WATERVILLE — First came the space-traveling clown, then the fictional fortuneteller. Then, the real-life tarot cards.

It’s been a yearlong journey for Doug Thornsjo.

Not too long after the graphic artist and author started his latest novel, about a clown kicked off his home planet who settles into an Earth circus, Thornsjo came up with the idea of designing a tarot card for each chapter heading to foreshadow events.

A friend and tarot practitioner encouraged him to take the next step. Thornsjo sold more than 100 decks in a Kickstarter campaign last month, each card a striking 1950s retro design of circus performers. They are, to his knowledge, the first Maine-designed tarot cards on the market.

“I’ve been astonished, really, that people have been so nice about it,” said Thornsjo, 55. “Just today, I’m shipping out to Thailand. I’m shipping out to Great Britain.”

“See Them Dance” is his second novel, published under his own banner, Duck Soup Productions. Thornsjo writes under the pen name Freder. (“It’s hard to encourage word-of-mouth when no one can pronounce your name,” he says.) The book, released in early December, follows the fantastic adventures of Cranch the clown.

“(He) loses his job thanks to a dust-up with a rather nasty religious order and finds himself booted off the planet and traveling out of control in a spaceship headed to Earth,” Thornsjo said. “He thinks he’s coming to another great circus planet and he’s got an eye-opener coming to him.”

The plot was originally part of a “Sandman” pitch Thornsjo wrote for DC Comics.

“I didn’t get that gig, but I got some good material out of it, so this was a story I’ve been wanting to put down for three decades,” he said. “It’s actually better this way; it’s my own little footprint.”

To craft the artwork, Thornsjo, a novice tarot card reader himself, started with vintage photographs. Many of the faces are black and white with serious expressions and bursts of wines, greens and yellows.

“I tear them apart and reassemble them with other vintage photos and some elements that I create myself; it’s a collage process,” he said.

Each tarot deck includes certain themes. He’s adapted them to the three rings: Adjustment (a woman holding a sword and scales, riding a unicycle on a high wire); The Hanged Man (a performer strung upside down with ropes and chains); The Clown (Cranch seeming to spring from a ladder with his little ruffle-collared dog).

“The Devil was a strong one for me because it features the villian of the book,” Thornsjo said. (The card features tentacles and a sneering, green man.)

He’s designed 22 cards so far, what’s referred to as a major’s deck, and is at work now on another 56 to create a full major’s and minor’s collection for later this year.

“Tarot is good for contemplation,” he said. “It’s good for helping work things through. It’s been wonderful, it’s been the most fun, especially because people have liked it, which is not something that I’m used to.”

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, unexplained and intriguing in Maine. Send ideas, photos and notorious alien clowns to kskelton@sunjournal.com.

Copy the Story Link