
That makes them useful now for exactly the same job: a poster that has to beat twenty others on a noticeboard.
How it works
Draw one scene at the worst moment: a figure recoiling, a hand at a throat, a door opening onto something. Nothing calm.
Engrave it crudely with heavy cross-hatching, printed too hard on cheap yellowed pulp paper so the line thickens.
Add flat garish red and yellow printed off register over the black. The title fills the top third in an enormous shadowed display face, with a screaming subtitle in quotation marks underneath.
When to use it
Use it for a ghost walk, a murder mystery, a Halloween event, a horror film night, a true crime talk, a melodrama.
Leave it alone for anything gentle. The style promises a shock and the audience will expect one.
Told apart from its neighbours
Victorian broadside is pure type with no picture. Penny dreadful is built around the picture.
Fine engraving is delicate and authoritative. This is the cheap version, printed badly on purpose.
Heavy metal posters do the same melodrama a century later with airbrush and chrome.
- Victorian Broadside
- Etching / Engraving
- Heavy Metal Concert Poster
Where it was used
The String of Pearls, which gave the world Sweeney Todd, was serialised in 1846 and is the archetype. Yellowback novels sold at railway stations used the same garish two-colour printing, and the format ran until cinema took the audience.
- Sweeney Todd serials
- The String of Pearls
- Victorian yellowbacks
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own event, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
poster for <event>, Victorian penny dreadful cover, one lurid wood-engraved scene caught at the moment of maximum peril with a figure recoiling, crude cross-hatched engraving printed heavily on cheap yellowed pulp paper, garish flat red and yellow printed slightly off register over the black line, an enormous shadowed display title filling the top third, a screaming subtitle in quotation marks, decorative rule, <date, time and place> in small crowded type at the foot
What goes wrong
The model returns a tasteful Victorian illustration. Ask for a lurid scene at the moment of maximum peril, crudely engraved and printed too heavily.
The second failure is clean printing. Say cheap yellowed pulp paper with flat red and yellow printed off register over the black line.
Leave out
subtlety, restraint, clean paper, modern type, empty space
Watch for
It has to be melodramatic. A calm scene turns it into an ordinary Victorian illustration.
Questions
Print it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
Next to it in few inks, drawn by hand
