Well. . . when I was in my early adolescence, I had a series of fairly serious illnesses and I had to be taken out of school. I spent a great deal o f time in bed, entertaining myself by reading everything 1 could get my hands on. It’s strange, but I don’t know how I ever got my hands on Weird Tales because it was strictly frowned on in my family—it was trash! But somehow, I did and I was thoroughly delighted with them. They were a brand new marvelous world. I’m sure I must have been thinking about those things for some years after I recovered. . . after I had finally gone through school and college. I had to stop college after three semesters and was very fortunate in finding a job. Still, I hadn’t done a lot of writing in this field, although I had written a bit for my own amusement at various times-melodramatic stuff, very adolescent and fun to do. —C. L. Moore, “Interview: C. L. Moore Talks To Chacal” in Chacal #1 (26)
Catherine Lucille Moore’s first professional publication in pulp magazines was “Shambleau” (1933), in the pages of Weird Tales. The immense acclaim of her initial spate of stories from 1933-1940, when she married Henry Kuttner, has become part of the legendry of pulp fiction. Yet while C. L. Moore seems to have emerged full-grown like Aphrodite upon the waves, what this really means is that a great deal of what she wrote before she began her professional pulp career has sadly been lost—either never published, or published and largely forgotten.
The earliest such work is technically juvenilia, though it extended into adulthood:
Ever since we were about nine a friend and I have been evolving a romantic island kingdom and populating it with a race which, inevitably, is a remnant of Atlanteans. We’ve a very detailed theology and mythology, maps all water-colored and scroll-bordered and everything, a ruling house whose geneology and family tree and so forth has been worked out in tbales and charts from the year minus—oh, just about everything that two imaginative girls could think of over the space of fifteen years. (Heavens, has it been that long?) We have songs and long sagas of heroes, and a literature full of tradition and legends, and we even made and colored a series of paper dolls to illustrate the different types and their costumes, and then there were wars and plans of battle, and we have the maps of all our favorite cities, and we’ve written a good deal of history. And that history is what I take seriously.
We centered on a favorite period, around 1200-1250, and the history gradually became the biography of the outstanding man of that generation, and for the past ten years at least I have been writing, off and on, about this rather picaresque hero and his adventures. If I think of it I’ll send you a sample or two. It mostly comes in short snatches, just as the mood seized me. And of course a lot of it is romantically school-girlish, and a lot full of undergraduate tragics, because it’s grown up with me and has a long way to grow yet.
Odear, now you have me started—I hadn’t thought of this for nearly a year, since my friend moved out of town and I took up the fantasy writing. Gee, it was fun. The hero’s name was Dalmar j’Penyra, and he had red hair and black eyes and was a priate and a duke and a mighty lover and quite invincible in anything he chose to undertake. How we used to thrill over his escapades. He died in 1256, at the age of 35 (that seemed to use the absolute ultimate at which a man might remain even remotely interesting) and we almost wept whenever we thought of it. Bless him, he does seem awfully real. We used to make sad little songs about it—The girls who died for Dalmar, tonight they sleep a chill—the honey lips are dust now, the throbbing throats are still, and peace is on the high hearts that beat for him so warm, and peace is on the black heads that lay on Dalmar’s arm. Their hearts have ceased from sorrowing, their tears no longer fall—the narrow bed, the cold bed, the grave enfolds them all. Oh, girls who died for Dalmar, and lie tonight so low— —C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 10 Sep 1934, MSS. Brown Digital Repository
In a later interview, Moore specified this friend was her cousin:
What happened was that I had a cousin with whom I was very close, and we used to make up romantic tales of mythical kingdoms. We would take, long, long walks in the neighborhood under the trees—it was a lovely time in the world to be alive—and we each worked out or own fantasy kingdom with dashing young heroes and lots of swashbuckling adventure. Then we began separately to write it out. It was not anything that either of us considered offering for publication; it never occurred to us. I found some of it not too long ago, some writing from back in my early teens. The writing style has not changed very much except for one thing: I never said anything once when I could say it five times. It was intolerably dull to read. The writing is all right, but the repetition is hideous!
[…]
I think my cousin with whom I developed the mythical kingdom and I would have gone on in that Vein if she hadn’t had to move away and if I hadn’t had the job. But it was there, and it would have to have come out one way or another. —”CA Interview,” Contemporary Authors vol. 104 (1982), 326-327
Bits and pieces of these poems about Dalmar j’Penyra are included in some of Moore’s letters to R. H. Barlow and H. P. Lovecraft in the period, and those fragments to Lovecraft in Letters to C. L. Moore and Othersare the only ones published. Moore did not publish much poetry during her pulp career, but like many other Weird Talers she had a knack for it. One poem believed to have come from Moore’s typewriter made it into newsprint:
The Spirit of St. Louis with pilot Charles Lindbergh had completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927; pilots could be heroes in the 1920s, and there is more than a hint of fantasy in this verse.
At age 18, C. L. Moore enrolled at the local Indiana University and took classes for three semesters (Fall 1929, Spring 1930, and Fall 1930). However, Black Tuesday struck in October 1929, signalling the beginning of the Great Depression, and her family’s finances required her to leave school and gain employment, which she did. While associated with the university, however, Moore contributed to its school magazine The Vagabond, publishing three short stories: “Happily Ever After” (The Vagabond Nov 1930), “Semira” (The Vagabond Mar 1931), and “Two Fantasies” (The Vagabond Apr 1931). The University has since made these public domain materials available online.
In 2013, these three stories saw print commercially in the Galaxy’s Edge magazine, issues #2 (May 2013, “Happily Ever After”), #3 (July 2013, “Two Fantasies”), and #6 (January 2014, “Semira”), as well as best-of and omnibus editions.
None of these fragments and short works—the Dalmar stories, “The Spirit of St. Louis” poem, or the three amateur fantasies during her brief university period—have any obvious direct connection with C. L. Moore’s pulp fiction. That is, Northwest Smith does not appear to be Dalmar j’Penyra with a raygun, and if there was a prototype of the flame-haired Jirel of Joiry, she isn’t obvious. (There are certain interesting parallels between Dalmar and Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis, but Moore is not known to have had a hand in those stories and the parallels might well be coincidental.) Yet what these works make clear is that before C. L. Moore made her pulp debut she had already done years of prep work, reading and writing fantasy and adventure stories, developing her poetic sense, crafting the skills that would serve her well in her pulp career.
Such insight into developing writers is rare; readers today might be a bit spoiled with how much of the early and private work, even the juvenilia, of pulp writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith is available for the right price. Most pulpsters, however, are blanks before their professional debut. We are fortunate to have these early examples of C. L. Moore’s work, which give us a glimpse at her process and development. For while she would polish her prose and improve her style and speed during her legendary career, it is evident that she was building on a foundation that went right back to childhood fantasy worlds, drawing on her love of fantasy, mythology, and adventure until—at last—she took the chance to submit something for publication.
France, 1974. Jean Giraud (Mœbius), Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and Bernard Farkas came together to create Les Humanoïdes Associés, a publisher for a new type of comic magazine: Métal Hurlant (“Howling Metal,” 1974-1987). Initially released as a quarterly and focused on science fiction, Métal Hurlant featured some of the best international comic artists of its time, as well as some of the most daring content, not just featuring sex, drugs, and rock & roll—but humor, horror, gory violence, politics, and philosophy.
The magazine was successful enough to inspire spin-offs in other countries, largely based, at least initially, on material translated from Métal Hurlant. So in the United States and Commonwealth countries, Anglophones could read Heavy Metal (1977-2023), with various special issues, spin-offs, graphic novels, and other projects; in Italy, the localized version of Métal Hurlant lasted only 12 issues (1981-1983), with several standalone Metal Extra issues, though the sister magazine Totem lasted longer (1980-1984). In West Germany, Schwermetall (“Heavy Metal,” 1980-1984) lasted a respectable 57 issues under its first publisher, and eventually ran to issue 219/220 (1998). Spain had their own translation of Métal Hurlant in the 1980s, the Netherlands had Zwaar Metaal (“Heavy Metal”), Denmark had Total Metal, Finland had Kylmä metalli (“Cold Metal”), Sweden had Tung Metal (“Heavy Metal”) and Pulserande Metal (“Pulsing Metal”), Turkey had Heavy Metal Türkiye…most of these international runs didn’t last long, but they spread the stories and art far and wide.
The creation of Métal Hurlant coincided with a number of other trends. H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and other early contributors to the Cthulhu Mythos became more widely available thanks to paperback reprints, and with the death of August Derleth, Arkham House lost its grip on the Mythos. New anthologies like The Disciples of Cthulhu(1976) proved that anyone could now play with the shared universe that Lovecraft and his friends had created. Argentinian master Alberto Breccia began and completed a series of Lovecraft adaptations for comics from 1973-1979, many of which first appeared in the Italian magazine Il Mago. Underground comix in the United States like Skull Comix (1970-1972) were giving way to semi-prozines like Star * Reach (1974-1979), and publishers also found they could side-step the Comics Code Authority by publishing magazines like Creepy (1964-1983) and Eerie (1966-1983) instead of standard-size comics, all of which featured material inspired by or adapting Lovecraft. H. R. Giger’s Necronomicon art collection was published in 1977, and quickly inspired the aesthetic for the film Alien (1979).
There was, in other words, a small revolution in Lovecraftian art, comics, and fiction in the 1970s. Not all at once, but from many different angles—and Métal Hurlant, the international crossroads where underground American artists like Richard Corben; French masters like Mœbius, Druillet, and Nicollet; Swiss artists like Giger; and Argentinian masters like Breccia could all come together at once.
That is what happened in September 1978, when Les Humanoïdes Associés published a 150-page special issue of Métal Hurlant dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft. The idea was so attractive that the next year, the English-language Heavy Metal magazine released their own Lovecraft special issue to coincide with Halloween, and when Métal Hurlant was translated in Italy, they released a one-off Metal Extra special issue dedicated to Lovecraft.
All three of these magazines share certain common elements, largely because the English- and Italian-language productions included material translated from the French special Lovecraft issue. Yet they were each different as well…and that’s kind of fascinating in itself, how these three magazines represent three different takes on the material, each tailored for their respective audience.
What follows is a survey: what each Lovecraft special issue contains, and by comparison, what they do not contain. To avoid excessive repetition, each issue and its unique contents are discussed separately, and then a single section discusses all the shared features. Because this is a long, image-heavy post, a table with links is provided to aid navigation:
150 pages, counting covers, the table of contents, ads, etc., Métal Hurlant Special #33 bis (“extra”) was one of several themed issues released by Les Humanoïdes Associés, with the other themes including Fin du monde (“the End of the World”, #36), Rock (#39), Guerre (“War”, #42), and Alien (#43). Not every feature in this issue involves Lovecraft or the Mythos, but a majority do. There are errors in the table of contents as printed, so a full list is given here.
Features involving Lovecraft or his creations are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c].
Front Cover: H. R. Giger
“La cimetière” (illustration) by Souchu, 2-3
Advertisement for Heilman by Voss and A l’Est de Karakulac by Daniel Ceppi, 4
Table of Contents, 5
Edito triste./Edito gai by Philippe Manœuvre, 6
“La Chose” by Alain Voss, 7-12
“Lettres de Lovecraft” by François Truchaud, 13
“La Retour de Cthulhu” by Alan Charles & Richard Martens, 14-15
“La Nuit du Goimard: Un ecrivain nommé Habileté-à-l’amour” by Jacques Goimard, 16-18
“Le Monstre Sur le Seuil” by Norberto Buscaglia & Alberto Breccia, 19-29
“Je m’appelle Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by François Truchaud, 30-32
“L’Homme de Black Hole” by Serge Clerc, 33-36
“Hommage à HPL…” (uncredited), 37-39
“Petite bibliothèque lovecraftienne” by François Truchaud, 40-41
“La Trace Ecarlate” by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi, 42-43
“Excursion Nocturne” by Frank Margein, 44-47
“Le langage des chats” by Nicole Claveloux, 48-49
Untitled illustration by Richard Martens, 50
“L’Indicible Horreur d’Innswich” by Philippe Setbon, 51-52
“Amitiés Rencontres” by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 53-57
“Barzai le Sage” by Marc Caro, 58-65
Advertisement for Richard Corben’s Den, 66
[c] “Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury” by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 67-70
[c] “L’énigme du mystérieux puits secret” by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 71-74
“A la Recherche de Kadath” by François Truchaud & M. Perron, 75-78
“H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by George Kuchar, 79-81
“Les Bêtes” by Dank, 82-84
Advertisement for Le Diable by Nicollet and Les Naufragés du Temps by Paul Gillon, 85
“Le Necronomicon” by Druillet, 86-96
Advertisment for La Boite Oblungue by Edgar Allan Poe and La Rivier du Hibou by Ambrose Bierce, 97
Advertismenet for Les Trafiquants d’Armes by Eric Ambler
“Les 3 Maisons de Seth” by Dominique Hé, 99-101
“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton” by Yves Chaland, 102-103
Advertisement for back issues of Métal Hurlant, 104-105
Advertisement for Métal Hurlant posters, 106
[c] “H.P.L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 107-109
[c] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 110-114
“Plat du Jour” by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 115-117
“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau” by Luc Cornillon, 118-119
“Cauchemar” by Alex Niño, 120-129
“H. P. Lovecraft au cinéma” by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, 130-131
“L’Abomination de Dunwich” by Alberto Breccia, 132-146
Back cover by Richard Martens
Unique Content
Front Cover: A plate from H. R. Giger’s Necronomicon(1977).
“Cauchemar” (“Nightmare”) by Alex Niño is a 10-page black-and-white comic that showcases a series of nightmares realized in surrealistic and highly detailed form; Niño pays homage to the styles of other artists, naming Heinrich Kley, Arthur Rackham, Phillip Druillet, and Jean Giraud (Mœbius). Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
Edito triste./Edito gai (“Sad Editorial/Gay Editorial”); “Edito triste” is written as by “Abdul Fernand Alhazred”, while the “Edito gai” (as in happy, not homosexual) is by Philippe Manœuvre. Both concern how the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft Special came together.
“Je m’appelle Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (“I am called Howard Phillips Lovecraft”) by François Truchaud is a brief biographical sketch of Lovecraft’s life, fairly accurate for the compressed time and space, with illustrations by Richard Martens and Druillet; the Druillet illustration is the same as the cover to the Lovecraft special issue of L’Herne(1969).
“La Nuit du Goimard: Un ecrivain nommé Habileté-à-l’amour” (“The Night of Goimard: A Writer Named Able-to-Love”) by Jacques Goimard is an essay on Lovecraft’s fiction, illustrated by Perry’s silhouette of Lovecraft.
“Le Monstre Sur le Seuil” (“The Monster on the Threshold”) by Norberto Buscaglia & Alberto Breccia is an 11-page black-and-white comic adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Breccia’s art combines traditional pen-and-ink with collage, which leads a strange, otherworldly aspect to the artwork.
“L’énigme du mystérieux puits secret” (“The Riddle of the Mysterious Secret Well”) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon is a 4-page color comic where an investigative duo investigates a mysterious well and uncovers some counterfeiters; slightly reminiscent in overall style to Hergé’s Tintin. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“Lettres de Lovecraft” (“Lovecraft’s Letters”) by François Truchaud is a review of Lettres 1 (1978), the French-language translation of the first volume of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters. Illustrated by Mœbius’ cover for Lettres d’Arkham (1975).
“L’Indicible Horreur d’Innswich” (“The Unspeakable Horror of Innswich”) by Philippe Setbon is a short fiction that purports to be the last story written by H. P. Lovecraft, complete with a mock reproduction of the original manuscript written on an envelope, based on the famous At the Mountains of Madness envelope.
“Petite bibliothèque lovecraftienne” (“Little Lovecraftian Library”) by François Truchaud is a brief survey of Lovecraft-related material available in French publications, as well as some related publications such as The Occult Lovecraft (1975) and H. P. Lovecraft: A Biography (1975) in English.
Back cover by Richard Martens, based on a photo of Lovecraft.
Heavy Metal H. P. Lovecraft Special Issue (Oct 1979)
This material is taken, for the most part, from a bizarre and eldritch tome written in a strange tongue, the “Homage á Lovecraft” issue of Métal Hurlant. We trust it will add just the right touch to your Hallowe’en festivities. —Sean Kelly, editorial for Heavy Metal vol. III, no. 6
96 pages, counting the ads, table of contents, etc., which makes for a thinner magazine that can still be side-stapled. Heavy Metal magazine vol. III, no. 6 is part of the normal numbering rather than an extra or one-off issue. While it draws much of its material directly from the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special, the publishers chose not to reproduce all of the Lovecraft material from the French.
What didn’t they translate? The text pieces, the Georges Kuchar reprint, several of the more humorous and less Lovecraft-related comics, a couple pages of Druillet’s Necronomicon, and oddly the Breccia adaptation of “The Thing at the Doorstep.” What remains isn’t exactly entirely dedicated to Lovecraft, either, so that the “Lovecraft” issue has rather less Lovecraft-related material in it than might be expected.
Maybe there was a crunch with time to put the issue together, or some issues with the right. However, they also added a few things that didn’t appear in the Métal Hurlant issue, notably the J. K. Potter cover and “The Devil’s Alchemist,” a work of fiction. Unlike the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special, the majority of Heavy Metal pages are in color, including colorizing some works that were in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant.
Lovecraftian items are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c]; items from the Métal Hurlant special are marked with an asterisk (*).
Front cover (“Mr. Lovecraft”) by J.K. Potter
Advertisement for Strategy & Tactics, 1
[c] Table of Contents, 2
[c]Advertisement for Job Cigarette Papers, 3
“…Thirty-one…” (editorial) by Sean Kelly w/ J. K. Potter, 4
[c] Advertisement for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 5
[c] “Final Justice” by Chateau, 6-14
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal posters, 15
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal subscriptions, 16
[*] “The Dunwich Horror” (“L’Abomination de Dunwich”) by Alberto Breccia, 17-25, 74-80
[c] [*] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 25-29
[c] “Xeno Meets Dr. Fear and Is Consumed” by Terrance Lindall & Chris Adames, 30-31
[*] “The Thing” (“La Chose”) by Alain Voss, 32-37
[*] “The Beasts” (“Les Bêtes”) by Dank, 38-40
[c] [*] “The Man from Blackhole” (“L’Homme de Black Hole”) by Serge Clerc, 41-44
[c] [*] “H.P.L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 45-47
[c] “Love’s Craft” by Sean Kelly & Matthew Quayle, 48-49
[c] [*] “Dewsbury’s Masterpiece” (Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 50-53
[c] Advertisement for back issues of Heavy Metal, 54-55
[*] “The Necronomicon” by Druillet, 56-61
[*] “The Language of Cats” (“Le langage des chats”) by Nicole Claveloux, 62-63
“Chain Mail” (letters page, but comic by Christopher Browne) 64
[c] Advertisement for Dragonworld, 65
[c] “Pat and Vivian” by Frank Margerin, 66-68
[c] “The Alchemist’s Notebook” by David Hurd & William Baetz, w/Walter Simonson, 69-73
[“The Dunwich Horror” continued, 74-80]
[c] Advertisement for The Grailwar by Richard Monaco, 81
[c] “Bad Breath” by Arthur Sudyam, 82-89
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal books/graphic novels, 90-91
[*] “The Agony Column” (“Amitiés Rencontres”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 92-96
Back cover (“Elizabeth”) by George Smith
Unique Content
Front cover: “Mr. Lovecraft” by J.K. Potter. Before digital image manipulation programs existed, Potter was producing strange, disturbing images with a combination of photographs, airbrush, and traditional pen and ink. The effects, with Potter’s imagination, could be quite stunning. In this instance, he uses it to place Lovecraft in a cosmic scene. Potter would lend his talents to several future Lovecraft-related projects, including the cover for Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1990).
“The Alchemist’s Notebook” by Byron Craft (as by David Hurd & William Baetz) is an original work of Mythos fiction, with illustrations by Walter Simonson. A note on the first page says that this story is “an excerpt from the novelization of the upcoming movie, The Cry of Cthulhu“—but the film never made it past pre-production (Cthulhu Calling: An Interview with Byron Craft). In 2016, Craft published the full version of the novelization as The Alchemist’s Notebook, which was later changed to The Cry of Cthulhu.
“Bad Breath” by Arthur Sudyam is an 8-page comic that is principally black-and-white with color tints on Selected panels and figures; it follows an amorous young man whose bad breath is impacting his love life, and the solution he attempts has horrific—and amusing—consequences. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“Final Justice” by Chateau is a 9-page color comic where a couple in Europe to write a book on historical crimes watch the re-enactment of a medieval murder at an ancient chateau. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“Love’s Craft” by Sean Kelly is a poem, accompanied by an illustration by Matthew Quayle. Tentatively Lovecraftian based on the title, but with no direct references to Lovecraft or the Mythos.
“Pat and Vivian” by Frank Margerin is a 3-page humorous comic about a woman awoken by a strange entity at the door. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“…Thirty-one…” (editorial) by Sean Kelly, discussing Lovecraft in brief. Accompanied by a photo-manipulated image of Lovecraft by J. K. Potter.
“Xeno Meets Dr. Fear and Is Consumed” by Terrance Lindall & Chris Adames is a two-page color fantasy/horror comic with a distinct textured painting style. Young Xeno, asking a fundamental question about certainty, sets off in dreams to find Dr. Fear—and does. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
Metal Extra Speciale Lovecraft (Nov 1982)
Cui, questo numero speciale di Métal Hurlant e un vero e proprio “omaggio” nei limiti è nei termini in cui puo esserlo una realizzazione a fumetti. Essa però dimostra sino a che punto è giunta oggi l’influenza del “solitario di Providence” e del suo mondo di sogni, di miti, di realtà alternative. E’un “ommagio” che ciascun disegnatore o scrittore ha estrinsecato secondo la sua predisposizione, il suo modo di vedere, il suo atteggiaento mentale, culturale, di spirito. E cosi (non ci si meravigli di ciò) vi saranno controbuti (fumetti) “seri” e meno seri o aprtamente ironici, allucinati e satirici. Un autore è amato non soo quando si prende sul serio il suo universo incubico (come ne L’uomo del Buco Nero, Il capolavoro di Dewsbury, ecc.), ma anche quando ci si scherza su, fra il serio e il faceto (Cthulhu), lo si prende aperamente in giro (La traccia scarlatta, Escursione notturna, Il ritorno di Cthulhu e cosi via).
Hence, this special issue of Métal Hurlant is a real “homage” to the extent that a comic book production can be. However, it demonstrates how far the influence of the “solitary of Providence” and his world of dreams, myths, and alternative realities has reached today. It is an “homage” that each artist or writer has expressed according to his predisposition, his way of seeing, his mental, cultural, and spiritual attitude. And so (don’t be surprised by this) there will be “serious” and less serious or overtly ironic, hallucinatory and satirical counterparts (comics). An author is loved not only when his nightmare universe is taken seriously (as in The Man from the Black Hole, Dewsbury’s Masterpiece, etc.), but also when he is joked about, half-jokingly (Cthulhu), and openly made fun of (The Scarlet Trail, Night Excursion, The Return of Cthulhu, and so on).
Gianfranco de Turris, Metal Extra Speciale Lovecraft, 5
English translation
Instead of trying to publish this as part of their regular series of issues, the editors in Italy essentially excerpted the majority of the Lovecraft comics content from the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special and squeezed it into a 100-page (counting covers) square-bound Metal Extra issue. They also added some additional materials not in either the Métal Hurlantor Heavy Metal Lovecraft special issues
Lovecraftian items are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c]; items from the Métal Hurlant special are marked with an asterisk [*].
[*] Front Cover by Mœbius
Table of Contents, 3
“Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by Gianfranco de Turris, 4-5
[*] “Annunci sul Gironale…” (“Amitiés Rencontres”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 6-10
[*] “Barzai il Saggio”(“Barzai le Sage”) by Marc Caro, 11-18
[c] [*] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 19-25
“Il Nome e la Cosa” by Luigi de Pascalis, 24-26
[c] [*] “La Traccia Scarlatta” (“La Trace Ecarlate”) by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi, 27-28
[*] “H. P. Lovecraft al Cinema” (“H. P. Lovecraft au cinéma”) by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou [uncredited], 29-30
[c] [*] “Il Capolavoro di Dewsbury”(Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 31-34
[*] “Il Ritorno di Cthulhu” (“La Retour de Cthulhu”) by Alan Charles & Richard Martens, 35-36
[*] “La Cosa” (“La Chose”) by Alain Voss, 37-42
[*] “Alla Ricerca di Kadath” (“A la Recherche de Kadath”) by François Truchaud & M. Perron, 43-46
[*] “H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by Georges Kuchar, 47-49
[*] “Il Linguaggio dei Gatti” (“Le langage des chats”) by Nicole Claveloux, 50-51
[*] “Il Piatto del Girno” (“Plat du Jour”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 52-54
[*] “Escursione Notturna” (“Excursion Nocturne”) by Frank Margerin, 55-58
“R. H. B.” by Andreas & François Rivière, 59-66
[*] “H. P. L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 67-69
“Incubo Londinese” by Riccardo Leveghi, 70-72
[c] [*] “Il Ponte dull’acqua” (“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau”) by Luc Cornillon, 73-74
[c] “Oltre L’autore Lovecraft” by Onomatopeya, 75-82
[*] “Le 3 Case di Seth”(“Les 3 Maisons de Seth”) by Dominique Hé, 83-85
[*] “La Bestie” (“Les Bêtes”) by Dank, 86-88
[*] “L’Uomo di Black Hole” (“L’Homme de Black Hole”) by Serge Clerc, 89-92
[*] “Le 2 Vite di Basil Wolverton” (“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton”) by Yves Chaland, 93-94
[*] “Omaggio a H. P. Lovecraft” (“Hommage à HPL…”), 95-97
“Piccola Bibioteca Lovecraftiana” by Gianfranco de Turris & Sebastiano Fusco, 98
Unique Content
Front Cover is a colorized version of Mœbius’ depiction of Lovecraft at his desk from Lettres d’Arkham.
“Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by Gianfranco de Turris is a two-page editorial-cum-introduction to the issue and Lovecraft, illustrated with reproductions of photos of Lovecraft.
“Il Nome e la Cosa” (“The Name and the Thing”) by Luigi de Pascalis is a short work of fiction about the Golem of Prague, accompanied by illustrations by Massimo Jacoponi, a photo of Lovecraft, and Perry’s silhouette of Lovecraft. Other than the illustrations, no explicit Lovecraftian content.
“Incubo Londinese” (“London Nightmare”) by Riccardo Leveghi is a short work of fiction. Illustrated by Bradley, Druillet’s cover art from L’Herne, a photo of Lovecraft, and two images from Lovecraft’s letters. Other than the illustrations, no explicit Lovecraftian content.
“Oltre L’autore Lovecraft” (“Beyond the Author Lovecraft”) by Onomatopeya is an 8-page fotonovela-style comic about Lovecraft’s life and literary afterlife, a montage of photos tinted, textured, and collaged together with speech bubbles and text boxes to provide a humorous but largely accurate narrative.
“Piccola Bibioteca Lovecraftiana” (“Little Lovecraftian Library”) by Gianfranco de Turris & Sebastiano Fusco; while sharing essentially the same title as its counterpart in Métal Hurlant, this is a brief listing of the relevant Arkham House volumes and the Italian translations of Lovecraft and related materials, including August Derleth’s “posthumous collaborations.”
“R. H. B.” by Andreas & François Rivière is an 8-page, black-and-white comic about Lovecraft’s friend R. H. Barlow.
Shared Content
Listed below are the shared features, drawn from the original Métal Hurlant issue and also appearing in either or both of Heavy Metal and Metal Extra, along with notes on differences between the versions and necessary context.
“A la Recherche de Kadath” (“Alla Ricerca di Kadath,” “In Search of Kadath”) by François Truchaud & M. Perron is a 4-page black-and-white fantasy pictorial map of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands in a lavish, detailed style. Appears in Métal Hurlant and slightly smaller in Metal Extra.
“Amitiés, Rencontres” (“Annunci sul Gironale…,” “The Agony Column”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi is a 5-page black-and-white comic. The French title translates literally as “Friendships, Meetings”, and the Italian as “Announcements in the Daily,” but in context it might better be called Personal Ads. The nameless protagonist is in police/medical custody, and flashes back to when he answered a personal ad in the paper, and received a response. When he goes to meet the woman, he is waylaid: the whole setup has been a trap. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“Barzai le Sage”(“Barzai il Saggio,” “Barzai the Sage”) by Marc Caro is an 8-page comic composed of several extremely dark, heavily-exposed photos of a sculpture of a figure in various poses and backgrounds; the text is derived from Lovecraft’s “The Other Gods.” Appears in Métal Hurlant and in Metal Extra, where text boxes replace the original typed text annotations.
“Excursion Nocturne” (“Escursione Notturna,” “Noctural Excursion”) by Frank Margerin is a 4-page black-and-white comic that is wordless until the final panel; the whole is a careful set-up of horror tropes with a comedic flourish. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“Hommage à HPL…” (“Omaggio a H. P. Lovecraft,” “Homage to Lovecraft”) by uncredited is nominally a 3-page black-and-white cut-out diorama inspired by Lovecraft; though the content is more descriptive of general witchcraft and I haven’t been able to source any particular Lovecraftian inspiration. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“H. P. L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet is a 3-page color fantasy painted comic. A pair of fantasy creatures travel through a city to where a suited, winged figure sits on a throne atop a pillar, and asks a sphinx-like riddle. A panel reveals the figure has the face of Lovecraft. While slight in terms of content, and the events play out with a dry humor, the artwork is fantastic. Nicollet would go on to do many painted covers for weird fiction translated into French, including collections of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, etc. The winged, demonic Lovecraft would reappear on the cover of Robert Bloch’s Retour à Arkham(1980). Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by Georges Kuchar is a 3-page biographical comic of Lovecraft’s life, which first appeared in the U.S. underground comix Arcade #3 (1975). Kuchar exaggerates certain elements of Lovecraft’s life and personality for comedic effect, but largely follows the available scholarship and characterization of H.P.L. in 1975. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“KTULU” by Mœbius is a 5-page color comic; a group of politicians, finished with a week’s work, descend to a strange place and ask Lovecraft where to find a Ktulu to hunt. A surreal, sardonic work that owes little to the Mythos but echoes Mœbius’ other work of the period, like Le Garage Hermétique; the image of Lovecraft on a high throne oddly echoes Nicollet’s “H.P.L.” Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“L’Abomination de Dunwich” (“The Dunwich Horror”) by Alberto Breccia, a 15-page black-and-white adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”—and a fairly faithful and evocative adaptation, with particular care given to Wilbur Whateley and his unnamed twin. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal; many of Breccia’s adaptations of Lovecraft stories first appeared in Italian in the magazine Il Mago, which may be why Metal Extra chose not to reprint it.
“La Chose”(“La Cosa,” “The Thing”) by Alain Voss is a 6-page black-and-white adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter.” Voss elaborates on Lovecraft’s story a bit, making Harley Warren more sinister and flamboyant, and the grave they break into becomes an elaborate sepulchre, but is otherwise very faithful. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“La Retour de Cthulhu” (“Il Ritorno di Cthulhu,” “The Return of Cthulhu”) by Alan Charles & Richard Martens is a 2 -page black-and-white comic. “Uncle Nyarlathotep” narrates a tongue-in-cheek account of the ritual that results in the reincarnation of H. P. Lovecraft. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“La Trace Ecarlate” (“La Traccia Scarlatta,” “The Scarlet Track”) by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi is a two-page, slightly humorless, mostly wordless spectacle. Métal Hurlant printed the comic in black and white, but Metal Extra added a bit of red to actually illustrate the “scarlet trace,” which works much better.
“Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury” (“Il Capolavoro di Dewsbury,” “Dewsbury’s Masterpiece”) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon is a 4-page color comic that ells an original Lovecraftian story, somewhat in the vein of “Pickman’s Model,” with the mysterious Dewsbury taking the place of Pickman, but truncated and dedicated to not showing the unnamable horror. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“Le langage des chats” (“Il Linguaggio dei Gatti,” “The Language of Cats” ) by Nicole Claveloux is a 2-page black-and-white comic, and adapts an excerpt from “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” involving the cats of the Dreamlands. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau” (“Il Ponte dull’acqua,” “The Bridge over the Water”) by Luc Cornillon is a 2-page comic where a man attempts to commit suicide by leaping from a bridge, and finds himself embattled by a protoplasmic tentacled entity. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related, though some might call it Lovecraftian. Published in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant, and colorized in Metal Extra.
“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton” (“Le 2 Vite di Basil Wolverton,” “The Two Lives of Basil Wolverton”) by Yves Chaland is a 2-page black-and-white comic. In Lord Whateley’s residence is uncovered the diary of an old servant, Basil Wolverton (after the comic artist), who had long served the family. The diary describes how Wolverton was a mad genius who sought to use the life-forces of others to extend his lifespan and rule the world—but he chose as his experimental subjects Black slaves, and found afterward his he fell into idleness and stupidity. The story is effectively a brief echo of the kind of weird racism typical of 1920s and 30s pulp fiction, although the artwork is excellent. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“Les 3 Maisons de Seth” (“Le 3 Case di Seth,” “The 3 Houses of Seth”) by Dominique Hé is a 3-page black-and-white comic in the form of a document about an artist’s visit to an ancient temple in Egypt, where he received a vision of the eldritch entity Suthluhlu. The artistic depiction of Egyptian pyramids, temples, statues, hieroglyphs, etc. is exquisite in its precision, though the Lovecraftian content itself is slight. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“Les Bêtes” (“La Bestie,” “The Beast”) by Dank is a 3-page black-and-white comic. The narrative is slight, a soldier or servant informs a man that the Beasts are back, which turn out to be a collection of fanged dinosaurs (and, bizarrely, a rhinocerous of unusual size) that are mowed down with guns; the hunter leaves strange three-toed tracks as he leaves after the slaughter. It’s a surreal bit of fluff, striking for its visuals, but deliberately obtuse. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“L’Homme de Black Hole” (“L’Uomo di Black Hole,” “The Man from Blackhole”) by Serge Clerc is a 4-page comic. Howard Phillip Wingate, horror author, recalls a visit to Arkham, where he encounters Nathaniel Jenkins, a retired doctor who lived at Blackhole Cottage, and participates in his experiments. What he sees there causes him to flee, but he hears once more from Jenkins, whose brilliant mind has succumbed… The story is a pure pastiche of Lovecraft, with little visual and written nods scattered throughout. Published in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra, but in color in Heavy Metal.
“Le Necronomicon” (“The Necronomicon”) by Druillet is 11 pages of black-and-white pseudo-script and illustrations, laid out as pages from an alien manuscript; a photograph of Lovecraft is included on the frontispiece. Druillet’s recension of the Necronomicon was released near-contemporaneously with Al Azif (1973) by L. Sprague de Camp, the Necronomicon (1977) by Simon, and The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names (1978) ed. by George Hay. Yet where the others focused primarily on producing some kind of decipherable content or referenced existing cultures and systems, Druillet deliberately made his pages evocative but untranslateable—and as a result, universal across all languages. Published in Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal, with some slight differences in presentation.
“Plat du Jour” (“Il Piatto del Girno,” “Dish of the Day”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi is a 3-page black-and-white comic. A hooded figure buys a spider, takes it home, cooks it up, and serves it to a bed-written individual in a rat costume. The tone is slightly ghastly, but also slice-of-life. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related. Published in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
Cultural Impact
In the decades after the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft Special was published, many of the stories and artwork have been reprinted in various formats and languages. Today, you can find collections of Druillet and Breccia’s Lovecraft comics and art in several languages. What might strike readers, however, is that the bulk of the three issues do not consist of adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories, but also comics, art, fiction, and nonfiction about Lovecraft himself. That issue, and to a degree the English and Italian magazines it inspired, was a nexus of Lovecraftian art and fiction that helped to further the spread of not just Lovecraft’s Mythos, but the myth of Lovecraft and his life, inexplicably entwined with his creations.
For many readers, one of these issues was their first introduction for Lovecraft. For some, it was an example of what Lovecraftian comics and art could be, unfettered by censorship or expectations to conform to commercial standards of what a comic or Lovecraftian work should be like. These works aren’t pornographic or particularly graphic, but they vary from reverent to irreverent, ghoulish to enchanting. Lovecraft and his work are interpreted many different ways by different creators—and that’s okay. There’s room for all those different approaches, and many more.
Métal Hurlant is being published in a new series. Perhaps appropriately, in August 2024 they published a new Lovecraft special—reflecting a new generation of talents to flex their imaginations and showcase their skills. It is a testament to the cultural impact of that first mammoth issue, but also a reflection that these specials are part of an enduring tradition. Creators that are happy not just to read about Lovecraft, his fiction and letters, but to participate in the process and add to the body of art and literature he inspired.
On page 50, quire E, on the 7th leaf, on the face of one of the only decorative plates in the book, an illustration, beneath which these handwritten words appear (Translations are my own):
Idh-yaa Lythalia Vhuzompha Shub-Niggurath Yaghni Yidhra (names of lesser outer goddesses) Dare licentiam ad ut eam in servitium vestrum Arma capere milites, (Give her permission to arem soldiers in your service.) —Jilly Dreadful, “De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” in She Walks In Shadows (2015) 51
There is a strong strain of bibliophilia that runs right through the heart of the Mythos, its authors and readers. Part of the game was creating eldritch tomes like the Necronomicon and Unaussprechlichen Kulten, some of them with detailed backstories, strange and terrible authors, and blasphemous contents that were often only hinted at—secret histories, oddly effective spells, sanity-sapping diagrams and illustrations.
Yet very few Mythos tomes are written by women. Even fewer are written for women.
How women interacted with the male-dominated cult space of the Mythos, and why they did so, may seem like questions directly born out of second-wave feminism—but while there have been efforts to address those issues, directly or indirectly (see “A Coven in Essex County” (2016) by J. M. Yales), in practice such explorations have been relatively rare and limited in scope. Because beyond writing a feminist lore for the Mythos, there needs to be a narrative attached to it, a story that demands telling that uses that lore in some essential way.
That’s what makes Jilly Dreadful’s “De Deadbus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” so much fun. The experimental format is the breadcrumb trail of a bibliophilic investigation, but the mythology is different in focus from the typical Mythos lore. What it outlines is a representative undercurrent to the popular literary cults of Cthulhu, Hastur, Nyarlathotep, and other Mythos entities normally presented in a male aspect; and that aspect has not to do with gender than sex.
Woodcut features worm-like Idh-yaa; sylvan Lythalia; Vhuzompha covered in multiple sets of eyes, mouths, as well as male and female genitalia; horned goat goddess Shub-Niggurath suckling infant devil at breast; many-tentacled Yaghni; and beautiful dream-witch Yidhra. —Jilly Dreadful, “De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” in She Walks In Shadows (2015) 53
If it were just another story of yet another researcher finding yet another eldritch tome and falling prey to its influence, that wouldn’t be terribly original; something to be judged on the execution, like a panel of judges marking their scorecards. However, there is a shift near the end—a final twist of the knife which, if it isn’t entirely foreshadowed, rather makes the piece. It breaks a wall that is rarely broken in Mythos fiction, and addresses the reader directly.
There is room for more elaboration on the secret history and alternate Mythos theology suggested by this story; perhaps some other writer will pick up the ball and sketch their own elaboration, add their own little flourish to what Jilly Dreadful has started here. That is how the Mythos grows, after all.
The day Oswald arrived, he called us to my father’s study and said peremptorily, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a spinster sister with a small portion is nothing but a burden to her relatives. I want you silly women married and out of my household as soon as possible.” Then he burned my father’s extensive collection of coastal plants and butterflies and sold his library. —Jane Routley, “Innsmouth Park” in Into the Cthulhu-Universe (2025) 76-77
We don’t like Oswald.
Jane Austen’s role in weird fiction is underappreciated, largely because she herself didn’t really write any (although Northanger Abbey is a biting satire of the Gothic novel, and a must-read for Gothic fans which even Lovecraft acknowledged, which has to at least classify Austen as weird fiction’s strange aunt.) Yet the world she described, the characters and milieu she envisioned, have been enduring and influential far beyond the genre she initially worked in. Generations of writers have called back to Austen, and mashups like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) by Austen & Ben H. Winters, Regency Cthulhu (2023) by Andrew Peregrine & Lynne Hardy, and Secrets & Sacrifices: A Regency Cthulhu Novel (2024) by Cath Lauria all point to a similar rainy-day afternoon brainstorm:
Why not mix Austen and Lovecraft?
“In ’forty-six Cap’n Obed took a second wife that nobody in the taown never see—some says he didn’t want to, but was made to by them as he’d called in—had three children by her—two as disappeared young, but one gal as looked like anybody else an’ was eddicated in Europe. Obed finally got her married off by a trick to an Arkham feller as didn’t suspect nothin’. But nobody aoutside’ll hev nothin’ to do with Innsmouth folks naow. Barnabas Marsh that runs the refin’ry naow is Obed’s grandson by his fust wife—son of Onesiphorus, his eldest son, but his mother was another o’ them as wa’n’t never seed aoutdoors. —H. P. Lovecraft, “The Shadow over Innsmouth”
Lovecraft did not live in Austen’s world, but the New England society that Lovecraft came from retained some of the same social mores and norms as in Austen’s day. Marriages were not just alliances of mutual love and affection, but involved perceptions of respectability and status, and practical concerns of money and temperament. While women in the UK have more options today than they did in the late 18th/early 19th century, the societal obsessions with marriage, reproduction, and compatibility are still there for many.
Jane Routley in “Innsmouth Park” takes this to heart. She drops an Innsmouth gent into an Austen scenario. Between the Oswalds of the world and the intelligent, meek, and slightly inhuman (but very wealthy) owner of Innsmouth Park, readers might suspect that they know the outcome of this short story before it gets three pages in. However, Routley does have a twist or two for the readers, and manages to pull off a solid story out of what could easily have been a farce.
As in any mashup, the tone tends to be rather light, and in this case favors Austen over Lovecraft. Nothing wrong with that; Austen’s strength was her setting and characters, and the Mythos is a flavor that mixes well into different settings. What makes it fun, however, are the little flourishes, the nods to both Austen and Lovecraft, and the very careful effort to build up the relationship between protagonist Eugenia and her potential suitor Rowah Marsh. We get to see things, not from the Lovecraftian point of view, but from the Austenian.
Whoever asked the Marsh daughter how she felt getting married off “by a trick?” Would she have been relieved to be out from under her domineering father, or lost and at sea among people she had never met before? Was it a step down or a step up in terms of her lifestyle and freedoms? We don’t get those questions or answers in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” but you can be damned sure if Austen was writing that story that we would.
Routley recognizes this. While the story is filled with witty lines and little nods to her literary forebears, at the core the story is played straight. If you really did read an Austenian take on “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” it would have the same basic outlines as “Innsmouth Park.” We don’t like Oswald because he represents all the overbearing dudebro assholes we have to deal with in our own lives, but in the specific Austenian context he plays the necessary role of the manifest social norms that are forcing the woman protagonist out of the family home and into a suitable marriage (other options, such as being a governess, being considered but found unsatisfactory.)
That is really what makes “Innsmouth Park” work; the choice that is made is ultimately not driven by green or love or lust, but a practical consideration of limited options and the available alternatives. Faced with a momentous life decision, Eugenia zeroes in on what really matters to her, and the priorities may or may not surprise the Lovecraft fans—but the Austen fans will understand.
Ever since Helen Vaughan saw ‘the face of The Great God Pan’ and Lavinia Whately gave birth to the spawn of Yog-Sothoth, a sexual undercurrent has existed in cosmic horror. Rarely seen but its effects often felt, eroticism helps to shape tales of the uncanny and unfathomable. —Back cover copy of Beyond Desire (2025)
This is a difficult balance, yet it seems to be what Zoe Burgess aims for in “The Tunnel.” The beginning of this story was featured in the Flash Horror 250 Contest in 2024, and if that visceral opening whets a reader’s whistle, Burgess goes much deeper—and gets more explicit—as the story is developed in her joint collection with Tim Mendees: Beyond Desire: Tales of Erotic Cosmic Horror (2025); the volume also contains “Writhing Mind” (2022) by Zoe Burgess.
Like in that story, “The Tunnel” is a tale of obsession, of an almost fetishistic desire for knowledge and sensation. There’s a quality reminiscent of Clive Barker’s “The Hellbound Heart,” the familiar outlines of which have been seen in many weird and erotic stories over the decades. Shades of Dr. Raymond’s search in Mary’s brain for the Great God Pan, or of William’s desire to uncover real magic through the artifact in The Invitation (2017) by InCase The language of the story is deliberately decadent, emphasizing the physical, the intimate, and hinting at something more than merely carnal.
This was what awoke Izzy’s companions, and they were greeted by faces of fear and adjective horror as the iron shell melted away to reveal the throbbing flesh-like pages of the manuscript inside. —Zoe Burgess, “The Tunnel” in Beyond Desire (2025) 166
There is a literalness to the descriptions that is reminiscent of “Night Voices, Night Journeys” (2005) by Inoue Masahiko (井上雅彦), but it is probably more accurate to say that Burgess knows the tropes of the genre and plays to them. Familiar images remixed, recombined, carefully arranged. The tunnel of the title is both physical distance for the protagonist Izzy to transverse and the metaphysical vagina to be reborn from. The reader is just along for the ride, the voyeur of a journey of discovery and self-discovery:
Izzy held onto tarlike hips and almost felt like they were pushing deeper into the unknown, as that hot cavern pulsated and caressed as well. —Zoe Burgess, “The Tunnel” in Beyond Desire (2025) 175
Metaphor and description break down on such an ecstatic psychosexual journey. Burgess strives to capture both novel sensations and something beyond that, some spiritual contagion that warps and fills and makes the sex act something profoundly more than just sticking tab A into slot B, repeat as desired. The story is essentially a spiritual descendant of the climax of Ramsey Campbell’s “The Moon Lens,” a story of initiation and transformation; while the cosmic horror is not called Shub-Niggurath, Burgess’ Void Walker has some of the same attributes.
More than anything else, “The Tunnel” by Zoe Burgess is an effort to tell an erotic horror story in the Lovecraftian mode. Not by invoking Cthulhu and the Necronomicon, but by trying to invoke familiar images and aspects as she tells a raw, uncensored story of transgression, transfiguration, and finally a kind of transcendence. When Izzy goes back out into the world, born from the tunnel, they are a carrier of a strange and terrible disease of knowledge, one which they desire to spread—and isn’t that so very familiar, readers of the Mythos?
Tell my sad little life story? I was a weird kid. Believed I was a Witch when very young, as did my older sister. She and I used to practice what we thought was magick. Grew up knowing I was a sissy (loved playing house with the neighborhood girls, but always dressed LIKE them, wearing play dresses &c) and being tormented for it by grown-ups, kids at school, and thus I became an introvert and created my own realms of reality where I could be safe. My best friend in high school was Jewish, and that began a Jewish identification. Later I learned that I AM Jewish on my mom’s side of the family. —W. H. Pugmire, “An Interview with W. H. PUGMIRE” (28 Feb 2009) by Jeffrey Thomas
There is a fine distinction between Jewish weird fiction and weird fiction that takes Jews or Judaism as its subject. Jewish weird fiction should be, ideally, written from a Jewish point of view; that may or may not involve aspects of Jewish religion or culture, but it should definitely have that viewpoint—and ideally, it should be written by someone who has lived experience to lend verisimilitude and authenticity to the story, who can approach the story as someone other than an outsider looking in. A good example might be “My Mother Was A Witch” (1966) by William Tenn.
A story doesn’t have to have a Jewish point-of-view to be about Jews or Judaism. Innumerable examples of Christian supernatural fiction reach back to Jewish religion and folklore to tell a story that is still focused, primarily, on a Christian point of view. The Wandering Jew in legend and literature may be Jewish in name, but their characterization follows the narratives conceived by predominantly Christian writers.
“The House of Idiot Children” (2008) by W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Snider is, I suspect, their attempt at Jewish weird fiction. It follows Rav Samuel Shammua, a teacher in a small Jewish community who works at a school for autistic students. The description of the students reflects common depictions of autistic savants, formerly and derogatorily known as idiot savants:
They sat there, some very still some moving slightly back and forth, all staring into the air before them. Samuel shocked himself to feeling suddenly jealous. What did they see as they looked into nothingness. What did they listen to with an inner ear? The world saw these children as idiots who would always have difficulty functioning with the normal ear; and yet these children each contained a singular degree of genius. One was a mathematical genius. Another had memorized huge portions of Torah and Talmud in both English and Hebrew. And Moshe, who sat awaiting him, had excelled in the art of gematria […] —W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Sinder, “The House of Idiot Children” in Weird Tales #308 (26)
As in many of his stories, Pugmire slightly reworked the language in subsequent publications, so for example in An Imp of Aether (2019) he wrote:
[…] saw some students who, sitting at various tables awaiting instructors, watched his entrance, some very still, some moving slightly to and fro. Samuel shocked himself with feelings of sudden jealousy. What did they see with their autistic senses, what could they hear with an inner ear? The world saw these children as idiots who would always have difficulty functioning in the “normal” world; and yet these children each contained a singular degree of genius. One excelled in mathematics, another had memorized weighty portions of Torah and Talmudic lore, in both English and Hebrew. And mOshe, who sat awaiting him, had excelled in the art of gematria […] (44)
Autistic savants have their in supernatural literature, like the young girl Tiffany in Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) who uses her knack for puzzle solving to solve the Lament configuration. Such peculiar aptitudes can interact oddly with certain aspects of Jewish culture. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, each of which can also represent an associated number, a practice called gematria. This overlap of linguistic and mathematical concepts has significant interest with topics like cryptography, the interpretation of certain Jewish and Christian religious texts, as well as Kabbalah and other occult systems. The intersection of these different areas of interest has been a fruitful area for creatives, such as the film Pi (1998) where a genius Jewish mathematician’s investigations into the nature of π reveal a number which might be the secret name of God.
Pugmire and Snider play with this idea:
“A twenty-third Hebrew letter, a letter of fire.” The elder man raised his hand so as to thoughtfully stroke his beard. “An angelic letter. A letter out of which nothing is formed.”
Samuel’s face felt odd, and he ran his hands over it, trying not to shudder. “You know of this?” His voice was laced with fear, for never had he experienced such a conversation. The mysteries of cabalistic lore were something with which he had never trafficked. He had seen certain friends of his become utterly obsessed with studying the Zohar and other such books, to the detriment of everything else. It was a lure in which he had no wish to find himself entangled. —W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Sinder, “The House of Idiot Children” in Weird Tales #308 (26)
“They’re not like others, that’s the point!” Samuel suddenly shouted, his face flushed with anger. “They are special creatures, for whom we especially care. What the hell is normal, Avram? Were you a normal kid? Our religious and ethnic heritage makes us outsiders in the normal world, that’s why we’re hated, that’s why madmen seek to destroy us.” —W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Sinder, “The House of Idiot Children” in Weird Tales #308 (29)
All of these elements come together in this story in an ending that is expected, and yet powerful. We the readers never learn the final mystery, which Moshe and the autistic children know and which Samuel Shammua learns. It is a literally ineffable truth, a knowledge beyond the scope of human experience. Whatever flaws the story might have in its depiction of autistic children, this was a deliberate and researched effort to weave together these disparate threads into a story that tried to express a weird tale from a Jewish point of view.
“The House of Idiot Children” was first published in Weird Tales #308 (Jan/Feb 2008). It was slightly revised and republished in The Tangled Muse (2008, Centipede Press), and then slightly revised again for An Imp of Aether (2019), which appears to be the authors’ final version.
Dear Ms. Hollow. You don’t know me, but you and I share a mutual acquaintance, through whom I had the opportunity to read the draft of your horror story about the exotic fruit that turns pain signals into pleasure. I much enjoyed the prose of your story, but I have some relevant information that I would like to share with you. —Mary Hollow, No One Came For Me: Weird and Primal Horror Stories
Lines of literary descent are not always easy to trace. If a writer goes out of their way to mention Cthulhu or the Necronomicon, then we can say with some certainty that they’ve read Lovecraft, or that they’ve read somebody that read Lovecraft, and so on. Without such concrete citations, it can be tricky to assign influences with any certainty. Would we say that Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation owes a debt to H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space?” Well, probably not within earshot of Vandermeer.
Fiction is like that. Writers can play with the same subjects, but may arrive at parallel approaches. We can only note the parallels. Fortunately, in this case, in the afterword to her collection, Mary Hollow gives thanks to Thomas Ligotti, so it is easy to say that yet, “Neural Mechanisms of Analgesia” (2023) is a story in the Ligotti lineage of weird fiction.
There’s a relation to Lovecraftian fiction, a similarity, but a distance as well. Hollow doesn’t cite the Necronomicon or Arkham, doesn’t try to fit her work into someone else’s mythology. As a medical horror, there is a distant echo of “From Beyond” and other gland stories, the clinical detachment that threads its way to a kind of sublime understanding regarding some fundamental function of life.
If you prick us, do we not bleed? —William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venus Act 3, Scene 1
The story takes the form of a letter to Hollow herself. The epistolary format offers some advantages; like with “Machines Are Digging” (2009) by Reza Negarestani, there is that fine frisson as scientific citation and rational argument segues into something else. That moves beyond science fiction and touches on something else, something that goes beyond science in a direction that approaches—not the mystical, but a kind of revelation that limits rather than expands the possibilities of life. The opposite of wonder is not terror, but a kind of disenchantment that negates wonder, cancels it out.
There is that aspect of—not exactly pessimism, but the kind of microscopic focus of ultra-sanity that strips away the comforting illusions of life, or even of weird fiction. There is no Elder Sign to ward of the neurological realities of the pain response in humans, no resonator to smash to hide from what was always around us all the time. Imagination can offer no comfort, and when stripped away there is only a kind of philosophical numbness. The reader ends the story burdened with knowledge, but there is nothing to do with that knowledge.
Does it matter if Hollow draws from Lovecraft or Ligotti? Only insofar as we can recognize the connection, the thematic parallels with their works. Hollow is working in a tradition, though not borrowing from anyone’s mythology in doing so. A reminder that as fun as the Mythos is, there is much more to Lovecraftian literature than just the Mythos.
While Weird Tales found success on the newsstands of the United States, early efforts to publish hardback reprint anthologies stalled out after the first volume. In the United Kingdom, however, editor and literary agent Christine Campbell Thomson managed to launch a successful line of reprint anthologies, the Not at Night series, which drew heavily from Weird Tales—and inspired many imitators. August Derleth’s first story at Weird Tales, “Bat’s Belfry,” made it into the second volume, More Not at Night (1926), and other stories of his made their first hardback appearance in subsequent volumes. Though Derleth did not think highly of the series as a whole, he must have been aware of it as a market.
The file of correspondence at the Derleth Archive of the Wisconsin Historical Society between Thomson and Derleth covers the years 1934-1954, comprising 34 separate letters for a total of 43 pages, all from Thomson. It is not clear from extant correspondence if Derleth had heard directly from Thomson before 1934; presumably, Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright or their London agent handled most of the commercial details of reprints. However, on 12 Feb 1934 Wright returned Derleth’s story “The Metronome” again, and Derleth apparently decided to skip the middle man and submit it to Thompson and Not at Night directly.
Dear Mr. Derleth,
Thank you so much for your note. I am most interested in your criticism. The general opinion here in England is that the ninth issue is well ahead of most of its predecessors and equal to any of them. Incidentally, I notice that you choose in every case an American author and not an English one as coming up to standard. Here, the general run of opinion is the other way round. Interesting.
I have read “The Metronome” and like it. I am not making a final selection at the moment, but I want to keep this story by me—which is tantamount to my taking it, but I wait always to get out the agreement until we have got the volume complete. I am afraid Selwyn & Blount won’t let me pay more than £3.3.0 for the book rights over here. Is this possible for you? You retain the English magazine rights, of course.
Yours sincerely, —Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 22 Jan 1934
The ninth entry in the Not at Night series was Keep on the Light (1933); it is difficult not to side with Derleth on this one, as the US entries reprinted from Weird Tales include Robert E. Howard’s “Worms of the Earth,” Mary Elizabeth Counselman’s “The House of Shadows,” and Clark Ashton Smith’s “Isle of the Torturers,” while many of the British entries are less well-regarded (and some have never been reprinted). It is possible the opinionated Derleth may have made a comment about “The Black Hare” by Flavia Richardson (a pseudonym of Thomson) or “Golden Lilies” by Oscar Cook (Thomson’s husband), which would not have endeared him to his potential editor. However, Thomson was a businesswoman first.
“The Metronome” was accepted for and published in Terror at Night (1934); Farnsworth Wright also changed his mind and accepted the story for Weird Tales, so it was published in the Feb 1935 issue, and Derleth was paid twice for the story—one of the benefits of foreign markets. Derleth inquired whether Thomson’s agency would work to play his other stories in British markets, rates involved, etc., and Thomson was willing. Most of their short, businesslike correspondence during 1934-1936 concerns issues of what rights to various works that Derleth retained and was willing to let Thomson attempt to market.
Accounts sheet for sale of “The Metronome”
The exchange rate for British pounds (pre-decimal) to U.S. dollars was about 1:4, so Derleth was perhaps a bit unhappy to find that his three guineas came out to only about $10.33 after fees, postage, and taxes. Still, Weird Tales only offered $20, or about half a cent a word, so Derleth didn’t do too bad overall.
Thomson scored a small coup when she sold Derleth’s story “Hawk on the Blue” (based on a story in a letter from Robert E. Howard) for 8 guineas (although after various costs, this came out to a bank draft for $26.94). Other stories were met with various comments; Regarding “Muggridge’s Aunt,” Thomson wrote: “I am not quite certain whether it is horrible enough for Not at Night, the readers of which like their blood laid on with a soupladle” (Thomson to Derleth, 24 Sep 1934). About “Gus Elker and the Fox,” Thomson wrote “we feel that it is too American to place over here” (Thomson to Derleth, 12 Oct 1934).
Through 1936, Thomson continued to act as Derleth’s British agent, generally failing to sell much of anything, though with the occasional success, and often a degree of unctuousness.
Dear Mr. Derleth,
We are going to have a Coronation Omnibus “Not at Night” next Spring and I want to include “THE TENANT”. The fee, being for purely reproduction work, is to be £1 per story, but I know that the money is of less importance to you than the publicity and I would dislike to have an Omnibus compiled from the previous eleven volumes without one tale bearing your name. I am contributing an introduction myself and shall refer to your other work, of course.
Yours sincerely, —Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 17 Nov 1936
“The Tenant” did appear in the Not at Night Omnibus (1937), but the brief introduction doesn’t refer to that or any other work by Derleth (to be fair, it doesn’t mention any other author’s work either, and is dated February 1936; such things happen in publishing).
The final letter of the first part of Thompson’s correspondence to Derleth is dated 29 Apr 1937; there is then a gap. With the international postage rates and rather poor returns, it seems likely that Derleth gave up on Thomson as an effective British literary agent. Whatever the case, the correspondence was resurrected in 1941. In the intervening period, H. P. Lovecraft had died (1937), August Derleth and Donald Wandrei had formed Arkham House (1939), and Nazi Germany had invaded Poland, sparking World War II in Europe (1939). Derleth was apparently hoping Thomson might be interested in publishing an anthology he had put together: Someone in the Dark(1941).
You probably don’t know that even before the war I was trying hard to get a publisher to do pretty much what you are doing—a Library of authors of Weird Stories—I got one volume by Edmond Hamilton out but then life got too difficult. I have a collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s tales here, just waiting, and had planned to get in touch with you for a volume in due course. (By the way, I am sorry to see from your jacket flap that H. P. L. is no more. He was indubitably a master of his craft.)
I will go round and see what can be done about an English edition of this volume – though it will be difficult, owing to the paper shortage and the embargo on the importation of sheets. but I will certainly investigate the possibilities. —Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 20 Oct 1941
The Edmond Hamilton volume was presumably: The Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Planetary Horror (1936); a year or two later, Thomson divorced Oscar Cook, which seems to have ended the publishing arrangement for the Not at Night series and apparently put the kibosh on further weird publishing plans for a bit. The mention that Thomson had a manuscript collection of Lovecraft stories on hand must have come as a surprise, because in the next letter we read:
I am very much interest in the booklet and also in all that you tell me in your letter of your activities. I got the H. P. Lovecraft stories some years ago (about three or four at least) and my recollection is that I obtained them from Farnsworth Wright. At that time we sold the Edmond Hamilton tales to a small but satisfactory firm called Quality Press (still going) and at that time the Directors wanted to try and do a cheap popular line of horror stories, corresponding to the “Not at Night” series. The scheme fell through owing to the general slump and tightness of money, etc. but I have still got the Lovecraft stories here. There [sic] were all tear sheets. The Hamilton book was called “The Horror on the Asteroid” and I got it originally through David Hampton and subsequent dealings were with Dr. Schwarz, who appeared to be Hamilton’s agent. later on. [sic] I’ll try and get you a copy and send it over but so much stuff has been destroyed by enemy action that I may not be able to lay my hands on one. —Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 31 Dec 1941
Farnsworth Wright had contemplated a collection of Lovecraft’s stories from Weird Tales as far back as the 1920s, but the dismal sales on The Moon Terror(1927) shelved any such plans indefinitely. In a later letter, Thomson says she may have gotten the tear sheets from Julius Schwartz, a teenage fan who was acting as Lovecraft’s agent in 1935-1936 and managed to sell At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time to Astounding Stories. In the same letter, she lets him know of her failure to sell Someone in the Dark due to wartime difficulties, and ads in response to Derleth’s dislike of Hamilton’s space opera stories:
I agree with you; I can’t do with interplanetary tales; I get giddy right away and feel that there is quite enough to deal with in and around this planet without bringing in the others. I could never care for the Edgar Rice Burroughes [sic] “Mars” stuff, which had some vogue years ago when I was very young! —Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 2 Mar 1942
Never ask an editor her age; Thomson was born in 1897, and would have been in her teens when A Princess of Mars was published in 1912. Still, this might explain some of her choices for the Not at Night series, which tended toward the strictly supernatural, grisly, and earthbound over interplanetary fiction. The last letter of this part of the correspondence concerns the ongoing paper shortage and the war effort:
Dear Mr. Derleth,
We have been going through our stored MSS. and find we have a number of short stories by yourself, all of which I think are just copies. May we destroy these? The have been offered in all likely places without success. We have also the tear-sheets of the H. P. L. stuff; can I send these for the war effort also as they, again, are only copies; we have also tear-sheets of Seabury Quinn, are you looking after his work also and can you give me authority to destroy?
Yours sincerely, —Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 11 Mar 1942
Derleth’s answer is unrecorded; though he probably cared little for tear-sheets (or the postage to have them shipped back to the United States) and had no involvement in Seabury Quinn’s affairs at the time. Here again, the correspondence breaks off, since the bid to find a British buyer for Someone in the Dark had failed, and the Lovecraft material Thomson had on hand was only copies of stuff Derleth already had.
The final letter in the file is dated 7 July 1954. The war had ended, the world upended, and Weird Tales would end its 31-year run later that year with the September 1954 issue. After WWII, editor Dorothy McIlwraith had made several attempts for a British edition of Weird Tales to be published, including a 28-issue run by Thorpe & Porter that ran from 1949-1953. Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos tale “The Black Island” appeared in the January 1952 issue.
Dear Mr. Derleth,
It is many years since we corresponded, and the other day some one left a more or less current copy of ‘Weird Tales’ in the office and I took it out to read over lunch and found your firm still existing and good story by you called ‘The Black Island’. And so I am writing to you and hoping that you have not quite forgotten my name. I still have—and shall never part with—your ‘Place of Hawks’ and ‘Some One at the Door’ and the beautiful collected H. P. Lovecraft which you gave me. Now I am writing for information! I am doing a book on the Western tradition and mystery (chiefly of course the Celtic and the West referring to these islands and not to U.S.A.,) but for this I am doing a lot of reading round the subject and I am wondering you would let me know just how much of the Chtulhu [sic] myths are based on any fact. I am of course a believer in Mu, Atlantis and that sort of stuff; but so little is available about Mu, other than such books as ‘The Children of Mu’, that I wondering just how much of the Lovecraft-Derleth material is purely imagination based on scientific reading and how much is based on what you and I would reasonably call ‘fact’. If there is any of the latter, I shall go through the Lovecraft material again and if possible give a passing reference to his work and yours in the book in the introductory chapter of the sources, etc. of our mystery teaching in the West. If it is all fiction, it must go.
[…]
I would like to send you the best wishes for the Arkham Press and for the high standard of production which you had before the war and hope—and indeed am sure—that it is keeping its level.
Yours sincerely, —Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 7 Jul 1954
This was presumably the early stages of what would become The Western Mystery Tradition (1968), published under her married name Christine Hartley. Whether or not Derleth took the time and postage to respond, there is no reference to Lovecraft in the book.
The Thomson-Derleth correspondence is superficially slight, since most of it is impersonal and concerns only the frustrating call-and-response of Derleth’s attempts to sell things to the British and Thomson’s typical replies that she tried and no one would bite. Yet what is interesting about this correspondence is that it gives at least some insight into what Thomson did—and did not—know about weird fiction, some of her attitudes on the kinds of stories she did and did not like, her awareness of the British markets and her general ignorance of what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. To ask Derleth in 1954 if the Cthulhu Mythos was real shows how far Thomson’s finger was from that particular pulse.
Yet, despite a rocky start, this was apparently a professional and polite relationship, and a rare glimpse into several “what might have beens” in Lovecraft and Arkham House publishing.
Cuando lea estas lineas yo no estaré ya en el mundo de los vivos . . .
Con estas palabras comienza la carta que Robert E. Howard envía a su amigo, mentor y famoso escritor. En un escrito delirante el auto tejano describe su progresivo descenso al infierno de la locura y la desesparación después de visitar una antiqua tumba india sita en el interior de una cueva.
En la narración se mezclan los sueños con la realidad, la escritura, la relación con los amigos y su novia, la salud de la madre y su dependencia de ella . . Sin salida, totalmente acorralado por sus miedos, Howard debe buscar una solución, una huida, un sacrificio . . .
Dear H. P. Lovecraft,
When you read these lines, I will no longer be in the world of the living . . .
With these words begins the letter Robert E. Howard sent to his friend, mentor, and famous writer. In a delirious letter, the Texan author describes his gradual descent into the hell of madness and despair after visiting an ancient Indian tomb located inside a cavern.
The story mixes dreams with reality, writing, his relationship with his friends and girlfriend, his mother’s health and his dependence on her… With no way out, completely cornered by his fears, Howard must find a solution, an escape, a sacrifice…
Querido H. P. Lovecraft (2017, Spanish), back cover copy
English translation
Rusty Burke, a scholar of the life and work of Robert E. Howard, has noted that REH was one of H. P. Lovecraft’s major correspondents—but that HPL was Howard’s major correspondent. The bulk of the surviving letters we have from Robert E. Howard are to Lovecraft; and while many of Howard’s other letters—to Clark Ashton Smith, Farnsworth Wright, C. L. Moore, Novalyne Price, etc. are important, none of them really cover the same breadth and depth as Howard’s letters to Lovecraft. Nor, in many cases, have we much of the other side of the conversation. In the collected correspondence of both men, at least as much as survives, we gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the push and tug of the conversation.
This literary friendship has extended far past the limits of the grave. Novalyne Price Ellis mentioned it in her memoir One Who Walked Alone (1986); “Gilgamesh in the Outback” (1986) by Robert Silverberg sees the two palling around the underworld together. The semiotic ghosts of both men have followed each other into novels and comic books, from Rick McCollum’s Ashley Dust (1996) to Lovecraft’s Book(1985) by Richard Lupoff, later restored as Marblehead (2006). Howard makes an appearance in most of the biographical graphic novels that have come out about Lovecraft, and every biography of Howard cannot avoid mentioning their “civilization vs. barbarism” argument in letters that winged their way from Providence, R.I. to Cross Plains, TX and back again.
It is this relationship that Antonio Manuel Fraga has attempted to capture in his novel Querido H. P. Lovecraft(2016, “Dear H. P. Lovecraft), which was written and published in Galician. The novel was then translated into Spanish (Castilian) by Mercedes Pacheco Vázquez and published, also as Querido H. P. Lovecraft, in 2017. It has not yet been translated or published in English, but in brief the novel takes the form of a classic epistolary novel, like Dracula, but consisting of several fictional letters between H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH’s father, with whom HPL corresponded after REH’s death in 1936). The bulk of the novel consists of Howard’s final letter to Lovecraft, detailing the supernatural curse that descended upon him and the real reason he took his life that day.
De ROBERT ERVIN HOWARD para H. P. LOVECRAFT 10 de junio de 1936 Sr. H. P. Lovecraft 66, College Street. Providence, R.I.
Querido H. P. Lovecraft:
Cuando lea estas líneas no estaré ya en el mundo de los vivos, pues pronto daré el definitivo salto hacia las tinieblas. Sin otra salida, y después de lo vivido, espero que la muerte se abra a mi como una madre redentora, un pecho cálido que me ampare y silencie los horripilates alaridos que no dejan reposar mi mente, cansada y enferma.
Puede que este testimonio, dictado por la urgencia y la necesidad de purga, me sirva también para comprender mejor toda esta atrocidad, o por lo menos para distinguirla de un modo más global.
Hace dos semanas me acerqué a Brownwood, donde compré tres tumbas en su camposanto. Los miembros de mi exiqua familia tendrán así cada uno su trozo de tierra donde reposar, donde olvidar tanto dolor embalsamados en la archilla arenosa de Texas.
Las raíces de nuestros padecimientos se entredan en el pasado, se mezclan y alimentan de las mismas sales, pero sus tallos crecen independientes hacia un sol que es fuego fatuo, sin bndad ni compasión.
En el caso de mi madre, la desgraciada Hester, hablamos de una vida marcada por la enfermedad propia y ajena –si como enfermeded se puede calificar mi mal, que después expcliaré detalladamente. ¡Tiempo habrá!–.
El padecimiento de mi padre, el viejo doctor Howard, tiene el sabor de la ceniza del desprecio de su compañera. Durante toda su vida fue un imán para las malas inversiones, en las que dilapidó los escasos ahorros de la familia. ¡Y bien que se lo reprochó Hester! Esa fue una de las causas del désden de su mujer, pero no el único ni el más importante. En esa guerra fue un titán. Por el contrario, sospecho fundadamente que no resistirá el trance de nuestra partida. Ojalá me equivoque.
Y por último está mi padecimiento, el del necio Bob, el torpe ignorante. Afortunademente, pronto será silenciado por este colt que ahora siento en el muslo y que se convertirá en mi redentor, reverendo y verdugo.
From ROBERT ERVIN HOWARD to H. P. LOVECRAFT 10 June 1936 Mr. H. P. Lovecraft 66 College Street, Providence, R.I.
Dear H. P. Lovecraft:
When you read these lines, I will no longer be in the world of the living, for I will soon take the final leap into darkness. With no other way out, and after what I have experienced, I hope that death will greet me like a redeeming mother, a warm breast to shelter me and silence the horrifying screams that keep my tired and sick mind from resting.
Perhaps this testimony, dictated by the urgency and necessity for a purge, will also help me better understand this whole atrocity, or at least to distinguish it in a more comprehensive way.
Two weeks ago, I went to Brownwood, where I bought three graves in the cemetery. The members of my tiny family will each have their own piece of land to rest in, where they can forget so much pain, embalmed in the sandy Texas clay.
The roots of our sufferings are buried in the past, they mix and feed on the same salts, but their stems grow independently toward a sun that is a will-o’-the-wisp, without kindness or compassion.
In the case of my mother, the unfortunate Hester, we are talking about a life marked by her own and other people’s illnesses—if my illness can be described as illness, which I will explain in detail later. If there is time!
The predicament of my father, old Dr. Howard, tastes like the ashes of his companion’s contempt. Throughout his life he was a magnet for bad investments, in which he squandered our family’s meager savings. And well did Hester reproach him for it! That was one of the causes of his wife’s disdain, but not the only one, nor the most important. In that war he was a titan. On the contrary, I strongly suspect that he will not be able to withstand our departure. I hope I am wrong.
And finally there is my suffering, that of the foolish Bob, the ignorant bumbler. Fortunately, he will soon be silenced by this colt that I now feel in my thigh and that will become my redeemer, reverend and executioner.
Querido H. P. Lovecraft (2017, Spanish) 20-21
English translation
Perhaps surprisingly given how prominently the letters formed their relationship—Lovecraft and Howard never met, though they corresponded from 1930 until Howard’s death in 1936—the epistolary format has featured less prominently in their fictional afterlives. In fiction, at least, the two men would get the chance to meet as they never did in life. So too, that way the writer isn’t forced to write as many letters to and from Lovecraft and Howard from the other’s perspective, which would require more than a passing familiarity with both men’s life and letters to convincingly nail the voice and knowledge of each.
It is difficult to judge how well Antonio Manuel Fraga has captured their voices. That Fraga did some research into Robert E. Howard’s life is evident, he obviously read at least the flawed biography Dark Valley Destiny(1983), or Mark Finn’s Blood and Thunder (1st ed. 2006/2nd ed. 2013), which emphasizes the sometimes conflicted family dynamics among the Howards. Some of the choices (filtered, admittedly, through two layers of translation) strike me as unlikely; Robert E. Howard would probably not have referred to his mother by her given name, for example, and never had anything but praise for his father in his letters to Lovecraft. There are a few other details that are “off” in the short novel, but to try and catalogue them would be pedantic. This is a fantasy novel, and some allowances have to be given.
As a novel, Querido H. P. Lovecraft is an interesting example of a familiar idea: the author becoming the character. The Robert E. Howard of this book is not the same REH that comes through in his letters to Lovecraft, but he is recognizable as an interpretation of that person. What it reveals is less about Howard and Lovecraft than it does about Antonio Manuel Fraga—what Fraga has taken away from his research about Howard, the aspects of his life and relationships that he wished to emphasize in telling his story.
Is it a story worth telling? As an exercise in fantasy, it’s fine. There have been innumerable stories that mingled H. P. Lovecraft’s death with his Mythos, that have blurred the lines between reality and fantasy, for fun if nothing else. In that sense, Querido H. P. Lovecraft is something of a fanfic novel, a great and impossible what if, the kind of cache of letters that Lovecraft and Howard fan-scholars might dream of coming across, like the scholarly protagonists of a ghost story that find the document that explains it all at last.
What we cannot forget, however, is that this is not about how Robert E. Howard lived and died, but the stories and interpretations that have grown up around it.
The death Robert E. Howard is tinged with tragedy. This was a man whose life has sometimes been described as a trajectory toward his inevitable demise, with biographers and critics looking back across the whole of his existence for signs that would point to his self-destruction. Howard’s suicide is a part of his mythos, as explored in works like “El guardian” (2010) by Enrique Balmes & Roc Espinet and “Life After Death” (2010) by David Güell, so the focus on his crucial final days isn’t unusual. The addition of a supernatural element throws off the narrative of inevitability; it emphasizes Howard as more of a victim and cheapens a tragic affair by diluting his own agency. He goes out not as the cipher, the man who had reached his hidden limit and came to the final step, but as a haunted man who suffers under persecutions the novel details all too well.
It would be interesting, someday, to read this in a proper English translation. To see what niceties of language I’ve missed, what nuances may come out from having someone fluent translate Fraga’s prose. While I doubt the translation would capture Howard or Lovecraft’s voice in their letters, there are a lot of nods to people, stories, and events in Howard’s life that would get a nod from Howard and Lovecraft aficionados.
A major focus of the Western occult tradition is the grimoire. For the most part, the occult tradition that has come down to us is primarily a literate one rather than an oral one; and potential occultists are more likely to first encounter magical teachings in written form than by word of mouth. While that may be shifting a bit in an era of ubiquitous streaming video and podcasts, for the most part it holds true: Western magic as we know it has focused heavily on written texts as a primary store of data and means of transmission. Readers interested in delving further into the topic are recommended to read Owen Davies’ excellent and accessible Grimoires: A History of Magic Books.
Translations are a major part of the occult publishing scene. Dan Harms regularly reviews new translations of occult manuscripts and texts into English. However, these reviews rarely deal with just the quality of the individual translation, but the selection and editing of the text, the critical and academic apparatus that surrounds the text. While some works might be simply translated into another language without comment, most translations involve either selective transmission, or the addition of explanatory and critical material that adds to the value of the translation by providing additional historical or literary context, or speaks to the translator’s intended purpose for the translation.
The Simon Necromonicon(1977) was the first, most popular, and at this point most pirated Grimoire associated with the Lovecraftian occult tradition; for decades the mass-market paperback edition has been a mainstay of New Age bookshelves, and has numerous sequels and derivative works. Elías Sarhan’s authorized translation, first published in 1992 by EDAF in Spain, has also gone through multiple editions. It is a faithful translation of the Avon paperback edition, including Simon’s acknowledgments, the preface to the second edition, the quote from the Chaldean Oracle of Zoroaster, and all illustrations, magical seals, and non-English names in the original text, with one notable exception:
The highly characteristic Necronomicon gate sigil created by Khem Caigan which normally graces the cover and frontispiece of the Simon Necronomicon is nowhere in evidence. Whether Avon didn’t ship the plates or that wasn’t part of the licensing deal, the publishers simply didn’t use it, at least on several printings. The paperback copy I have includes a generic computer-generated 10-pointed star on the cover. Considering how prominently Caigan’s design has been displayed in many editions and how widely it has been swiped by artists as a generic Lovecraftian symbol, its absence is a significant departure from English-language version.
Necronomicon gate sigil created by Khem Caigan
In addition, there is an appendix. “Cronología, Fragmentos e Invocaciones de H. P. Lovecraft sobre « El Necronomicón»” (“Chronology, Fragments, and Invocations from H. P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon). This begins with an introduction by Alberto Santos Castillo, an editor of many Spanish-language translations of Lovecraft’s works, that begins:
Si abordamos la obra de H. P. Lovecraft teniendo en cuenca el contenido del presented libro, nos surgeon does cuestiones queue son como dos caras different es del author de Providence: el iniciado en saberes ocultos y el escéptico materialista.
A lo largo de toda su vida, Lovecraft defendió que el contenido de sus historias era producto de un ejercicio literario propio de la ficción y que no mostraban ningún tipo de realidad posible o alternativa a la nuestra. Desde muy pequeño convivió con la soledad y el aislamiento. La imagen de su abuelo Whipple, un hombre bondadoso y «sabio», por toda esa biblioteca que le donó a su muerte, afianzaron en él esa inquietud por el concocimiento. El mundo debía ser creado y medido entre los povorientos volúmenes de las estanterías. Sin embargo, Lovecraft ansiaba un saber oculto cuando las pesadillas y las obsesiones se cebaban en él. Al leer su obra, uno descubre que hay una verdad que se escapa entre líneas, frente a esa imagen de frialdad y distanciameiento emocional pretendido.
If we approach the work of H. P. Lovecraft taking into account the content of the presented book, there are two different faces of the author of Providence: the initiate in occult knowledge and the materialistic skeptic.
Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that the content of his stories was the product of a literary exercise characteristic of fiction and that they did not depict any kind of possible or alternative reality to our own. From a very young age, he lived with loneliness and isolation. The image of his grandfather Whipple, a kind and “wise” man, and the entire library he donated to him upon his death, strengthened his desire for knowledge. The world had to be created and measured among the dusty volumes on the shelves. However, Lovecraft yearned for hidden knowledge when nightmares and obsessions took their toll on him. Reading his work, one discovers that there is a truth that escapes between the lines, in contrast to that image of coldness and intended emotional detachment.
El Necronomicón 271
English translation
Simon’s Necronomicon has any number of flaws, many of which are discussed in The Necronomicon Files by Dan Harms and John W. Gonce, but there are two immediate issues every Lovecraft fan and would-be Lovecraftian occultists have to face: 1) Simon’s assertions of the real existence of the Necronomicon goes against what we know of Lovecraft’s life, attitudes, and knowledge of the occult; and 2) Simon’s Necronomicon, purportedly a translation of the original text, bears basically no similarity to the Necronomicon that Lovecraft and his contemporaries wrote about, containing only a scattered handful of familiar-sounding names and none of the translations or contents supposed to be in there according to stories like “The Dunwich Horror.”
To address these shortcomings and add value to the basic Simonomicon, Castillo tacked on an appendix that contains (in order), a Spanish translation of Lovecraft’s “History of the Necronomicon,” a collection of quotes (“fragmentos”) from the Necronomicon that Lovecraft peppered into his work in stories like “The Nameless City” and “The Dunwich Horror,” and finally a collection of incantations from Lovecraft’s work, mostly in his made-up artificial language (e.g. « ¡Wza-y’ei! ¡Wza-y’ei! Y’kaa haa bho: ii, Rhan-Tegoth: Cthulhu fthang: ¡Ei! ¡Ei! ¡Ei! ¡Ei! Rhan-Tegoth. ¡Rhan-Tegooth, Rhan-Tegoth!» (287) adapted from “The Horror in the Museum”). Some minor spelling and formatting errors aside from the translation, this is a neat piece of work and a definite improvement over the base version of Simon’s Necronomicon, and makes sense for a Spanish translator that knows they need to address both potential audiences: those primarily interested in Lovecraft’s fiction and those primarily interested in the occult.
Fragmentos Originales del Necronomicón (2001) trans. Marcelo Bigliano
The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names (1978) edited by George Hay is probably the second-most popular (and pirated) Necronomicon grimoires in existence. Except much of the book is not actually a grimoire at all; of the 184 pages, there are 12 pages of front matter, an introduction by Colin Wilson that weaves a fictional history of the “real” Necronomicon manuscript (pp. 13-56), a fake letter from Dr. Stanislaus Hinterstoisser (pp. 57-64), a commentary by Robert Turner (pp. 65-80), and a note on supposed decipherment of the text (pp. 81-102) before readers actually get to the supposed English translation of the medieval grimoire that inspired Lovecraft (pp.103-140). Then there are the appendices in the form of three essays: “Young Man Lovecraft” by L. Sprague de Camp (pp. 141-146), “Dreams of Dead Names” by Christopher Frayling (pp. 147-171), “Lovecraft and Landscape” by Angela Carter (pp. 171-182), and the whole book is rounded off with a bibliography (pp. 183-4).
The actual Necronomicon material in the Hay Necronomicon is effectively less than 40 pages. Which might explain why someone had the bright idea to cut out the pseudo-scholarship and present a highly abridged translation of the book. That is exactly what Marcelo Bigliano did in Fragmentos Originales del Necronomicón: El Libro de Los Nombres Muertos de Abdul al-Hazred (2001), published by Tomo in Mexico in several editions, as a modestly sized and priced paperback.
Where El Necronomicón was being inclusive, Fragmentos Originales is selective. Bigliano begins with what appears to be an original prologue that essentially lays out an abbreviated version of Lovecraft’s history of the Necronomicon and then tries to sell the authenticity of the Necronomicon as an occult document. To give a sample:
También los conocidos libros negros titulados Seventh Books of Moses son mencionados por Lovecraft en sus relatos. Si se considera la relación entre estas obras, basadas en versiones latinas alterads de Key of Solomon y ciertos textos hebreos poco conocidos: The Leyden Papyrus, un antiquo libro de magia egipcio que se le considera parte de un todo con el Eigth Book of Moses y the Sword of Moses, que a su vez se cree que contiene en Ninth and Tenth Books de la serie, surge con fuerza un sistema mágico estrechmente relacionado con el Necronomicón.
Also the well-known black books titled the Seventh Books of Moses are also mentioned by Lovecraft in his stories. Considering the relationship between these works, based on altered Latin versions of the Key of Solomon and certain little-known Hebrew texts—The Leyden Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian book of magic considered part of a whole with the Eighth Book of Moses and the Sword of Moses, which in turn is believed to contain the Ninth and Tenth Books of the series—a magical system emerges that is closely related to the Necronomicon.
Fragmentos Originales del Necronomicón 9
English translation
However, this is really an uncredited translation of Robert Turner’s “The Necronomicon: A Commentary” from the Hay Necronomicon:
The well-known ‘black books’ entitled the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are mentioned by Lovecraft in his stories, and if one considers the terlationship between these works—based on corrupt Latin versions of the Key of Solomon and certain little known Hebrew texts—The Leyden Papyrus,—an ancient Egyptian book of magic said to be one with the Eighth Book of Moses—and The Sword of Moses—held to contain the Ninth and Tenth Books in the series, a system of magic closely related to concept of the Necronomicon powerfully emerges. (Hay 68)
Lovecraft does not mention the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses—which are genuine grimoires—in any of his fiction, though the title crops up in some related works by other authors (Dan Harms pointed out to me that the Seventh Book of Moses appears in “Wentworth’s Day,” one of Derleth’s “posthumous collaborations” with Lovecraft). This is part of Turner’s wind-up to the actual magical manuscript material he invented, and if it resembles those “authentic” grimoires at all, it’s because he designed them to.
Following this prologue (pp. 8-16), Bigliano then presents the translation of Turner’s “Foreword” (Hay 105, 108; Fragmentos 17-20), sans illustrations, and then jumps directly into a highly abbreviated rundown of the major eldritch entities in the Lovecraft Mythos, again borrowed from Turner (Hay 74-75; Fragmentos 20-23). For example:
Shub-Niggurat El Gran Macho Cabrío Negro de los Bosques con un millar de Jóvenes. La manifestación Terrenal del Poder de los Antiquos. El Dios del Aquelarre de las Brujas. La naturaleza ELemental de Shub-Niggurat es la de la Tierra, simbolizada por el signo de Tauro en los cielos y, en el mundo, por la Puerta del Viento del Norte.
Shub-Niggurath The Great Black Goat of the Woods with a thousand Young. The Earthly manifestation of the Power of the Ancients. The God of the Witches’ Sabbath. Shub-Niggurath’s Elemental nature is that of the Earth, symbolized by the sign of Taurus in the heavens and, in the world, by the Gate of the North Wind.
Fragmentos Originales del Necronomicón 23
English translation
Not actually sure if Bigliano picked up these planetary associations somewhere or if they’re original additions to the text, but from there he continues directly into a translation of the magical manuscript portion of the Hay Necronomicon, including reproducing all the sigils and seal (pp. 25-85). A conclusion chapter is also borrowed from Turner in an earlier part of the book (Hay 78-79; Fragmentos 87-89). A brief note on Lovecraft (pp. 91-92) is followed by a translation of Angela Carter’s essay (pp. 93-116), and finally a section on the Cthulhu Mythos (pp. 117-124).
In the end, the Fragmentos lives up to its title: like a handful of pages from a larger manuscript that have been re-bound as their own work. Bigliano cut out the heart of the Hay Necronomicon and packaged it as a mass-market grimoire along the lines of the Simon Necronomicon, judiciously rearranging bits and pieces to suit his needs or tastes and ejecting most of the more peripheral matter about the supposed manuscript’s origins and connections to Lovecraft. All of the tongue-in-cheek elements, such as Colin Wilson’s carefully written introduction, and all the more elaborate illustrations, were cut. That isn’t particularly surprising when one considers that there are no notices of permission granted; this was, by all appearances, one of the many unauthorized translations of the Hay Necronomicon and its material.
The two Spanish-language grimoires are separated in time, translator, and geographical publishing context, but were both working toward a similar end: translating this English-language Lovecraftian occult material to a Spanish-language market who were presumably familiar with Lovecraft and eager for more. The popularity of the works can be attested by their multiple editions, and the different paths that the editors and translators took to the material represent respective approaches.
It is fun to think how, in a couple of centuries, historians of the occult might have multiple different recensions and translations of the Necronomicon available, and will have to figure how the family of texts relate to one another, to try and understand or re-create the chain of events or decisions that led to such similar material following different paths. If only the Fragmentos survived, one could not reconstruct the Hay Necronomicon; but they could probably ascertain its influence on Eldritch Witchcraft: A Grimoire of Lovecraftian Magick (2023) by Amentia Mari & Orlee Stewart based on certain illustrations and lore. Who knows what the Lovecraftian occult tradition might look like, in a different time and in different tongues?
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 