The name of H.P. Lovecraft gets bandied about a lot in relation to horror. His influence is palpable in the work of Stephen King, who has been unsparing in crediting the New England cosmic horror author, Charles Stross and even the recent work of Let the Right One In writer John Ajvide Lindqvist has a clear debt to him. Still Lovecraft’s name is most closely associated with pulp fiction and in life he received little recognition for his efforts. So it is fitting that comic creators have continued to find inspiration in the Cthulhu Mythos, encouraging new readers to discover these parables of human insignificance in the face of vast, cthonic horrors and mad gods. From Hellboy to Moore’s Neonomicon Lovecraft’s spirit is alive and well (though a little too alive in the case of the latter example).
Boom! Studios anthology book Cthulhu Tales is a fine introduction to Lovecraft for newcomers, with a lot to offer to established fans too.
The mistake Moore made with Neonomicon was assuming that the repression of the sex urge in Lovecraft’s writing was something worth investigating. If anything it was an obvious conclusion to draw. What is more impressive though is to take the bleak and fatalistic work of Lovecraft and inject notes of comedy into them. Glen Cadigan’s story One of Those Days has a typically Strossian formula – what happens when an IT worker comes face to face with an eldritch computer virus. This mash-up of Office Space and The Call of Cthulhu builds up to a great punchline, one that is no less Lovecraftian. It’s a nice inversion on the typically depressing endings of the writer’s actual stories. Christopher Sequeira’s Incorporation mines similar material, applying the tropes to climbing up a particularly ‘cyclopean‘ corporate ladder. The highlight of the collection though, both comically and in terms of inventiveness, is William Messner-Loebs’ Cthulhu House. This is a laugh-out-loud story that takes the obsession with reality television and marries it to something more …squamous. Michael Alan Nelson’s concluding story On The Wagon features a family intervention with a nasty sting in the tale. Humour is such a rare thing in horror, it is great to see creators balancing their gore with some, perhaps maniacal, grins.
Other stories within the collection trust to the tried and true Lovecraft formula of having a hero be confronted with his own cosmic insignificance and suffering death if he is lucky, otherwise madness. There are also hit and miss contributions, but that’s as true of anthologies generally as it of Lovecraft himself.
It is worth remembering that the reason the New Englander’s name is still known is because he welcomed collaboration, encouraged amateurism and experimentalism. His legacy is to be an essential part of the bedrock of 20th century American horror.
Check out Cthulhu Tales Omnibus: Madness for a hint as to why.
Tags: Alan Moore, Charles Stross, Christopher Sequeira, comic booked, Cthulhu Mythos, cthulhu tales, Cthulhu Tales Omnibus: Madness, Emmet OCuana, Glen Cadigan, H.P. Lovecraft, hellboy, horror fiction, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Neonomicon, Stephen King, William Messner-Loebs
About the Author
Written by Emmet OCuana
What Next?
Digg itSave This Page
Subscribe to ComicBooked
Related Articles