Nécroéroticon (1986) by Anonymous and Adult Frankenstein (2006) by Enrico Teodorani et al.

Eldritch Fappenings
This review concerns graphic adult comic works.
Reader discretion is advised.

The cultural and economic factors that have led to at least two separate European pornographic comics involving the Frankenstein’s Monster and the Lovecraft Mythos intersecting, decades apart but identifiably through some of the same systems and processes, are difficult to articulate. A large part of the issue involves the odd currency that pornographic comics represent to publishers. It can be cheaper and faster to translate an existing work for publication in a new market than to commission and wait for an original work to be published in a given language. This has the odd effect that a number of the same works may be published in different languages, in different countries, years apart, and packaged at each stage as original works. And so readers, writers, and artists may be in communication with each other and sharing influences.

Before the internet, trying to track down the details of where this material was published was difficult. It requires recognizing the same material was published in different media, collating indices to erotic comics magazines (scarce enough data), and making connections with artists, writers, editors, translators, and publishers—data which is often missing or omitted. As a result, some of the data on these works is sketchy or nonexistent. Further digging might yield more details; the work always continues.

What is fascinating to me is that these two works represent independent expressions of the legacy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos fiction, which came together by different people at different times in different ways, yet clearly represent iterations on the same ideas. Horror fans who grew up with both of these mythologies to play with synthesized them into new and original erotic works. Because they are pornographic, the works have largely escaped popular notice and critical scrutiny. Yet for fans of horror, they deserve at least a little recognition. They are, if nothing else, deliciously weird.

Nécroéroticon (1986)

“Franky Stone,” a bald, muscular version of Frankenstein’s Monster, premiered in the black-and-white French comic magazine Supersexy #1 in 1977. The subsequent issues of Supersexy chronicled the continuing adventures of Franky, in and out of bed, as he faced off against various monsters and threats by day and made love with the beautiful Arlette Delapierre, whose company he prefers to his creator, Dr. Stone. Erotic content was limited: bare breasts are on display, and sexual action is often depicted, but without showing the genitals or penetration, using various artistic devices (a gripping hand and carefully placed head, for instance, could completely conceal the penis while implying oral sex.)

Supersexy ended with issue #8, and Franky’s adventures continued in Hypersexy #3 (1978) with the ninth chapter: “Le Nécroéroticon.” This was the chronologically last adventure, although Franky would be republished in the French magazines Miss Eros (1980) and Sexorama (1985). In 1986, all nine chapters would be translated into Spanish by an anonymous translator and published as the 9-issue series La amante de Franksextein, with one chapter per issue, the remaining pages of each issue containing another, non-Franky Stone story. The Spanish issues don’t track in the same order as the original French publication, so “Necroeroticon” appears in issue 8 of La amante de Franksextein.

After a romantic interlude with Arlette, Franky goes to the bookstore to purchase an erotic work in two volumes: the Necroeroticon, which contains some new positions for Arlette and Franky to try. However, in Franky’s haste, he leaves behind the second volume, which is discovered by the villainous Dr. Stone and his assistant Pietr follow:

C’est le Necroerotikon . . . écrit par un Arabe fou du sexe: un nommé Abdul.	Es el Necroerotikon, escrito por un árabe, loco por el sexo, llamado Abdul…	It is the Necroerotikon, written by an Arab, mad for sex, named Abdul.
French	Spanish	English

While the translation is mostly word-for-word, the anonymous translator did have a few moments where they went for the gusto.

Grâce à lui, je me libérerai d’Arlette et récupérerai mon Franky…	Thanks to him, I will free myself from Arlette and get my Franky back…
French	English
Por fin encontré el arma con el cual venceré a esa mujer ladrona e infame. ¡¡El Necroeroticon!!	At last, I have found the weapon with which I will defeat that thieving, vile woman. The Necroeroticon!
Spanish	English

Dr. Stone reads that when the planets are in alignment, and the sex ritual in the first part of the book is performed (which Franky and Arlette are in the middle of), there will be an earthquake that will awaken the sex god Phallocrath (Falocras in the Spanish version). Shortly thereafter, that happens, and Dr. Stone and Pietr (with three young women) go seek out Phallocrath in a cave, and find him. Since explicit sex and genitalia weren’t shown, the “sacrifice” of the three women occurs largely off the page, and Phallocrath is only seen in shadow.

Je suis votre serviteur! Commandez et j’obéirai! J’aime une belle femme pour toi, Phallocrath! Ensuite toutes les femmes de la terre seront tiennes!	Soy vuestro servidor… ¡Mandady, obedeceré! Tengo a una mujer muy bella para ti, Falocras. ¡Enseguida todas las mujeres de la tierra serán tuyas!	I am your servant! Give the command, and I shall obey! I shall find a beautiful woman for you, Phallocrath! And then, all the women of the earth shall be yours!
French	Spanish	English

Unaware of this, Franky and Arlette want to try another ritual… unfortunately, Dr. Stone interrupts the ritual, and Phallocrath loses his powers. Arlette takes the opportunity to dispose of their half of the Necroeroticon.

Je l’ai jeté par la fenêtre… J’aime mieux tes méthodes naturelles et souvaces!	Tiré el libro por la ventana. Me gustan mucho más tus métodos naturales y salvajes.	I threw it out the window… I much prefer your natural, wild methods!
French	Spanish	English

As with El Convento Infernal (1995) by Ignacio Noé & Ricardo Barreiro, we only get glimpses of the Necroeroticon as a kind of grimoire-cum-sex manual. The plot itself is a spicy comedy of errors, with the Lovecraftian elements largely a wink and a nod, with intimations of horrors that never appear on the page, a phallic eldritch entity we never see clearly, and consequences that basically don’t happen. Franky’s status as a Frankenstein’s monster-esque character plays no real role in the story, but Arlette’s assertion that she likes Franky’s natural and unsophisticated methods when it comes to lovemaking is a fitting denouement to the story.

Adult Frankenstein (2006)

Enrico Teodorani (15 May 1970– ) was born in Forlì, Italy; as a teenager in the mid-to-late 1980s began contributing to local fanzines and comics, and started singing in a couple of heavy metal bands. He has long had an affiliation with horror and erotica, and some of his most popular creations follow these trends, including the female western character Djustine, many of whose adventures have been translated and published in English as well.

In the early 2000s, Teodorani was publishing work with X Comics, an Italian-language monthly adult comics anthology magazine. This was a relatively popular format in Europe, and as with Metal Hurlant, there were often comparable volumes in different countries, such as Kiss Comix in Spain, which also had a French translation in France and an English edition in the United States. This meant that the work of a few creators could be available internationally in many languages in different publications, but it kind of makes it tricky to keep track of where everything was being published.

Around 2004, Teodorani began collaborating with various Djustine artists on a series of very short black-and-white works for X Comics that all feature Frankenstein’s Monster; the artists were Marco Guerrieri, Dario Santarelli, Gavino Piredda, Andrea Bulgarelli, Morrik, Luca Malisan, Danilo Loizedda, and Silvano, and the works vary from 1-6 pages. These appear to have been largely filler, but inspired by a 1976/1977 softcore Italian horror comic Frankenstein published by Edizioni Del Vascello/Edifumetto, which got a snapshot history in X Comics #37 (2002).

The Teodorani-written X Comics series appears as fairly disjointed, without a single plotline but more a series of brief erotic interludes in the saga of the Frankenstein’s Monster, the effect of the different artists and their unique takes on the monster, which vary from drawing inspiration from Boris Karloff’s makeup in the early Universal Frankenstein movies to the long-haired, sharp-featured Frankenstein’s Monster of Bernie Wrightson. It is a deliberately eclectic and pulpy mix, which often features Frankenstein’s Monster facing off against some other horror over a naked and nubile woman, and ending with a sex act. All in good fun.

There are two stories with Lovecraftian elements. In the 4-page “Island of Dr. Frankenstein” (artist: Andrea Bulgarelli), Dr. Frankenstein has taken his creation and a young woman to a remote island to use an ancient book to summon an amphibious humanoid from the deep for a sex rite—some clear overtones to “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” although nothing explicit. Frankenstein’s Monster objects, attacks the humanoid from the deep and drives it off, and is rewarded for his trouble.

Some of Bulgarelli’s figurework has a distinct resemblance to John Buscema’s from Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian comics, though none of these are swipes, but all original works. Doctor Frankenstein is sporting a slightly outlandish English-style moustache, but in a comic where he’s dabbling in interspecies sexual relations, that’s hardly his worst character flaw.

The second, and more explicit Lovecraftian entry is the 4-page “Frankenstein, King of Demons” (artist: Silvano), which is the last story in the book. In the second-to-last entry, Frankenstein’s Monster had died and gone to Hell. In this story, in Hell, Frankenstein runs afoul of various Lovecraftian entities and is captured, before being inadvertently summoned by a magician, taking on an armored, costumed appearance very much in keeping with the Dark Age of Comics, and reminiscent of characters like Tim Vigil’s Faust.

“Silvano” is credited for the art, and this is Silvano Calligari, who did some artwork for Djustine, and you can see him having fun here balancing light, nearly non-existent backgrounds with relatively dark, heavily detailed figurework. While other segments in Adult Frankenstein aim for comedy or eroticism, this one is clearly going for horror over titillation.

In 2005, the series was collected and translated into English by Enrico Teodorani, and published as a one-shot titled Adult Frankenstein by Eros Comix, which had handled other English translations of European erotic horror comics, such as Rosano Rossi’s Ramba (1992-1995); Raulo Caceres’ Elizabeth Bathory (2002-2004) and Morbid Tales (2004); and The Young Witches (1991-2005) by multiple writers and artists. An Italian edition with identical title but different cover was apparently published by EF Edizioni in 2008, though I haven’t been able to source a copy to confirm the contents.

When you look at “Nécroéroticon” and Adult Frankenstein side-by-side, it is easy to see the parallels. The creators have taken Mary Shelley and Lovecraft’s creations in very different directions, and the Frankenstein’s Monster is barely recognizable in some of his appearances, marked out from the other characters only by a few tell-tale stitches, while Lovecraft’s Mythos is present more thematically than anything drawn directly from his stories.

Yet both of these works are genuine descendants of an international diaspora of English-language horror media; the shared result of stories, comics, and films that have made their way around the world for over a century and informed the pop culture of countries that Lovecraft, at least, never visited. They are part of an ongoing tradition of erotic horror, a tradition that involves translation across linguistic boundaries so that new audiences can read and maybe be inspired by these works.

Frankenstein’s Monster lurches on…and at least in some iterations, he may have a bit of help from Abdul Alhazred.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Black Sands #1 (1996) by Blair Reynolds & James Reynolds

Eldritch Fappenings
This review concerns a work with adult Lovecraft themes and graphic art.
Reader discretion advised.

Right and proper gentlemen, your attention, please. This is a public announcement: Room 308 Graphics & Publishing will no longer pursue games supplement production. Newly completed, the long-anticipated Call of Cthulhu adventure supplement The Mysteries of Mesoamerica, which was to be RM308’s premier publication, will instead be published by Pagan Publishing with an estimated release date as Summer 2008.

My apologies.

As the lone chief editor, operations manager, financial coordinator, sales representative, and sole artist, illustrator and designer for the entire company, I laboured for several years to get The Mysteries of Mesoamerica, a lavishly illustrated 150-page opus and RM308’s premier publication, into production, devoting many hundreds of hours, early mornings and late evenings, weekends and holidays — every spare scrap of free time — to its design and development, anticipating my return to the games publishing forum. But as 2007 came to a close and I began final preparations for MoM’s release — at the same time preparing the foundation for the next supplement, The Mysteries of the Old West, Volume I (like ‘Mesoamerica, another monster supplement in excess of 175 pages!) — I realized that it would be impossible for RM308 to continue as it had. It was simply too much for one artist: rendering cover art, interior illustrations, NPC portraits, maps, spot art and layout, and struggling to maintain the production schedule of a respectable, marketable games publisher. As the sole proprietor, I concluded that RM308 could never become what I’d originally intended it to be.

It must be said that I had meanwhile also grown increasingly disenchanted and frustrated (again) with the games industry’s orthodoxy, mediocrity, vapidity and apathy. Especially where Lovecraft and roleplaying are concerned, I feel strongly that too many bubbly, juvenile, tender-hearted milksops have infested the genre: Pollyannas promoting a kinder, gentler version of the Cthulhu Mythos by way of Cthulhu plush dolls, Elder Sign earrings, ‘Niggurath nursery rhymes, Miskatonic Christmas carols, and buttloads of other flippant silliness.

And it’s not just the gaming industry. The general population of devotees among “Lovecraftian circles” suffers from a fairy tale misconception of the Mythos, one that I believe would turn poor Howard in his grave if he could see the candy-ass travesty that his grand universe has become. The mainstream Mythos is a dumbed-down and diluted, popularized and trivialized, emasculated cartoon, wholly separate from the dark, unutterable, obscene and blood-soaked savagery that is the true essence of the Mythos, and my contempt for this fashionable, New Age, Hello Kitty Lovecraft is well known.

So no more games. RM308 hereby retires from its ambitions at roleplaying publication. Again, my apologies, especially to Brian Appleton and John Crowe, my trusted colleagues and brothers-in-arms.
Room 308 Graphics & Publishing will now concentrate its efforts on the development of my former personal works, Black Sands: Betrothed (the original), Black Sands: Catalogue of the Ten Thousand Churches, and Black Sands: Temple of the Compass. This “creative course correction” will be more manageable and feasible than full-time game supplement production, and will more faithfully reflect my personal (hardcore) concepts of the greater Mythos. More importantly, the rendering of these books will better serve and honour my lord and master, the Great Phæraoh Ahau Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, Father of Knives, Cæsar of the Ten Thousand Tongues and Architect of the Monument of the Great Rain — blessings be upon His name! I’ve long considered my personal works to be secondary to CoC, but no longer.

Previews will soon be available for your inspection at my new website: www.RM308.com, and I hope to receive your continued support.

Cheers,

Blair Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief
Room 308 Graphics & Publishing

Blair Reynolds died in 2021. A few who knew him or admired his work marked his passing (“Blair Reynolds has left the building”). In the few short years after, much of his presence and memory have vanished from the internet. The above message was posted on the Yog-Sothoth.com forums, now defunct and unlikely to rise again. Blair Reynolds’ website, rm308.com, is long gone, although the Internet Archive contains bits and pieces of what it was. Most of his self-published work remains largely unavailable in hardcopy. Perhaps in five or ten years someone will contact the family, scrape through the archives, and put together an artist retrospective. Maybe then we’ll remember Blair Reynolds for who he was and what he did.

The Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game was first released in 1981. Heavily influenced by RuneQuest (1978) and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977), CoC brought then-contemporary ideas of roleplaying gaming to then-contemporary ideas of what Lovecraftian horror and the Cthulhu Mythos were. By the end of the decade, however, things were shifting. Horror roleplaying was moving in different directions (Vampire: the Masquerade would be published in 1991), and Lovecraftian horror was becoming more open and accessible to new voices, further from the rigid categorization of the Mythos under August Derleth.

In 1990, John Tynes founded Pagan Publishing, a small group that put out a Call of Cthulhu gaming fanzine called The Unspeakable Oath. This would be the starting point of what would become Delta Green and a variety of contemporary Mythos fiction that spun out of that, reworking and reimagining Lovecraft’s Mythos in new ways (for more on the history of Pagan Publishing, see Shannon Appelcline’s Pagan Publishing: 1990–Present). What struck most readers first and foremost was the cover by Blair Reynolds:

Reynolds’ artwork was featured on all of the issues of The Unspeakable Oath through 8/9 in 1993. It is probably Reynolds’ best-known work, stylistically distinct, often featuring a combination of photorealism, gore, nudity, and ritual elements that many found suggestive, tantalizing, and disturbing. Some of the effect, with distinct foreground characters against a detailed but darker background, suggests a multimedia-like approach, layering elements on top of each other to form the final composition.

At the time, Call of Cthulhu artwork wasn’t transgressive. Decent artists worked for Chaosium, but no one pushed the envelope in terms of what was acceptable for a roleplaying product in the 1990s; there was little gore, little nudity, and the monsters and cultists could often look more goofy than menacing. In an era when horror roleplaying was moving toward a more mature audience with various White Wolf games like Vampire: The Masquerade, it took more than tentacles and fish-people to really sell Lovecraftian horror as being something more than quaint. It needed something fresh, artwork that took chances and hinted at forbidden rites and rituals, monstrosity and corruption. Blair Reynolds provided that edge of mystery and taboo-breaking.

In 1994, Reynolds left Pagan Publishing to form his own Room 308 Publishing, and although he provided some more artwork for other gaming projects, his focus turned to a creator-owned work: Black Sands #1 (1996), the first part of a self-published black-and-white graphic novel written and illustrated by Blair Reynolds with additional works of fiction provided by James Reynolds.

“Black Sands: Betrothed” runs 26 pages. The pages are not laid out as a comic strip, but are a collection of artistically arranged art, some of it sexually explicit, and text. The text consists of excerpts from the 1924 journal of Frank Orand Buhtbaumbe, recounting a dream given to him by the Vision Serpent about his wife Allison, during their honeymoon in Haiti. Buhtbaumble watches his wife have sex with the human form of the Vision Serpent, and in the morning finds her gone; he consults with a friend, Dr. Henry Tiller, in New Orleans, and discovers that it was Nyarlathotep that took his bride. Buhtbaumbe seeks her at an ancient temple and kills many cultists—only to discover that was his wife’s plan all along. Then he wakes from the dream.

Cover and sample pages:

In the introduction to this issue, Reynolds explains:

This is a “cyclic” story, which means simply that portions of the book – Parts I, II, and III – will trade places back and forth each issue. The main body of each issue will always be entitled “Black Sands”, and for the Premiere Issue the main body is devoted to Part II, which takes place in the early 20th century. In addition to the main body, two “preludes” set the stage for upcoming issues, giving you an idea of what is ahead. The preludes for this issue include Part I (prehistory) and Part II (near future). Issue Two will see Part II (20th century) sliding into a prelude spot while Part I moves into the Black Sands main body, and the “meeting” of Hiuto and Messala will be illustrated in full detail, as the event deserves. Part III will take another prelude position in Issue Two and then come full circle to the main body – and the forefront – in Issue Three. Issues afterward will continue in this cyclic fashion, and in this manner the Black Sands saga will unfold.

It was an ambitious plan, and sadly wouldn’t quite come to fruition. But we can see the outline of what Reynolds hoped to accomplish.

The first prelude is “Tunc” (then), which takes the form of a prose account by Commander Torrence MacLaren, 22 April 2103 that runs for two prose pages. There is a heavy Delta Green vibe, a sense that this is a future of secrets where the Mythos is spilling into the open, and that MacLaren is more than he appears.

The second prelude is “Nunc” (now), two pages of prose from the journal of Onufari Iramus El’de Shaideene Messala, in an indeterminate year, but implicitly pre-gunpowder. This is the first appearance of the characters Hiuto and Messala mentioned in the introduction, and based on the last line, their “meeting” would have been vivid, if it had been published:

She was left speckled with the fluids of her escort when I finally go to her, tied her and left her face-down on one of the mattresses.

I made certain to stand where she could see me while I undressed. I wanted her to see the scars, and the marks of faith. And when I opened the haversack I’d brought in with me, it was especially important for her to see the pale mask I withdrew . . . . . . . as well as the polished metal cylinders and needles.

The remaining six pages consist of four works in the form of “files” for some unnamed group or agency. Two of these are labeled in the introduction “Templar File SK60550/312G” and “Templar File HD86179/782V” by James Reynolds, with supporting artwork by Blair. Again, there’s a strong Delta Green vibe to all of these, the idea of hidden narratives of the Mythos in a contemporary setting, buried under layers of government secrecy. Very much in the vein of what would become the SCP wiki format, although less structured.

“SK60550/312G” involves an experiment where student subjects are dosed with the hallucinogenic excrement of a newly discovered insect species. The results are strongly implied to be nasty, although a lot of blanks are left in the record.

“HD86179/782V” is slightly more infamous; the “Dogon Project” has a child born and raised in complete darkness with minimal human contact, echoing various feral child legends and Harry Harlow’s infamous monkey studies. This is the part which gets, if not exactly graphic, more transgressive than typical:

In his twelfth year he discovered masturbation. I still wonder what his source of fantasy was. He even used to try to engage in sex with his feces and food.

Yet there was one particularly interesting twist beyond that:

When he turned nineteen he had formed his own type of language. His grunts and movements were a way of talking to himself. This seemed perfectly natural to me until one day he formed a word, a word that I knew all too well: CTHULHU!

Sample pages from the files:

Black Sands #1 (1996) is as vivid today as it was thirty years ago. There are still boundaries that fiction and art rarely approach, and while I wouldn’t qualify any of this as pornography or even erotica, there is no doubt that this is in the same vein as the Linda Lovecraft anthologies in terms of being very explicit, mature works, with none of the humor or silliness that often cuts the Lovecraftian horror like baking soda in cocaine. If there’s a criticism, it might be that the writing is a little too obsessed with the question of good and evil, too focused on contrasting what the characters are seeing with Christian definitions of good and evil.

Black Sands #2 and subsequent issues would never emerge; in the 90s he returned to illustration for roleplaying games, and then stuck mostly with prose fiction. However, there was a sort of sequel in the 2010s. In 2013, Room 308 published Black Sands: Catalog of the Ten Thousand Churches, Journal No. 1, which republishes the entirety of the “Betrothed” sequence, along with prose chapters. Here, Blair Reynolds abandoned his original plan and rewrote the material as Col. Franklin Mackenzie Keyes’ field notes on various Lovecraftian cults he had encountered in his adventures.

Journal No. 1 was followed by an edited, much less explicit second edition in 2019, which alters the original “Betrothed” art to remove an erect phallus and various vulvas. This was followed by Journal No.2 (2019) and Journal No. 3 (2021) shortly before Blair Reynolds’ death. All of these volumes are illustrated, though nowhere to the degree of Black Sands #1 (1996), and the later volumes make considerable use of public domain and stock art, altered for purpose. They make for fun reading, nowhere near as edgy as the original Black Sands, but with plenty of wit and quite a lot of thought behind the various cults and cultic shenanigans.

It is a sad legacy. Blair Reynolds’ work, prose and art, is largely forgotten today; his great project of Black Sands was never fully completed, at least not according to his original vision, and even the few books he did put out near the end of his life are rare. All are out of print, except for Kindle editions of Black Sands: Catalog of the Ten Thousand Churches, Journal No. 1 (without the “Betrothed” comic), Journal No. 2, and Journal No. 3, which are still available for now.

Maybe, one day, that will change. I hope so. More people deserve to see what Blair Reynolds achieved, or tried to.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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El Convento Infernal (1995) by Ignacio Noé & Ricardo Barreiro

Eldritch Fappening

The following review concerns a work of Lovecraftian pornography.
It includes nude images and will discuss relevant matters of sexuality in detail.
Reader discretion advised.

Ignacio Noé (1965– ) and Ricardo Barreiro (1949–1999) were two of the Argentinian comic creators who found a niche in European comics, their work often bouncing between Spain, France, and Italy, with translations in many different markets. Their collaboration El Converto Infernal first appeared in the Spanish-language adult comics magazine Kiss Comix in 1995, serialized from issue 49 to issue 56, running 62 pages, lavishly painted and drawn by Noé. The result was popular enough to be translated into several languages, and an English translation by Robert Legault was published in a lightly censored edition by NBM in 1997 as The Convent of Hell.

As the title suggests, The Convent of Hell is a work of nunsploitation. The roots of this genre go deep in European art and literature, including historical accounts that amount to “nuns behaving badly,” like the Nun of Watton, but most contemporary scholars point to La Religieuse (1792) by Denis Diderot, a sympathetic novel about a nun trapped in the legal and social constraints of her order and unable to leave, as a turning point. The work both emphasizes the lack of personal freedom that the nun Suzanne Simonin experiences and offers sharp criticism of the Catholic Church and its institutions. This set the stage for the main erotic line, where nunsploitation erotica is primarily a variation on the “women in prison,” but offering tangential and complementary taboos including lesbianism, sex work, BDSM, and blasphemy—themes which all crop up in greater or lesser degree in works like The Devils (1971), directed by Ken Russell.

First panel, showcasing the remote and isolated location of the fortress-like convent.

Openly erotic explorations of the theme varied widely. Robert E. Howard, for example, owned a copy of The Merry Order of St. Bridget, a flagellation novel involving nuns, and captured the central theme of imprisoned passion in a poem:

NUN

I have anchored my ship to a quiet port;
A land that is holy and blest.
But I gaze through my bars at the tempest’s sport
And I long for the sea’s unrest.
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, 23 Jun 1926, Collected Letters 1.98

Exploitation filmmakers, comic book artists, and writers in the 1970s became especially lavish in using nuns, working out several variations on the basic theme, especially in countries with a strong Catholic influence such as Italy, Spain, France, and their diaspora. Nor was Lovecraftian media immune. The underground comic Tales from the Leather Nun (1973) includes one of the first original Lovecraftian comics, “Tale of the Leather Nun’s Grandmother” by writer/artist Jaxon, who owes her youth and beauty to the work of the wizard Alhazred—and who has accidentally turned her vulva into a portal into the cosmic domain of Cthulhu and other eldritch entities.

Barreiro and Noé were quite evidently drawing from an eclectic mix of resources in composing their work, and the graphic novel has a frankly erotic character playing out to many interests. There are elements of sadomasochism, bondage, lesbianism, Satanism, and corruption that come together with supernatural elements. After a brutal opening involving the sexual torture of a novitiate, the nuns uncover a hidden locked door in the basement (possibly a reference to Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy), which inspires in the Mother Superior a dream of a Lovecraftian-flavored Satanic ritual:

While the Church of Satan does include a few Lovecraftian elements, the actual being that emerges in this dream is a monstrously-endowed satyr. An older nun manages to find a reference to the door in a handy copy of the Necronomicon…

The mother superior of the convent doesn’t listen to her, however, and forces the door open, leading to an eruption of phallic-headed tentacles reminiscent of Japanese hentai in one of the most infamous scenes from the graphic novel.

Which gets explicit and quite graphic, leading to the afflicted nun’s death and the sealing of the door. Douglas E. Cowan, who summarizes the graphic novel in greater detail in his book The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, waxes clinical:

When the locks are broken, though, the nuns shrink back in fear as this time a true Lovecraftian horror bursts into the room. A flurry of tentacles, each rubbery arm tipped with a sinister phallus, emerges from whatever unearthly space lies beyond the door. Seizing the first available Marionite sister, it quickly envelops and strips the screaming woman. Fondling her ever more intmately, the tentacled abomination progresses to vaginal, anal, and oral rape—physical manifestations of everything she has sworn to abjure as a consecrated virgin. Although the other nuns are frozen in terror, with every new invasion of the young nun’s body a cut-away panel shows the effect on the Mother Superior, who grows increasingly turned on with each grotesque violation. Finally, the abbess orgasms as the Great Old one lifts the other woman high into the air, sexually impaled, every tentacular phallus ejaculating at once. A rain of eldritch sperm covers her body, and unable to withstand the supernatural assault, she dies naked on the rude stone floor.

We are never told her name. (111-112)

That night, the corrupted Mother Superior goes to unseal the door, and is interrupted by a messenger from God, a child-like angel.

Image truncated because no one needs to see a naked putto.

This sequence—where the corrupted Mother Superior nails the tiny angel to the door and then literally sucks the life out of them through their penis—was omitted from NBM’s edition of The Convent of Hell, probably out of fear that what it was depicting was too close, at least visually, to child sexual abuse material. There are anecdotes that even this mild self-censorship wasn’t sufficient; Steve Fentone in AntiCristo: The Bible of Nasty Nun Snema & Culture reports that: “[…] initial shipments of THE CONVENT OF HELL were reputedly stopped at the Canadian/US border, presumably for the books elements of bestiality and degradation.” (234)

With this sacrifice, the Mother Superior manages to summon a monstrously endowed Beelzebub through the door, in the form of a gigantic satyr. The corruption of the convent is soon complete in an orgy of sex and blood. After a chance encounter with a pair of newlyweds, the Vatican learns of the degradation and sends a special assault force with holy-water-blessed members and flamethrowers to deal with the Satanic infestation, destroy the demon, and block up the doorway once again.

This is not the first erotic comic work to invoke Lovecraftian names and themes; aside from the aforementioned Tales from the Leather Nun, there were works like the Italian comic Ramba, written by Marco Delizia; and the Young Witches series, which was created by Ricardo Barreiro and Francisco Solano López. The conflation of Lovecraftian elements with Satanic elements wasn’t uncommon in this respect, but neither is it really an attraction for those looking for Lovecraftian erotica, instead of Satanic porn with a thin skin of Lovecraftian elements. These few panels reproduced for this review contain basically all the Lovecraftian names and references across 64 pages of art.

El Convento Infernal is definitely a work of art. It is sacrilegious to the point of comedy; occasionally brutal, often over-the-top, yet the artwork is vivid and, as Cowan points out, often draws on classical works of Satanic imagery for reference. There is a vividness to the full-color artwork which is starkly at odds with the sometimes muddy shading of the black-and-white artwork that dominated Kiss Comix at the time. It is an exercise in excess where every episode seeks to grab the reader with at least one can’t-unsee-that image. In that respect, it is a success.

But does it go too far?

This is not a work that delves deep into the psychology of cloistered nuns, although there are hints of sexual repression and political considerations throughout the story; it is primarily, and always, a pornographic work, and some of the acts are violent and nonconsensual. There isn’t any actual bestiality, as Fentone mentions; the great hoofed goat with the enormous phallus is a demon. There is not technically any CSAM; it’s an angel. Yet it is definitely a dark fantasy, and one that is narratively built like a sexploitation horror film if there were no budget on special effects and the actresses would do absolutely anything in front of the camera.

Clark Ashton Smith was living in Auburn, California, when the Catholic order the Sisters of Mercy opened a convent within sight of his cabin in 1939/1940. He sometimes jokingly called it “the Nunnery of Averoigne,” and the sight of the nuns inspired a few poems. Most were relatively sedate affairs, but one speaks of the temptation of the forbidden:

IMPROBABLE DREAM

In my dream a nun,
Proudly bosomed, lunar-pale,
Danced naked in the sun.

—Clark Ashton Smith, Complete Poetry 2.499

El Convento Infernal is, in a much more explicit fashion, just such an improbable dream. More lavish, more detailed, and probably tripping the censors as obscene in some jurisdictions, yet in every sense a pure sexual fantasy that bespeaks a fascination with seeing the untouchable touched, the inviolate violated, witnessing the act of transgression against deeply ingrained cultural taboos.

Outside the United States, there have been multiple editions of this work collected in Spanish, French, and possibly other languages. The English edition has never been reprinted and today is quite scarce. Noé would return to Lovecraftian themes in 2023 when he provided a variant cover for Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu (Zenescope), which is evocative of his earlier work while being in no way tied to it.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Cuntess EP (2025) by Necronomicunt

[…] the lyrics for this song were written 19 years ago when the first face transplant was performed. It is about a serial killer who hates his face and makes a face of his own, sewn together out of the dried, skinned faces of his victims. The music was written this year, 2024 {Age of Cunt} and is technically a tryptych with an intro and outro. This is how it shall be recorded professionally[.]
—Steph Bathory, 18 Sep 2024 Facebook post to the Necronomicunt page

The influence of H. P. Lovecraft in music can be chronicled in lyrics, individual songs and tracks, albums, and band names. Writers like Gary Hill (The Strange Sound of Cthulhu) and Sébastien Baert (Cthulhu Metal: l’Influence de Mythe) have traced the literary DNA from the early psychedelic rock of the band H. P. Lovecraft through the earliest heavy metal influences in “Behind the Wall of Sleep” (1970) by Black Sabbath to the time of publication. The list is never complete; new generations discover Lovecraft’s mythos, new artists create new bands, compose and perform new pieces. It is all so wonderfully weird.

Necronomicunt is a relatively recent example. Band members include vocalist/lyricist Steph Bathory/Cuntess Dracula (former vocalist of Bathom and SpitRoast Sluts Not Dead); guitarist Tommy/Cutrifiend Punt; drummer Matt Hills/Omzferatu, and bassist Aaron Richmond/Yeti (all information from Encyclopedia Metallum). As for the style:

Necronomicunt merges the commandment of Doom with the speed of D-Beat Punk Rock. From the black-tar-filth, cud of decay; the satanic riffs primordially ripple through, oscillating faster than the speed of light, from the bottom of a black hole. (Bandcamp)

“D-beat” is a hardcore punk style named after a characteristic drumbeat; “Doom” metal is a descendant of heavy metal that typically uses a slower tempo and down-tuned guitars. Put the two together, and you have a sound that is heavier than your typical punk band but more frantic and energetic than a typical doom album. Very atmospheric, but it’s got a beat you can mosh to. Steph Bathory’s vocal style contains the fast pace of punk singing with death metal growls. Not unintelligible to the trained ear, although it might take new listeners a few listens to pick out the lyrics (I tried to find the lyrics, but they’re not on Bandcamp or Spotify, although there are a few on the band’s Facebook page). Necronomicunt is often categorized as sludge metal, and not without reason, but don’t focus too heavily on labels; that way lies madness.

In terms of content and aesthetics, Necronomicunt clearly takes inspiration from black metal (a heavy metal variant with Satanic themes/content/trappings) and horror, with songs about vampirism, serial killers, Satanism, etc. Despite the name, Lovecraft doesn’t appear to be a major lyrical influence per se, although the Facebook page includes the lyrics for an eponymous song titled “Necronomicunt” (Facebook, 14 Jan 2023):

…and given the name of the band is an obscene homage, and its musical descent from Black Sabbath, we can definitely say they’re somewhere in the Lovecraftian musical family tree.

Cuntess (2025) is Necronomicunt’s first EP, available on Bandcamp and for promotional purposes on Youtube and Spotify, and consists of four songs:

Face Transplanter (05:44)
Pyramid of Death (04:06)
Cuntess Dracula (04:58)
Green Phlegm (05:06)

“Face Transplanter” was the standout and also appeared in The 100 Best Releases of 2025; “Green Phlegm” also appeared on Pest Records Online Compilation vol. 18, although personally I think “Cuntess Dracula” and “Pyramid of Death” are better fits for horror fans. There are far worse ways to spend 20 minutes or £6.66, and I’ll bet their live shows are loud and energetic, if that’s their studio performance. One live video from the 2023 Easton Punk Fest suggests the distortion gets pretty extreme, but people are moving to the beat.

Real question: why Necromicunt?

Because it’s fun. It’s transgressive to the point of almost being silly, but it communicates forbidden, occult, dark, nasty, obscene, and in-your-face. Which is perfect because that’s exactly the kind of sound the band has. So it fits, it works, it is appropriate in context. It may offend a few prudes, but that’s rather the point. Take it like the bright markings on a toxic frog: experience at your own discretion.

The weird thing is is, they’re not the only ones. There’s a Canadian band called Necronomikunt; and at least three different bands have released songs titled “Necronomicunt”: Alastor in 2000, Ghoulmancer in 2014, and Reanimator in 2022. That’s a lot of Necronomicunts! And there are undoubtedly more. The coincidental combination of consonants has inspired many different creators to fuse Lovecraft’s epic title with an expletive, and the juxtaposition and the mouth feel both work. There have been plenty of variations in this line over the years: the Necronomicum ex Mortis in the porn film Evil Head (2012) and the four-issue run of Necronomicum: The Magazine of Weird Erotica (2014) being two examples; readers might also compare “Necrophallus” by Makino Osamu (牧野修), which also takes Lovecraft’s basic concept in strange and deliberately taboo-defying new directions.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“H. P. Lovecraft’s The Ter’ble Old Man” (1971) by Larry Fuller

We will probably never know who was the first Black creator to adapt Lovecraft to the medium of comics. Pre-Code Lovecraftian Horror Comics rarely credited their writers and artists; it is not impossible that one or more uncredited toiler in a small horror comic shop was Black. So too, there may be some obscure comic that hasn’t come to light yet where an early artist or writer applied their talents to a Lovecraft adaptation that has so far escaped notice. Such things happen, and when they come to light push back “first” a little further.

That being said, the first Lovecraft comic adaptation by a Black creator that I’m aware of is “H. P. Lovecraft’s The Ter’ble Old Man” in the underground comix Laugh in the Dark (1971, Last Gasp), by Larry Fuller.

After the Comics Code Authority was formed in 1954, horror and crime comics swiftly vanished from the newsstands of the United States. EC Comics’ was especially hard-hit. A generation that had grown up reading horror comics now could not find them; so some began to make their own. Young artists and writers began to write and draw their own comic strips and pages in the 1960s, publishing in outlets not covered by the CCA, such as college magazines, self-published ‘zines, and underground newspapers.

In 1968, Zap Comix #1 was published in San Francisco. A solo effort by Robert Crumb, this issue showcased an original art style completely unlike the conventional comic strips of mainstream publishers like Marvel, DC Comics, Gold Key, and Archie. The subject matter was also unconventional; without need to submit his work to the censors of the CCA, Crumb could include nudity, explicit sex, politics, drug use, racial issues, crime, horror, and whatever else he wanted. In subsequent issues, Crumb invited other creators to add their own contributions, including future legends like S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, and Rick Griffin. These anthology comics provided a template for the underground comix movement.

Gary Arlington formed the San Francisco Comic Book Company in 1968; economic necessity forced him to sell his collection of Golden Age and EC comics, and the commercial outlet brought him into contact with like-minded readers and artists. Arlington embraced independent publishing, printing a number of underground comix during the 60s and 70s. One of these was Bogeyman #1 (1969), a horror comic inspired by classic EC comics created by Rory Hayes, a young teen with no formal artistic training who also worked the cash register at the store, and who would go on to earn a reputation for works like Cunt Comics. As with Zap Comix, while the first issue of Bogeyman was a solo effort by Hayes, the subsequent two issues of the short-lived series were anthology titles, showcasing horror-related work by several creators.

In 1970, Last Gasp Eco Funnies was founded in Berkeley, California. Among their comics would be EC-inspired horror comics like Skull (1970-1972) and Tales from the Leather Nun (1972), both of which featured Lovecraft adaptations or stories based on Lovecraft’s fiction and creations. In 1971, Last Gasp published a one-shot titled Laugh in the Dark; according to some sources (e.g. Lambiek Comicopledia), this was originally intended to be the fourth issue of Bogeyman, and features work by Rory Hayes and other artists that had contributed to previous issues. It also featured “Hairy” Larry Fuller’s one-page adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Terrible Old Man.”

The first page I ever got paid for doing. Appeared in Laugh In the Dark, an underground circa 1970, all stories of HP Lovecraft. Thanks, Rory. May you rest in peace.
—Larry Fuller, Some Grass and a Gallery (2000)

“The Ter’ble Old Man” might have been Fuller’s first paid work, but it wasn’t his first published work. Ebon #1 (1970), the first comic to star a Black superhero in his own title, was published by Gary Arlington a year before Laugh in the Dark came out. These connections reinforce the idea that Laugh in the Dark started as a Bogeyman issue. In later years, Fuller would gain a reputation for his LGBTQ+ comics and pornographic comics like White Whore Funnies (1975-1979) and Gay Heartthrobs (1976-1981), and as a publisher.

“The Ter’ble Old Man” has remained relatively obscure in Lovecraftian comics history, mostly because it has never been reprinted, outside of reprints of the entire issue of Laugh in the Dark itself. While a competent adaptation, especially given the space constraints, the story lacks many of the grand images that would make for splashy illustrations, and Fuller’s line is workmanlike rather than exceptional, with the rough quality that is typical of underground comix at the time. Without context, this adaptation seems unexceptional; though largely faithful to Lovecraft’s text, it omits the more supernatural aspects of the story.

It is most interesting to consider this story in the context of what else was happening in publishing, especially comics and Lovecraft, at the time. Lovecraft was seeing a resurgence in the 60s and 70s due to paperback reprints; pulp fiction in general was seeing renewed interest that would lead to a brief revival of Weird Tales. The interest in Lovecraft wasn’t unique to Fuller—Laugh in the Dark also contains “Wilfred Kreel: Seeker of the Strange” (an adaptation of “The Lurking Fear”) by Manuel “Spain” Rodriguez (who is, very likely, the first Hispanic comic creator to adapt Lovecraft)—and there were several other Lovecraft adaptations that appeared in later underground comix.

Yet Lovecraft wasn’t just an underground idol; Lovecraft stories and adaptations appeared in both non-Code-approved comic magazines like Warren Publications’ Creepy and code-approved-but-bloodless horror comics from Marvel, who produced their own adaptation of “The Terrible Old Man” in Tower of Shadows #3 (1970), only six months prior, in 7 pages by Roy Thomas (script), Barry Windsor-Smith (pencils), Jean Simek (letters), Dan Adkins & John Verpoorten (inks). In comparison to Fuller, the Marvel effort is very conventional for the time—seven pages means fewer cramped panels, more space for Windsor-Smith to showcase his art—where Fuller’s adaptation is necessarily condensed. So, too, Marvel went through the trouble of securing permission to adapt the story from Arkham House, something that Last Gasp does not seem to have done with Laugh in the Dark (1971), but which they did do for Skull Comix #4 and #5 (1972).

In that context, underground comix appear as one thread in the spread of Lovecraft to greater recognition. His posthumous reputation had, in effect, street cred among the young creators of the underground, who could (and would) do things with Lovecraft’s work that Marvel and Warren Publications could not do. The creators who had placed themselves on the forefront of the medium would produce some of the first Lovecraftian pornography, some of the goriest Lovecraft adaptations, some of the most serious and accurate, and some of the funniest and most farcical. They made Lovecraft’s work their own—and that was what Larry Fuller was doing, not in a big splashy way, but in a single page of cramped panels.

Laugh in the Dark (1971) can be read at the Internet Archive.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Robert E. Howard as a Boy” (10 Jul 1936) by Elsie Burns

When Robert E. Howard and his mother died in the small town of Cross Plains, Texas on 11 June 1936, it was a shock to the small community. It was also news. Jack Scott, the owner and editor of the Cross Plains Review, did more than post the bare facts of the tragedy and the announcements for the funeral. Along with the normal materials, he published a letter from C. L. Moore to Dr. Isaac M. Howard consoling him on his son’s death (3 Jul 1936); published one of Robert’s award-winning school essays (19 Jun 1936), and the short story “A Man-Eating Jeopard” (14 Aug 1936). A year and a week after Bob’s death, he even published his “final” poem, “The Tempter” (18 Jun 1937). Yet one of the most unusual and interesting pieces that saw print in the Cross Plains Review after Bob’s death was “Robert E. Howard as a Boy” by Mrs. T. A. Burns (10 Jul 1936).

Elsie M. Cochran Burns (20 Jul 1889 – 28 Mar 1940) was the wife of Thomas Allen Burns. Born and raised in Burkett, TX, to the southwest of Cross Plains in neighboring Coleman County. In 1912 she was appointed the postmaster of the small town. In 1917, the Howard family came to Burkett, to live for a while. Young Robert attended the local school, and the dog Patch came to live with the Howard family (REH.world). Her brief memoir is one of the few to mention Howard’s childhood or his beloved pet, who is otherwise mostly known through Dr. Howard’s letters.

※

ROBERT E. HOWARD AS A BOY
by Mrs. T. A. Burns

`Tis early one Spring morning, accompanied only by current magazines. We take off across a nearby pasture
for a walk, stopping occasionally to pluck an anemone or some other dainty pastel hued blossom which
mother nature displays soon after the first robins return.

After a time we find ourself seated upon a rock, lost in musings, with the only disturbance a tinkling cow bell
down by a wooded section near the water hole on the twitter of birds as they flit to and fro among the
branches of an oak above us. Finally becoming so absorbed in reading we are unaware of any approach until a big black and white dog wearing a collar bounds down from a ledge of rock behind, startling us. The kind look in his eyes assures that he is at least friendly, when almost immediately a call “Come Patches, come Patches” is heard and looking up in direction of the voice we see a lad of about ten years crossing fence wearily. Simultaneously each [sic] Patches in the meantime, seems to be investigating a small cave under a huge rock. As his master approaches our position and politely announces, “I’m Robert Howard, am sorry if we frightened you Patches and I are out for our morning stroll. We like to come here where there are big rocks and caves so we can play “make believe.” Some day I’m going to be an author and write stories about pirates and maybe cannibals.

“Would you like to read them?”

Assuring him that we would, he calls to Patches and they are soon out of sight over the crest of the nearly hill, where-up we resume musing and reading.

Sometime later Robert comes to live next door, we watch him as he and his faithful and beloved dog, Patches, play dog after day until they are joined by a pet coon which Patches seems to understand is one of the family, many romps and spills are enjoyed by the trio, Robert ever manifesting kindness and consideration for his pets. After a time the coon becomes so mischievous that the family hold council and agree with reluctancy [sic] to return him to his native haunts on Pecan Bayou.

Roberts father, being a practicing physician, gives opportunity for the father mother and son to spend much
time together as they accompany him on long drives. Frequently they stop an their return at some shady spot near a stream and spread lunch. which had been carefully prepared and the little family seem to live in a world of their own for a time.

During the fathers absence, while on duties made by an ever demanding patronage, mother and son keep close contact and are inseparable pole, portraying a devotion seldom known, ever between parent and child.

Robert, ever studious and possessing an unusually vivid imagination, even as a child, possesses visionary
[ranches] upon which roam spirited mustangs, long horns, and gun totin’ cowboys. In fancy the cattle and
horses carry Roberts favorite brand X≡ (X three bars) carvings of which are still to be seen in sand rocks, on
trees where he played, even on the [gable] roof where he was want to climb.

True to his prediction that Spring morning, Robert wrote many and vivid stories, copies of which fill a large
sill trunk at [his] fathers I gaining for him recognition and a certain amount of fortune at home and abroad.
There writings and acquaintances will keep alive in our hearts the memory of this beloved author, Robert E.
Howard.

※

Elsie Burns died a few years later (obituary) from an embolism (death certificate). There would be no more memories of her young neighbor that grew up to be a famous pulp writer; though this would not be the end of her connection with Howard. In the transcripts of interviews conducted by L. Sprague and Catherine Crooke de Camp in Texas in the 1970s, conducted to compile material for their Howard biography Dark Valley Destiny, Elise Burns turns up several times. The de Camps were tracing the migration of the Howard family, and wanted to learn more about the woman who had written “Robert E. Howard as a Boy.” They did not discover much, as she had been dead over 30 years at that point, but they wanted to get it on the record. Par of their questions read:

AND: I don’t know now . . . This Mrs. Burns is . . . I guess she’s dead.

LS: Oh yes. Long since.

CdeC: She remembered Robert –

AND: May I tell you something about Mrs. Burns? Do you know anything about Mrs. Burns?

CdeC: Only she was a post mistress and she liked to write.

LS: And she married a man who was almost as fat as she was, who lived to be over a hundred years old.

AND: Fat? Her husband was not as big as I.

CdeC: Oh?

LS: Oh?

CdeC: Oh, I thought he was fat too.

And: Oh no. That was the show. Everybody loved her all right. And they liked him. They liked him, both of them. But he was such a tiny little fellow and here was this great big 300 pound woman. And she was precious to him. She took care of him just . . . He was quite a bit older and she . . . It was the greatest thing in the world, that he had her in his last years.

CdeC: Yes. I think that someone else said he was small. (to LS) You’ve always thought he was big.

LS: Mmm. Somebody said he was a big fat fellow.

AND: Oh, you’re mistaken. You’re mistaken.

LS: Must have had him mixed up with somebody else.

CdeC: Well I know that she . . .

JD: (to And) You were going to say, “Mrs. Burns . . . ” You had a story to tell, about Mrs. Burns?

AND: Oh I don’t have a story except that she was such a big person. And she had a sister not quite so big. But she was always so kind to this old fellow and took care of him and treated him like he was . . . er . . . her child.

CdeC: That was lovely.
—”Interview with Annie Newton Davis, 18 Oct 1978″ in “…when I last see him”:The de Camp Interviews on Robert E. Howard (2026) 193-194
AND: Annie Newton Davis
LS: L. Sprague de Camp
CdeC: Catherine de Camp
JD: Jocelyn Darling

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The Fishmen of Innsmouth” 「インスマウスの半魚人」(1959) by H. P. Lovecraft & Shōgo Matsumiya (絵・松宮省吾)

Eldritch Fappenings

This review deals with a work of erotic art and writing.
As part of this review, selected images with depictions of nudity will be displayed.
As such, please be advised before reading further.

My proper introduction to the Japanese-language Cthulhu Mythos came courtesy of Edward Lipsett and Kurodahan Press (2002-2025). For over twenty years, Kurodahan worked to translate into English works that would otherwise never have been available to monolingual Anglophones like myself. Thanks to their efforts I was able to read Asamatsu Ken (朝松健) and Rampo Edogawa (江戸川乱歩) and many others I hadn’t heard of; and I gained an appreciation for the work of the people translating those stories back into English. Now that Kurodahan Press is no more and their titles out of print, I regret I didn’t have the money to buy everything they put out, or the time to read it all.

In Kurodahan’s Night Voices, Night Journeys (2005) the first volume of Lairs of the Hidden Gods stories (an anthology series of Japanese Cthulhu Mythos tales), there is an essay titled “Lovecraftian Landscapes: Four Decades of H.P. Lovecraft and Manga” by Yonezawa Yoshihiro (米澤嘉博) trans. Ryan Morris, where he described an early Lovecraft translation:

It was entitled The Fishmen of Innsmouth (illustrated by Shōgo Matsumiya) and appeared as part of the feature article, The Greatest Horror Stories from Around the World, Illustrated in issue Three of Ugoku Kao (Moving Face), the “tabloid strictly for men,” originally published as an offshoot of the very popular 1950s erotic entertainment magazine Hyaku-man in no Yoru (One Million Nights of One Million People). The subtitle read “Horrors! My face—it’s become… a frog!” The story featured pictures of half-naked women with such outrageous captions as “The Khanakai tribe made sacrifices of young virgins. THe bosoms of these fast-maturing tropically-raised maidens, with their black skin, breasts like ripe peaches, dark eyes that could seduce any man, lips with scents like durian, and gently curving waists hidden only by grass skirts, were but decorations on the altar: offerings to the Demon God.” The illustrations were fine black-and-white ink pieces that had all the mood of a Western horror novel, and although the FIshmen looked more like frogs, they were certainly grotquese. These drawings were perhaps made more accessible thanks to their being in the similar Vein as the “Lost world” monster stories of Oguri Mushitaro and Kayama Shigeru. It was only a four-page illustrated story, but it is most likely the first ever domestic H.P. Lovecraft visual work. (294)

Dr. Justin Mullis asked if I had a copy; I did not, but was able to procure a copy of Moving Faces, vol. 1, no. 3 (Mar 1959) [うごく顔第1巻第3号（1959年3月）]. I then asked a friend, Dr. Dierk Guenther in Japan (who helped out before on “Medusa’s Curse” (1995) by Sakura Mizuki (桜水樹氏)), to translate it into English.

The result is everything that Yonezawa Yoshihiro described in his essay and more. An abbreviated, localized, sexploitation version of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” crammed into four pages for a Japanese men’s magazine. Given when and where it was published, the work also reflects something of the language and attitudes of the postwar period in Japan; reader discretion advised. No translator is credited for the original translation/abridgement. Dierk Guenther’s comments on the translation will be marked by dagger symbols (†) and included at the end of the translated text.

※

A famous story of monsters

The Fishmen of Innsmouth

“Ah, my face, it looks like a frog …”

Author: Lovecraft
Matsumiya Shōgo/Art
[New translation and notes: Dierk Guenther]

(1) “The cheapest way to Arkham town? That would be the bus in the direction of Innsmouth.”

I was celebrating my coming of age with a tour of New England, visiting historic sites as well as researching the distribution patterns of flora and fauna. It was from an agent at the train station of Newburyport that I heard for the first time the name of the town of Innsmouth.

“You seem not to be aware of this. The town can’t be found on maps or tourism brochures. In 1927 the town was hit by a mysterious infectious disease and violent riots that reduced the town’s population. Now the town is dead, and only a few, very peculiar people are living there.”

My interest was immediately raised, and I took the bus to Innsmouth, being the only person on board. The bus driver had uncanny features, looking like half-fish, half-frog.

(2) Soon, the bus arrived in a bleak town. Many houses lined up that were reminders that in earlier times, the town must have been very beautiful and flourishing. Not one single person could be seen. The half frog, half fish bus driver didn’t say one word, and with a gloomy feeling, I looked out of the window at the “town of death”. It was a dark town that felt nauseous with an overall stench of decaying fish.

Soon, an awkwardly constructed stone building, a medieval-style church, could be seen. The entry in the building’s basement was open, revealing a rectangle of blackness inside. And then I saw a priest, who was wrapped in a peculiar vestment. He wore a frightening golden tiara-like crown.

(3) I checked myself in at the hotel Gilman House, of which I had heard from the agent in Newburyport, left my luggage there, and went into town. All the ghost-like people whom I met occasionally, who seemed to come out of nowhere, looked like half-frog, half-fish, and were unsettling. And then, by coincidence, I met a white-haired elderly person. His name was Zadok Allan, and he was 96 years old. He appeared frightened and had the peculiar habit of sometimes looking behind himself.

Luring the old man by offering him whiskey, we went to a part of the beach with no one around and here I spoke with Zadok.

The area was wrapped in an atmosphere of death and destruction and the unbearable stench of raw fish filled the air.

“Can you tell me why the blooming Innsmouth became like this?”

“That was a truly horrible thing.”

Around the time these events unfolded, there was a friend of the old man by the name of Matt Eliot, who on an island chain in the South Pacific traded with the natives living there†. Among these natives was the tribe of the Kanakys, who paid respect to evil gods that lived under the sea.

(4) On the island where the Kanakys lived there was a peculiar ruin. On its wall were engraved terrifying images of fish and frogs and random monstrous creatures. The Kanakys claimed that when the island rose out of the sea, evil gods lived in this building. Thanks to the evil gods, the Kanakys could catch a lot of fish and other creatures from the depths of the sea. In return, the Kanakys offered young virgins as living sacrifice to the evil gods.

The islanders held twice a year a big festival, on the evening before the May Festival and on All Saints’ Day. Young women of dark skin and firm, full breasts stirred the hearts of men like a vaguely ominous bell. Their lips tasted of the aroma of the durian fruit. They were tropical-bred and quick to become passionate. Wearing at their curved hips a ceremonial waist loincloth, they were taken to an altar as a human sacrifice to the dark gods.

Although they did not say “I am sad. Although I dreamt of living together with you. What fate, being given to the depth of the sea,” the young women cried in their hearts.

Especially, the hearts of the young men who led their lovers to the altar were filled with anguish. The altar was set up on a canoe, and together with the sacrificial victims, it was thrown into the sea. How the gods then disposed of the sacrifices I cannot say.

And then at one point, the evil gods came on land. They told the Kanakys: “If you mix your blood with ours, then at first children that resemble humans will be born, but the children will be like the evil gods and can also live in the depths of the sea.”

(5) This appealed to the islanders. They thought if they could live on the sea floor they would be free like the fish, and so began to mate with the evil gods. It is possible that the evil gods were an amphibious species who in old times had vanished from the land. These evil gods were beyond death, and even their descendants continued to live on.

When Elliott arrived on the island, strangely, the Kanakys had vanished. Captain Obed said: “With no natives around, we can’t do any profitable business. Well, as there seems to be no other way, can we attract the evil gods from the sea?”

Elliott served under the captain, and he was opposed to this idea. However, the captain stubbornly refused to listen. In those days, Innsmouth was a town that survived on the seafaring trade. Especially if Obed’s ship (or: business) would hit a slump, it was absolutely obvious that the town would fall into decline.

“To make matters worse, one can’t even catch fish in the town. Look, those Kanakys got their blessings from these evil gods, aren’t they? They could catch fish in unlimited quantities. If we make money, the city’s economy will improve. The problem is what to do about those human sacrifices these evil gods like so much. Well, we can handle this flexibly.”

Even the sailors knew the stories about the monsters, and they were not pleased to get close to such things, but for the sake of money, they shut their eyes to it.

(6) There is a reef off the coast of Innsmouth. And on this reef a weird disturbance occurred. On the eve before the May Festival and on the All Souls’ festival, Obed and his men conducted a strange festival. It was the festival held by the Kanakys. By the way, only on these evenings young women vanished without a trace. However, in the town, fish could be caught in extraordinary quantities. It was around this time that the monsters who had come to the land in the year of the Kanakys appeared in Innsmouth. And they demanded from the townspeople what they had also demanded from the Kanakys. Thus, by the time of the Civil War the children who had been born were beginning to come of age. They were half frog, half fishmen.

(7) But, riots and a plague brought in from China†† turned Innsmouth into a town of death, concluded old man Zadok, laughing like a drooling lunatic†††.

This evening, there was not one single guest in the Gilman House. In my room, which stank of mould, and under the dim, gloomy glow of an electric bulb, I read a book. Due to being beset by an eerie feeling, I couldn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t keep from staring at the door latch, and just in case anything might happen, I slept in my clothes and shoes so that I could easily escape from the room. In the darkness, I heard a strange noise. It was without a doubt the sound of someone opening carefully and with great caution the lock of my room’s front door with a key. Because I had already felt a vague sense of uneasiness beforehand, even while I realized that a terrible danger was approaching, I managed not to be frightened. (Still, I had to get into safety.) Using a quickly made improvised rope, I climbed down from my room in the Gilman House into the inner yard. The moonlight radiated eerily. Then the entry of the house opened, and from the inside appeared gradually strange forms in the darkness, holding up lanterns, speaking in frightening, rattling voices, uttering words that were clearly not English.

Seeing these forms, my whole body shivered. Their staggering gait was so repulsive that it turned my stomach.

The most disgusting one among them was the form of a monster that wore a crown. And then I saw them clearly: The half-frog, half-fishmen! The shadow of Innsmouth! I fled along the decayed railway tracks, bathed in yellow phantom moonlight. When I returned to Arkham I rested at a count’s house. There I saw an eerie pattern. I learned that, seemingly, my grandmother and others had died in Innsmouth. Did this mean that I had half frog, half fishmen blood in my veins? One morning, I looked in the mirror and the face that I saw there was unmistakably the creepy face of an Innsmouth half-frog, half-fishman.

† The original Japanese translator uses doujin, which is an outdated and offensive term for indigenous people.

†† The original translator uses a very derogatory term for China. The text was translated in an era before Japan and China took up diplomatic relations, so the term for China may still have been common in Japan in 1959.

††† The original translator used an extremely offensive term for “mad person” that is nowadays regarded as insulting and dehumanizing.

※

Without attempting to directly translate any of Lovecraft’s prose, the uncredited Japanese translator still tried to present something of Lovecraft’s style in a Japanese context—while waxing eloquent on the young Polynesian women that Lovecraft essentially glossed over in the original. The abridged text is an artifact of both when and where it was published; other stories in the same feature include “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs, “The Upper Berth” by F. Marion Crawford, and “The Strange Adventure of a Private Secretary” by Algernon Blackwood, so Lovecraft and Innsmouth were in good company, especially considering that neither would be commonly known in Japan.

The illustrations by Shōgo Matsumiya also deserve mention: these are actually very good, equal to or better than most of the pulp illustrations that Lovecraft received in English-language periodicals in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada during this period. While some are clearly there mainly for titillation, the figure-work is solid for the limited space, and those island ruins are especially evocative.

It is interesting to contrast “The Fishmen of Innsmouth” with another Lovecraft story that appeared in a risque men’s magazine at this time, “The Rats in the Walls” (1956). At a time when English-language periodicals were trying to gently censor Lovecraft, the Japanese periodical that aimed for shock and sensationalism leaned the other way.

Thanks again to Dierk Guenther for the translation and notes.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Lovecraft’s Daughter (1983) by R. Alain Everts

Imagine yourself in the United States of America, 1965. The children born of the baby boom in World War II are teenagers now. A television in nearly every home. The pulp magazines have been dead for a decade. Garish paperbacks reprint the contents of old Weird Tales. Arkham House celebrates its 26th year of operation—and a long-promised project finally saw fruition. The first volume of the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft was shipped out to connoisseurs of the weird, like you. The kind of project normally reserved for much more important and successful authors. It was, though few understood it at the time, the birth of Lovecraft scholarship. Readers could finally learn something more about Lovecraft’s life, in his own words. One passage might have raised a moment of interest:

But one thing Mme. Greene says quite desolates me—she avers that her fair and frivolous offspring is not to be captivated by the charms of any highbrow, not even the otherwise irresistible Bolingbroke!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 30 Aug 1921, Selected Letters 1.149

Thirty-one pages later, you would have found out her name:

At dinner—about one-thirty—were Loveman, Theobald, Long, Mme. Greene, and the latter’s flapper offspring, yclept Florence—pert, spoiled, and ultra-independent infant rather more hard-boiled of visage than her benignant mater.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, 18 May 1922, Selected Letters 1.180

That would, very likely, be the last that you would have read about Florence Carol Greene (19 Mar 1903 – 31 Mar 1979), the daughter of Sonia H. Greene, for another decade. She does not appear in Lovecraft’s Selected Letters again, not even after Howard and Sonia married. L. Sprague de Camp in Lovecraft: A Biography (1975), describes her as the sole surviving child of Sonia’s first marriage; Frank Belknap Long in Howard Phillips Lovecraft—Dreamer on the Nightside (1975) gives a little anecdote from when they met:

Sonia’s daughter was very pretty, with freckles that met across the bridge of her nose, and blonde hair and a waist so slim it seemed a little unreal. Unfortunately she was soon to leave New York, to be with a young man to whom she had recently become engaged. (50)

Sonia herself was reticent in writing about her daughter; her memoir of her marriage with Lovecraft barely mentioned the child, never the woman she became. In part, this is understandable: by the time Sonia and Howard married in 1924, Florence was apparently out of the house, living on her own, and she and her mother had some fundamental break that never really mended. Astute readers would have realized that H. P. Lovecraft had, at least technically, a step-daughter from his brief marriage—but who was she?

R. Alain Everts had cultivated a friendship with Sonia H. Davis, the former wife of H. P. Lovecraft, in her later years. Their correspondence, interviews, conversations, as well as written material and photographs from her formed the basis for several of Everts’ essays, articles, and publications, including “Mrs. Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (1973), “Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Sex” (1974), Winifred Virginia Jackson—Lovecraft’s Lost Romance (1976), and Alcestis: A Play (1985) by Sonia H. Greene & H. P. Lovecraft, the latter published by Everts’ imprint The Strange Company.

Readers never really get an idea of how much material from Sonia that Everts had; whether those represent all he had gathered and was willing to share, or if there was more unpublished, possibly because it was of little interest outside a specialized circle of Lovecraft fans and scholars.

That specialized circle had a name: the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association. Modeled on the same amateur press associations that Lovecraft had been a member of, the EOD was (and as of this writing, still is) an organization where a select group of Lovecraftian fans and scholars connect and share their latest writings, discoveries, and analyses through periodic zines. Everts was a member for a long time, and while he is best known to fans through the works he published through The Strange Company and articles that were published in commercially-available magazines, the zines he put together for EOD are an often fascinating look at what was the bleeding edge of Lovecraftian research.

In 1983, Everts issued three thin stapled pamphlets titled Lovecraft’s Daughter, Lovecraft’s Daughter II, and Lovecraft’s Daughter III as part of his contributions to the EOD mailings, summarizing and synthesizing his research on Florence Carol Greene—better known in her adult and professional life as Carol Weld. These pamphlets were never collected, never reprinted, never made available to the wider public, except when a member of the EOD sold part of their collection or died, and their heirs offered it for sale. They are hen’s teeth, and it is difficult to assess their impact. Certainly, later biographies of Lovecraft like S. T. Joshi’s I Am Providence have a bit more to say about her, but her connection to Lovecraft is so tangential and tenuous that tracing her life may seem a digression.

Monica Wasserman, who edited Sonia’s autobiography Two Hearts That Beat As One (2024), doesn’t think so. In her own page on Florence Carol Greene, Wasserman correlated the contents. The only child of immigrant parents in the U.S.; her father out of the picture, her mother raising Florence by herself as a single mother, with the aid of her own mother (who was busy raising two half-siblings). Florence was intelligent, probably feisty, likely stubborn, and independent. What she thought of Lovecraft or her mother’s remarriage is unknown, but Florence’s relationship with her nominal stepfather appears to have been nonexistent.

Everts’ pamphlet Lovecraft’s Daughter is relatively accurate on the biographical details, and some of his information came directly from Sonia:

Sonia recalled to me various dinners at her apartment with both Lovecraft and Samuel Loveman present, where she and Florence would host them for an evening of food and conversation. On some occasions, Sonia and Florence would disagree so strongly that they would fight in front of their guests.

The break between mother and daughter was apparently total. Everts noted that:

When I wrote on Sonia’s behalf in 1967 to Carold Weld (as she then styled herself), the letter was returned to me, opened, with a handwritten message that the envelope had been opened by mistake. I will never forget Sonia’s expression when I showed her this enveloped, and she replied sadly that the handwriting was Florence’s.

There are many reasons why adult children might go “no contact” with their parents, and we don’t have Carol Weld’s side of the story. We only indirectly have Sonia’s through a few writings and Everts’ account in Lovecraft’s Daughter. Unfortunately, the latter is responsible for at least one rumor that has proven hard to kill:

Some years earlier, I believe Sonia mentioned to me that Florence was about 18, she had fallen in love with a nice man with background credentials of impeccable quality – they should have been, for the man was Sonia’s half-brother, by her mother’s second marriage.

Monica Wasserman noted that this was probably a point of confusion, as Sonia’s half-brother Sydney married a young woman named Florence Stone in 1923, and Everts may have easily mistaken one Florence for another, especially with Long’s comment about an engagement, which may have hinted that her daughter was intending to marry, either to someone Sonia didn’t approve of or simply to escape her mother’s household. Whatever the truth, Florence Carol Greene would marry John Weld in 1927, and thereafter be known as Carol Weld.

Today, Lovecraft’s Daughter and its sequels, rare and obscure, aren’t of much interest for its raw information on Carol Weld. Digital genealogical records, newspaper archives, and the collections of the mother and daughter’s papers in their respective archives give access to more information than Everts had access to in 1983. Its interest lies in its expression of Everts’ continued use of his time with Sonia, how he found ways to express that information to an audience of Lovecraftian fans and scholars. This is how information got promulgated before the dawn of the internet, and this is also how rumors start.

Which is why it is important not to rely exclusively on these old fanzines, but to try and view them in their appropriate historical context, and with a critical eye toward not only their sources for information, but how they are synthesizing that information and presenting it to others. Historical data is valuable, but it must also be re-assessed, especially when new information becomes available. Lovecraft’s Daughter was a step on the path of gaining greater insight into who Carol Weld was, and how her story and Lovecraft’s connected; it is an essential part in understanding Sonia’s life and the realities she faced as a single mother in New York. That it has been superseded by later sources isn’t a surprise or a detraction.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Winifred Virginia Jackson—Lovecraft’s Lost Romance (1976) by R. Alain Everts & George T. Wetzel

Or had Lovecraft been casting sheep’s eyes upon some young woman whom he lacked the nerve to approach openly? Could it have been his fellow-amateur and ghosting client Winifred Virginia Jackson, with whom he had quite—for him—a close friendship?
—L. Sprague de Camp, H. P. Lovecraft: A Biography (1975) 123

In 1943, Arkham House published Beyond the Wall of Sleep, the second collection of Lovecraft’s fiction. It was the first book publication of “The Crawling Chaos” (1921) and “The Green Meadow” (1927), two stories co-written by H. P. Lovecraft and Winifred V. Jackson—there credited as “Elizabeth Berkeley.” Fans deciphered the pseudonym; George T. Wetzel correctly identified Winifred Virginia Jackson as one of Lovecraft’s collaborators in The Lovecraft Collector’s Library, vol. VII (1955). Details about Lovecraft’s collaborators, however, were thin on the ground. Aside from a few references in the first volumes of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters and a brief bit of speculation by de Camp, there was nothing available on their relationship or the stories they wrote together.

In 1976, you had to be an exceptional Lovecraft fan to know much about Winifred Virginia Jackson.

R. Alain Everts and George T. Wetzel were two exceptional Lovecraft fans. Everts had interviewed many surviving friends and associates of Lovecraft, including developing a friendship with the former Mrs. Lovecraft, Sonia H. Davis, and written such essays as “Mrs. Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (1973) and “Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Sex” (1974). In the process, Everts had also alienated many people (see The Curse of Cthulhu [PDF]). Wetzel likewise distinguished himself as a fan-scholar and publisher; the seven volumes of his Lovecraft Collector’s Library were a starting point, collecting many of Lovecraft’s early amateur writings and writings about Lovecraft (which Everts would later publish the collected edition through his imprint The Strange Company in 1979), along with several other articles and miscellaneous publications. Wetzel was also considered a bigot by fellow fans, and accused of writing poison pen letters (“In Memoriam: George Wetzel” in Ibid 45 [PDF]).

Winifred Virginia Jackson—Lovecraft’s Lost Romance (1976) combined Everts’ and Wetzel’s respective skills, interests, and prejudices. Counting the covers, it is a small 8.5″ x 11″ stapled pamphlet of 11 sheets (which technically makes 18 pages, although some of those are blank), which includes a mix of biographical essay, black-and-white reproductions of photographs, and photostatic copies of some of Jackson’s poetry from amateur journals. A fairly typical fan-product of the period, a touch more scholarly and influential than most, if only because information on Jackson would remain scarce for decades, until the greater availability of digital records and the digitization of books, newspapers, and ‘zines made it possible to obtain greater information and accuracy about her life…with some caveats.

To give an idea of what this means, here is a quick sketch of WVJ’s life based on readily available documents just on ancestry.com:

Born 1878, died 1959. (Findagrave)
Daughter of King Jackson and Myra E. Jackson; older brother Ralph Jackson (1880 Federal Census)
1900, working as a stenographer, living in a boarding house in Northfield, MA. (1900 Federal Census)
21 Mar 1902, married Frank M. Le Monn in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Michigan marriage records)
1910, living with her mother in Boston, still married. (1910 Federal Census)
3 Jul 1913, death of Kingsbury Jackson (New Hampshire death records)
14 Aug 1913, marriage to Horace Wheeler Jordan in Boston, MA. (Massachusetts marriage records) [Presumably divorced between 1910 and 1913]
1920, living with her mother in Boston, now single but still listed as Winifred Jordan, working as a stenographer in a law office (1920 Federal Census)
1930, living with her mother in Boston, occupation listed as writer/book writer (1930 Federal Census)
1938, death of Myra Jackson (Massachusetts death index)
1950, living with Eugene Holmes in Boston, marital status “widowed” (1950 Federal Census)
20 Apr 1959, death of Winifred Virginia Jackson (obituary)

While this seems like a lot of specific information, there’s a lot that isn’t shown here: where she went to school and college; her career in amateur journalism; the books she wrote, edited, and published; her work as co-founder and then owner of the B. J. Brimmer Company with William Stanley Braithwaite; etc. The records we do have are rife with inaccuracies: the 1880 Federal Census lists her as “son” rather than daughter; the ages given in later census records are always incorrect, which led one researcher, Charles Trombee, to conclude she habitually lied about her age (Lovecraft Collaborator–Winifred Virginia Jackson), and even Ancestry.com and Findagrave disagree on her exact birth date. Certain records are missing, possibly lost or never digitized—so we know she divorced her husbands, but don’t necessarily know when exactly.

So keep that in mind: Everts and Wetzel were working with incomplete data. While reporting what they had discovered, not all of what they report would be accurate, and not all of their speculations would be accurate either. Even today, a biographer would have a lot of work to do to fill in the gaps of Winifred Virginia Jackson’s life.

Some of what was reported was, frankly, gossip. For example, the idea that Lovecraft and WVJ shared any romantic interest arises from Wetzel’s correspondence with amateur journalist Willametta Keffer:

Mrs. Keffer wrote to Wetzel on 23 January 1956 stating that everybody in Amateur Journalism thought Lovecraft would marry Winifred Jordan. She added: “Now don’t you go encoraching on my territory here, this is an aspect that hasn’t been touched and I’m working it up […] A long time member of NAPA who knew and met both HPL and Winifred Virginia told me of the ‘romance’.”

Writing to Wetzel again, twenty years later:

She also added that Mrs. Jordan was “supposed to have had a torrid affair with an editor and I found some substantiation in a Year Book of the Bibliotheque Society of Boston.”

Taking this gossip as gospel, and combined with less-than-complete biographical information, Everts and Wetzel made a couple of deductive leaps which, in hindsight, are unfortunate:

Her marriage was brief and ended in divorce about early 1919. Her husband Horace Jordan was a Negro – in fact Winifred Virginia Jackson had always been a champion of the Negro – today at least one of her descendants is also married to a Black. By the time she had met Lovecraft, her marriage was over and she was the msitress of the celebrated Negro author William Stanley Braithwaite. His marriage prevented him from marrying Winifred, but for ma[n]y years she remained his mistress. However, this affair did not prevent Winifred Jackson from becoming very attracted to the single HPL. […] It is doubtful if Lovecraft himself knw of her former husband and her liaison (although Lovecraft did enjoy gossip) with Braithwiate [sic], – but even if he had he might not have cared anyway. […] What is known as fact is that many older Ajays have told Everts that they were surprised that Lovecraft had not married Winifred Jackson. It is a fact that Lovecraft took a snapshot of Winifred Jackson at the seaside, and it is known that she and HPL were romantically linked by the 1921 Boston National Amateur Press Ass[o]ciation convention. In the words of Sonia Lovecraft to Everts in 1967, “I stole HPL away from Winifred Jackson.”

There is a lot to unpack there. Let’s start at the beginning: Horace Wheeler Jordan was, according to census records and his WWI draft card, white:

Was Winifred Virginia Jackson a champion of Black rights and culture, despite being white? Probably. Trombee notes that she had poems published in The Brownie Book (aimed at Black children) and The Crisis, a Black literary magazine, and was mistakenly listed among Black poets in Colored girls and boys’ inspiring United States history, and a heart to heart talk about white folks (1921) by William Henry Harrison, Jr. and Negro Poets and their Poems (1923) by Robert Thomas Kerlin. Winifred Virginia Jackson co-founded the B. J. Brimmer Company with mixed-race poet, author, and editor William Stanley Braithwaite, which company published various works by Black authors, including Sidelights on Negro Soldiers (1923) by Charles H. Williams. She does not appear to have had any children, so it’s not clear who her “descendants” were in this specific case; probably the children of her surviving cousins.

The accusation that Winifred Virginia Jackson carried out an extramarital affair with William Stanley Braithwaite is, so far as I have been able to determine, unsubstantiated. If Wetzel is to be trusted, the rumor began in amateur journalism, but it first hit print with Winifred Virginia Jackson—Lovecraft’s Lost Romance. No private letter from Jackson or Braithwaite has emerged that hints at any kind of sexual relationship between the two (although given that Braithwaite was married and that interracial relationships were taboo in the 1920s, this may not be so unusual). Scholarly works like The William Stanley Braithwaite Reader (1972) make no mention of such an affair, nor was it mentioned in any of Braithwaite’s autobiographical essays (although again, this isn’t surprising).

Of their friendship (and Braithwaite’s admiration of Jackson as a poet) we can be fairly certain. Braithwaite’s Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921 devotes a chunk of space to Jackson; Braithwaite wrote an introduction to her book Backroads: Maine Narratives—with Lyrics (1922); and in the Twentieth Anniversary Number (1921 annual of the Bibliophile Society in Boston), Braithwaite wrote an introduction, “The Poetry of Winifred Virginia Jackson,” to give three examples. Perhaps it was the latter that Keffer was thinking of when she said the “Year Book of the Bibliotheque Society of Boston,” since the Bibliophile Society of Boston did issue an annual, often titled a Year Book. Yet there is nothing in that introduction the least scandalous or suggestive of a romantic or sexual relationship. Nor did Keffer ever produce the tell-all article she hoped to.

Everts’ comment on “stealing” Lovecraft from Jackson is more interesting; as discussed in “Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Sex” (1974) by R. A. Everts, we don’t have any way to really prove or disprove this, as Everts is reporting a private communication that was is only ever published here and nowhere else. We are dependent on his memory and his trustworthiness as a source. Still, the idea that the bachelor Lovecraft might be hypothetically paired with various single women in amateur journalism, especially those he worked closely with, such as Jackson, isn’t far-fetched. After all, when Lovecraft did eventually marry, it was to an eligible single woman in amateur journalism with whom he worked closely, Sonia H. Greene.

There is a little more in Winifred Virginia Jackson—Lovecraft’s Lost Romance, such as a reproduction of the photo Lovecraft took of Jackson, but not much else of real consequence. Everts and Wetzel based their idea of a romance (real, potential, or imagined) on the 30-40-year-old memories of gossiping amateur journalists. Some of the facts about Winifred Virginia Jackson they got right, others wrong; the sources being what they are, this isn’t surprising or even a substantial criticism. Mistakes happen all the time in genealogical and biographical research, and the misidentification of a single individual in an error-filled record can lead even the most well-meaning researcher off into a chain of fantasy. The affair with Braithwaite remains unproven, though perhaps some love letter will surface one day to give it substance. The uncritical repetition of the claim decade after decade shows the dangers that can come from relying on a single unreliable source.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Women and Robert E. Howard” (1975) by Harold Preece

There were many women in the brief life span of Robert Ervin Howard. And yet there were very few.
—Howard Preece, “Women and Robert E. Howard” in Fantasy Crossroads #3 (1975), 20

The study of the life and writing of Robert E. Howard has typically trailed that of H. P. Lovecraft. This was due to the different circumstances surrounding their deaths, disposition of their papers, publication or republication of their works, and the fan scenes that developed around their works and fiction. Notably, Howard was not surrounded with many literary-minded friends who published memoirs and remembrances soon after his death the way Lovecraft was, and biographical essays took long decades to emerge. As a consequence, many aspects of Robert E. Howard’s life only really began to emerge in the 1970 and 80s.

Harold Richard Preece (16 Jan 1906 – 24 Nov 1992) was one of Robert E. Howard’s close friends during the late 1920s, one of a group of literary-minded young Texans who Howard corresponded with. Preece would go on to other things after his association with Howard, including work with the Federal Writer’s Project in Texas to document folksongs and folklore, writing about civil rights, writing westerns for pulp magazines, and authoring several books. In the mid-late 1960s, Glenn Lord (agent for Howard’s estate) came in contact with Preece searching for more information on Robert E. Howard from those who knew him. So Preece came into contact with Howard fandom, and wrote several essays and articles, notably “The Last Celt” (1968), “Women and Robert E. Howard” (1975), and “Robert’s Lady Cousin” (1978).

In Howard’s surviving correspondence, the letters from Howard to Preece date from 1927 to 1930, and the last mention of Preece in Howard’s letters is in 1932. This gives an approximate range from the period of their friendship, or at least their period of closest acquaintance. This closely aligns with Preece’s account of their friendship in “The Last Celt”; where Preece met Howard in Austin, TX in 1927, through mutual friend Truett Vinson. Preece, Howard, and Vinson would become members of The Junto, a collaborative amateur journal that ran until 1930.

Most of Preece’s information on and impressions of Howard came from his few personal meetings with him, several years of correspondence, and their mutual participation in The Junto and related ventures (compare with Howard’s correspondence with Lenore Preece, Harold’s sister); supplemented by scanty biographical essays and articles by others. The survey of women in Howard’s life is thus slanted largely toward those whom Preece knew about (e.g. Howard’s cousin Maxine Ervin, a mutual acquaintance and member of the Junto), and those relationships that Howard told Preece or others in the Junto about.

These latter women are generally nameless and difficult or impossible to identify positively; they seem to represent infatuation on Bob’s part rather than relationships in the strictest sense. To give an example:

There was first, of all, the carnival girl. Some months of our correspondence had passed before he mentioned her. Then because of my own ambivalent feelings about women, I brought up the subject to Bob.

His reply was a single sentence recollection. He wrote – I quote from memory – that he’d lost interest in romance because of a let-down from a carnival girl when he was age fifteen.
—Howard Preece, “Women and Robert E. Howard” in Fantasy Crossroads #3 (1975), 20

We have to take Preece’s word for it, since the letter doesn’t appear to survive and the anecdote doesn’t appear in Howard’s other letters (there is an anecdote about a carnival girl, but not one that Howard says he was interested in or betrayed by). Other aspects of Preece’s memory are verifiable, however. When he wrote:

There was a really noble letter he sent me – a capsule defense of women, breathing the spirit of Margaret Fuller and Mary Wellstonecraft. Sadly it is a part of the Howard correspondence that has been lost so that I must again quote, indirectly from memory.
—Howard Preece, “Women and Robert E. Howard” in Fantasy Crossroads #3 (1975), 20

Fortunately, the letter was eventually found and published. It reads in part:

Salaam:

You’re right; women are great actors. But I can’t agree with you in your statement that the great women can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Men have sat at the feet of women down the ages and our civilization, bad or good, we owe to the influence of women.

Let us look at the records of the great women.

Sappho: doubtless the greatest woman poet who ever lived; certainly one of the greatest of all time. The direct incentive of the lyric age of Greece, the age that for pure beauty, surpasses all others. How shall a pen like mine sing of the beauties of Sappho, of the golden streams which flowed from her pen, of her voice which was fairer than the song of a dark star, of the fragrance of her hair and shimmering loveliness of her body? Has it been proven that she was a Lesbian in the generally accepted sense of the word? Who ever accused her but the early Christian — ignorant monks and monastery swine who were set on breaking all the old golden idols; and Daudet, a libertine, a groveling ape who could see no good in anything; Mure, a drunkard and a blatant braggart whose word I hold of less weight than a feather drifting before a south wind. May the saints preserve Comparetti who was man enough to uphold pure womanhood, and scholar enough to prove what he said. No prude was Sappho but a full blooded woman, passionate and open hearted with a golden song and a soul large enough to enfold the whole world. […]
—Robert E. Howard to Harold Preece, c. Dec 1928, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 1.258-259

And so on for several more pages, praising various women and their achievements. So we can say that Preece’s memory wasn’t completely flawed. His judgment, however, was idiosyncratic. For instance, he wrote in the essay about Robert E. Howard and the carnival girl:

Conan, is naturally, Bob Howard’s wish-picture of the author himself. But I can believe that every major character portrayed by a writer is a projection of its creator or of someone who has left some indelible, if sub-conscious impression, on the lonely, frustrated person sitting at the typewriter. Even if some model is magnified beyond proper due, and, as I believe, that Bob gave the carnival woman a stature in memory that she could not have possessed in plain fact.

All of Bob’s lusty, virile women are this woman. Yet none of them are.
—Howard Preece, “Women and Robert E. Howard” in Fantasy Crossroads #3 (1975), 22

It doesn’t seem that Harold Preece and Robert E. Howard had much contact after 1930, which is critical when considering “Women and Robert E. Howard,” because Howard’s most notable relationship with a woman was his dating Novalyne Price from 1934-1936, her version of events given in the memoir One Who Walked Alone (1986). When assessing Preece’s essay with a critical eye, his general ignorance of Novalyne becomes abundantly clear, since he merely repeats what he heard from Glenn Lord, the agent for the Howard estate, and summarizes his opinion of her as “a cheap coquette” (Fantasy Crossroads #3, 22).

Novalyne was not amused:

Harold Preece did, as many people do, jumped to conclusions when he had incomplete information in which he showed that he did not know and understand Bob that well. He called me a “cheap coquette.” That was because he did not know the entire story.
—Novalyne Price Ellis to L. Sprague de Camp, 5 Aug 1979, Selected Letters of Novalyne Price Ellis 37

In comparing Lovecraft studies and Howard studies, it is interesting to note the important contributions to the understanding of both authors’ lives by the women with whom they were romantically involved. Sonia H. Davis wrote her The Private Life of H. P. Lovecraft (1985), and Novalyne Price Ellis wrote One Who Walked Alone (1986)—but what is not generally acknowledged is that both women were driven to write and publish their version in part because of the misconceptions and untruths spread about them in print. And it is notable the degree to which disbelief, attempts to discredit, and misogyny were common responses to their efforts. As E. Hoffmann Price, a fellow pulp writer who had known the Texas pulpser wrote when he learned that Novalyne Price Ellis was looking to publish her memoir at the same time as the de Camps were working on their biography of Robert E. Howard:

If the lady you mention published a well-documented book, On Sinning with R.E.H., she might outsell you, unless the oafery seize & destroy her scurrilious volume. It is to laugh! I knew him when is not sufficient. One must also write for other than dizzy fans.
—E. Hoffmann Price to L. Sprague de Cmap, 7 Apr 1978, Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard 308

In the scheme of Robert E. Howard scholarship, “Women and Robert E. Howard” has largely shrunk in importance. Preece’s recollections are few, imprecise, and overwhelmed by his suppositions, which have largely not stood the test of time, though there have been similar efforts to read various women in his life as the inspiration for various female characters in his fiction. The shot across Novalyne Price Ellis’ bow is more notable than the carnival girl, as it speaks to the reception of Novalyne into the nascent Howard scholarship. Ultimately, Preece didn’t actually know any of the women he was writing about, and ignorance of the subject did not dissuade him from weighing in on it.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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