counter-images

I never read with reversed cards, because I've always felt like doing so would compromise clarity.

However, it occurs to me that many of these images have reverse or upside-down meanings, and that some of these are seen as commonplace images in popular culture. For example, here is the anti-queen of hearts, drawn towards the middle of the 19th century, by John Tenniel, to illustrate Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures Underground."

And here is Carroll's less finished, and less comical, but decidedly scarier version of the same subject. It conveys the same nightmarish and at the same time slapstick impression as the rest of the book.

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