The Borisography: K

Finnish Mythology: The giant Kalevanpojat was created by the goddess Ailej from burned trees after a forest fire, and had the ability to turn fertile land into heaps of stones, or wasteland into marshy meadows, with his magic sickle.

It appears inverted in the Best of Boris set.

In Icelandic mythology, an enormous spider named Cariden possessed an enchanted golden sword that would grant its owner any wish that was spoken out loud. Cariden would hang the sword in her web to lure winged fairies inside where they would be trapped and devoured. The brave and bewitching fairy Kamal tricked Cariden by entrancing her with fascinating stories. When she was close to the sword, Kamal touched it and it became hers. She then killed Cariden and became queen of the fairies.

The kicker is modelled by Julie Bell, and the kickee by Cathy Thole, another great artist trained by Boris.

Apparently the first edition had to be recalled for editorial changes, but not until over 100,000 had been sent to book stores etc, making it a bit of a collector's item.

You might want to look at the sculpture shown in the top-left corner of the painting – here's a close-up for those of you whose eyes are not up to the task.

The UK artist Oliver Tupton produced a small (approximately 22cm high) sculpture based on this design. Resin casts were available in at least three colours: Ivory (off-white with golden snakes,) overall pewter and overall bronze finishes.

Boris has a picture of Boris posed for this painting: he's wearing a rented suit of armour and sitting on a rocking horse! Very undignified but, if the painting is anything to go by, it served its purpose well.

The painting is undated but FABV gives the year as 1976.

Curiously, the painting appears to be unsigned whereas the poster definitely shows Boris' signature at bottom left.

Painted 1980.

Boris did at least two other paintings for the company in 2001 and 2003 respectively. They were both for their Excel Sword range of thermal printing plates and therefore showed warrior types wielding swords. This painting shows a laser-equiped scorpion so presumably is for a different product range.

This was the second painting for this same product. I don't have a copy of that artwork but see The Conqueror Comes for a modified version.

Norse Mythology: In a moment of drunkenness, Krungnir the Giant challenged Thor the Thunder God to a fight. Krungnir then decided to improve his chances of defeating Thor by having an even larger giant (nine miles and one furlong high) built out of clay. During the confrontation, Krungnir hurled a huge whetstone at Thor. But he had not counted on Thor's magic hammer, which collided with the whetstone, smashed it to bits, and went on to cleave Krungnir's skull in two. The clay man, seeing this, trembled so violently that he disintegrated into dust.