“Never Threaten A Spider” (2024) by Sara Century

Giant spiders are traditional. The square-cube law be damned.

In “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth” (1908), the hero Leothric deals with an oversized arachnid. In “The Tower of the Elephant” (1933) by Robert E. Howard, a young Cimmerian faced eight-legged death. In “The Seven Geases” (1934) by Clark Ashton Smith, Atlach-Nacha spins their web endlessly in the dark. In “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” H. P. Lovecraft wrote of the bloated purple spiders that warred with the almost-men of Leng, and in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937), the giant spiders of Mirkwood nearly put an end to Bilbo and his party—and they’re nothing compared to Shelob, who guards the threshold of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings (1955).

Spiders work on many levels. They are first and foremost predators, not scavengers or placid eaters of vegetables or waste. Alien in outline, fascinating in their anatomy and habits. Some leap, some spin, some are venomous. Fantasy spiders tend to all three; like the giant serpents of Sword & Sorcery, they combine and maximize the attributes and horrors of everyday attercops and exaggerate them past any natural bound. A normal spider, if scared, may bite; their venom may hurt, but few spiders are a serious threat to humans. A human need not fear being wrapped up in their web like a fly, their fluids sucked out, until a mummified corpse is left trapped forever.

In a Sword & Sorcery setting? Well, the human might be the fly. But the fly might also have a sword.

“Never Threaten A Spider” (2024) by Sara Century advertises to the readers what is about to come. It’s right there in the title. Readers who pick up a copy of Profane Altars: Weird Sword & Sorcery will not be disappointed by false advertising. Yet the giant spider in this story isn’t quite a box-tick on some giant list of Sword & Sorcery tropes, either.

Writers and readers of Sword & Sorcery (or Heroic Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, or however you chose to label that squirming grey cross-genre where fantasy, horror, and adventure fiction have mixed and mingled) today face a different problem than Robert E. Howard & co. did in the 1930s. Howard’s Conan basically defined a genre; peers like C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry, Clifford Ball’s Duar the Accursed and Rand the Rogue, Fritz Leiber Jr.’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, Manly Wade Wellman’s Kardios, Joanna Russ’ Alyx…a whole chain of swordsmen, swordswomen, and sorcerers have entrenched expectations of what an S&S tale is, can, and must be.

Robert E. Howard and C. L. Moore didn’t have to worry so much. They were inventing, not imitating. Tolkien’s major competition at novel-length were works like The Worm Ouroboros (1922) by E. R. Eddison and The Broken Sword (1954) by Poul Anderson. There were no Tolkienian imitators; his readers had few expectations. They were allowed to be awed, excited, amused, and entertained.

Several decades and hundreds of fantasy stories, novels, roleplaying games, comics, cartoons, and films later, and readers tend to be a bit more jaded. They’ve seen it all before. They recognize the tropes. Writers have to struggle against expectations. What should be in a fantasy adventure story? What’s too old-fashioned? How to buck expectations?

“Never Threaten A Spider” feels like it tiptoes on those questions. At a straight read, it is a straightforward adventure yarn, with a thin skein of worldbuilding, a little horror, a little action, not too heavy on the sorcery, and perhaps with a slightly unfinished feel. Not everything is explained and not all of the names are a random conglomeration of syllables, both of which are endearing. Not everything has to be explained. Writers are allowed a little mystery, to hint instead of explaining every detail. We don’t need three thousand years of history about the dead queen and the jewel of the nameless spider-god.

On deeper consideration, however, this almost by-the-numbers S&S tale is anything but. It is a subtle subversion of expectations: a swordswoman who loses her sword early on. A thief who doesn’t really want to steal anything, and ultimately doesn’t. A hardboiled protagonist saved by a cute little bunny rabbit.

The hero of the story, a woman named Viy, isn’t some thinly-reskinned version of Conan, or Jirel of Joiry, Red Sonja, or Alyx. Warrior, thief, and outlaw, yes, but not her cynicism is balanced with homesickness, her rage by kindness. The readers don’t see her at her best in terms of skill and accomplishment: sans sword and thieve’s tools, she spends much of the story half-naked and wet, and she resorts at the penultimate struggle to picking up a club and to try and beat her foes to death.

Yet she’s smart enough to know when to run. That some fights aren’t winnable. That murder isn’t the job. For a genre that can sometimes exult in the murder hobo lifestyle, there is a real subversion in having a protagonist that doesn’t need to be a barbarian hero slaying all gods and monsters and macking on the nearest princess. There is something much more realistic about Viy’s failures, her flaws, and at last her triumphant escape with life and a jewel, even if it isn’t the one she came to the god-haunted swamp to steal.

Perhaps, if we’re lucky, we’ll read more of Viy’s adventures in the years to come.

“Never Threaten A Spider” by Sara Century was published in Profane Altars: Weird Sword & Sorcery (2024, Weirdpunk Books).

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.

El Otro Necronomicón (1992) by Antonio Segura & Brocal Remohi

Eldritch Fappenings

This review deals with a horror comic intended for adult audiences. As part of this review, selected images with cartoon depictions of genitalia and graphic violence will be displayed as the work is discussed.
As such, please be advised before reading further.

Antonio Segura (1947-2012) was a Spanish comics writer, and Jaime Brocal Remohi (1936-2002) was a Spanish comics artist. Both were natives of Valencia, and both achieved recognition for their work, and though neither quite broke through to fame in the English-speaking comics world, Jaime (as Jaime Brocal) was one of the stable of Spanish artists that found work with Warren Publishing in horror magazines like Eerie and Creepy.

In the 1979, the situation inverted somewhat:

A Spanish version of Creepy, wearing the name on the cover, finally appeared in March 1979. Published by Toutain until issue # 79 (Jan. 1986), this series offered a mix of stories. The mix, this time, was not the result of putting together stories from different publishers—all the stories were not from Warren—but by grouping, under the same cover, reprints from American authors and illustrators with original stories by Spanish artists and writers.

The quality was high and the magazine a success. The artistic styles varied from story to story and from nationality to nationality, but the tales were genuinely interesting, provoking, and, fittingly, creepy. Yet, a stark difference can be spotted between the American stories and the Spanish ones. While American authors favored the supernatural monsters of lore and Hollywood cinema such as zombies and vampires, Spanish creators were more inclined to human monsters and realistic grounding. Supernatural horrors were mostly absent—except in beautiful adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft’s works—in the Spanish stories, the horror rather being born from alienation and human cruelty.
—Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, “Spanish Creepy: Historical Amnesia in ‘Las mil caras de Jack El destripador’ in Critical Approaches to Comic Books (2023) 50

The Lovecraft adaptations included “La maldición del amuleto” (Creepy #73, Jul 1985) by Joan Boix; “La Sombra sobre Innsmouth” (Creepy #63, Sep 1984) and “La casa en el umbral” (Creepy #64, Oct 1984) by Norberto Buscaglia and Alberto Breccia, the latter an Argentinan comics artist who achieved fame for his adaptations of Lovecraft, translated in several languages—his work in the French comics magazine Métal Hurlant was translated into English in the Heavy Metal Lovecraft special issue in Oct 1979. The letters-to-the-editor page for Spanish Creepy was “Consultas al Necronomicón,” and the replies were signed “Alhazred.”

The Spanish Creepy was revived in 1990-1991 and ran for 19 issues, and the publisher Toutain tapped some of the same great Spanish talents from the first run for a series of seven original Lovecraftian horror comics, written by Antonio Segura and illustrated by Jaime Brocal Remohi.

El Otro Necronomicón (“The Other Necronomicon“) followed the sensibility of European comics rather than mainstream English or British comics; violence, gore, and nudity could be graphic, but also the approach to the subject could be vividly intelligent, aesthetic, and intellectual, with metafictional flourishes. These stories of El Otro Necronomicon were never translated or published in English-language markets, and remain relatively obscure. Even the 1992 softcover album that collects the seven stories is now quite scarce.

Alberto Breccia explained the origin of the series in his foreword to the album:

Mi amigo, mi hermano Jaime, generosamente me ha pedido que prologue su libro sobre guiones de Antonio Segura, «EL OTRO NECRONOMICÓN». Mi cierta habilidad para el dibujo no es la misma que para la escritura. Pero no puedo rehusarme y escribiré entonces una’s lineas. Hablaré de nuestro entrañable amistad de tantos años, de nuestras interminables charlas sobre dibujo y libros. Nuestras correrías por Barcelona y Valencia por librerías de viejo revolviendo, buscando y hallando antiguos cronicones, polverientos folletines y regrasando felices con nuestros trofeos a tomar unos mates en su casa en compañia de su encantadora esposa Conchín y sus hijos, a los cuales he visto crecer. ¿Qué es un prólogo? ¿Una introducción al contenido del libro? ¿Una presentación de sus autores? ¿Mi opinion sobre la obra? . . . un poco de todo eso. Es de sobra conocido que nunca he leído comics, ni siquiera de niño. Lo cual no habla mal de los comics, sino de mí. Pero estos que tengo sobre mi mesa he tenido que leerlos. En principio como un gesto de lealtad hacia al amigo y porque debía hablar sobre ellos. Poco a poco su lectura me fue atrapando hasta lamentar su término. Ese manuscrito que hallé en el viejo puesto de revistas y libros viejos de mi amigo Yoel Novoa, escultor y demonólogo, ha encontrado en Antonio Segura y Jaime Brocal los intérpretes ideales. Hace unos años, en Barcelona, Jaime me manifestó su interés en volver a dibujar una historia fantástica. Frankenstein fue la elegida. Durante unas semanas discutimos cómo pensaba encararla, discutimos bocetos; hasta su hijo Jaime confeccionó en plastilina un possible rostro del monstruo.

Luego yo debí partir a Italia para regresar posteriormente a la Argentina. Pasado un tiempo, Jaime me escribió diciéndome que había desechado el proyecto. En Valencia, en Octubre de 1988 volvimos sobre el tema. Un año después, en Buenos Aires, doy con el manuscrito. En un siguiente viaje a España, me reúno con Jaime y Antonio en Valencia y les doy con cierto pesar el manuscrito. Hoy escribo estas lineas frente al resultado de estas inquietudes. He contado el origen de la obra. He dado mi opinión sobre ella. Los autores, a través de la excelencia del trabajo pueden prescindir de mí presentación. Ahora resta la opinión de los lectores.

Alberto Breccia.

Buenos Aires, 25 de Noviembre de 1991

My friend, my brother Jaime, has generously asked me to write the prologue to his book written by Antonio Segura, “THE OTHER NECRONOMICON.” My ability to draw is not the same as my ability to write. But I can’t refuse and I’ll write a few lines. I will talk about our close friendship of so many years, about our endless conversations about drawing and books. Our trips to Barcelona and Valencia through old bookstores rummaging, searching and finding old chronicles, dusty pamphlets and returning happy with our trophies to drink some mate at his house in the company of his lovely wife Conchín and his children, whom I have seen grow up. What is a prologue? An introduction to the content of the book? An introduction of its authors? My opinion on the work? . . . a bit of all that. It is well known that I have never read comics, not even as a child. Which does not speak badly of comics, but of me. But these I have on my desk I had to read. In principle as a gesture of loyalty towards my friend and because I had to talk about them. Little by little, its reading captivated me until I regretted its end. That manuscript that I found in the old stand of magazines and old books of my friend Yoel Novoa, sculptor and demonologist, has found in Antonio Segura and Jaime Brocal the ideal interpreters. A few years ago, in Barcelona, Jaime expressed his interest in drawing a fantasy story again. Frankenstein was the chosen one. For a few weeks we discussed how he intended to approach it, we discussed sketches; even his son Jaime made a possible face of the monster in plasticine.

Then I had to leave for Italy and later return to Argentina. After some time, Jaime wrote to tell me that he had abandoned the project. In Valencia, in October 1988, we returned to the subject. A year later, in Buenos Aires, I found the manuscript. On a subsequent trip to Spain, I met Jaime and Antonio in Valencia and, with some regret, gave them the manuscript. Today I am writing these lines as a result of these concerns. I have told the origin of the work. I have given my opinion on it. The authors, thanks to the excellence of their work, can dispense with my introduction. Now all that remains is for the readers to give their opinion.

Alberto Breccia.

Buenos Aires, 25 November 1991

Prólogo de Alberto Breccia, El Otro Necronomicon

Prologue by Alberto Breccia, English translation

Breccia’s prologue makes a little more sense as an extension of the comic prologue to the stories, where a comic version of Alberto Breccia relates to comic versions of Antonio Segura & Brocal Remohi to adapt stories from a secret manuscript that H. P. Lovecraft wrote. The results are the seven stories in this collection.

Hechos que no se atrevió a novelar…. ni quiso hacer llegar al lector, abominaciones que ni el se atrevió a divulgar.

Para mí, este manuscrito es como el otro Necronomicon.

Facts that he did not dare to novelize …. and did not want to make them known to the reader, abominations that he did not dare to divulge.

For me, this manuscript is like the other Necronomicon.

“La Voz de la Bestia sin Nombre”

“The Voice of the Nameless Beast” opens in a rural setting where animals have begun to attack humans. A repairman comes to the small, insular community…

…and discovers a cult.

Tres veces hemos pronunciado tu nombre secreto… ven a nosotros… ayúdanos una vez más a vengarnos de quienes nos desprécian y humillan… trikk’kliki… og’giduuuu… haj’jdoei*	Three times we have pronounced your secret name… come to us… help us once again to take revenge on those who despise and humiliate us… trikk’kliki… og’giduuuu… haj’jdoei*
Nota: *Desaconsejamos leer estas sílabas en voz alta. Nunca see sabe…	Footnote: *We advise against reading these syllables aloud. You never know…

Without being explicitly connected to Lovecraft’s stories, the brief story is very Lovecraftian in outline, albeit able to depict explicitly on the page the kind of naked cultists at their ceremonies which Lovecraft could not.

“Bloody Blues”

Titled in English, this story is implicitly set in the Southern United States of a generation ago; like Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937), it combines the Blues with supernatural horror…and, in this case, borrows a couple of licks from Lovecraft’s “The Hound.”

Los autores dedican está historia a John Lee Hooker.

The authors dedicate this story to John Lee Hooker.

To the credit of Seguna and Brocal Remohi, not only are the majority of characters in this story African-American, but they are not depicted as racial stereotypes. Unfortunately, this is slightly offset by the fact that this is one of the grislier of the tales in this volume, with an infernal blues song sending the Black audience into a literal orgy of rape, murder, and cannibalism worthy of Emaneulle and the Last Cannibals (1977) or Cannibal Holocaust (1980).

In a footnote at the end of the tale, it is explained that one of the survivors had traveled to Providence to tell H. P. Lovecraft a strange story.

“El Shoggoths”

The first story with an explicitly Lovecraftian connection features a “Mr. Howard” from Providence dealing with a rare book dealer named Solomon over an obscure volume, and wants to know the author of certain annotations in the margins. The dealer says he bought it from a little person who runs a circus. This gives Brocal Remohi the chance to draw several very special people, some of whom have a distinct resemblance to various characters that appeared in Creepy.

The annotator, however, is no longer quite human.

“Los Hombres de Negro”

“The Men in Black” opens on a picture of the Spanish Creepy offices—imagine in 1991 opening the latest magazine and staring at a rather good rendition of the magazine editor, asking artist Jaime Brocal Remohi (pipe) and Antonio Seguna (cigarette):

¿Para cuándo tienes pensado entregarme la próxima historia del Otro Necronomicón?

When do you plan to deliver the next story of the Other Necronomicon?

Inserting themselves into the story adds a bit of metafictional framing to the tale—which is itself a nested narrative, where a woman in a wheelchair at an asylum explains to the doctor how one day her father returned from Salem with a book written in archaic Latin…and after his untimely death, two men in black come looking for it. Unwisely, Amanda decides to read the book herself, and ends up literally ravished by the dark forces unleashed.

“Jugando con Fuego”

“Playing with Fire” continues to follow the Men in Black—as well as Segura and Jaime Brocal Remohi. The creative team end up at a cemetery to confront a few corpses that don’t want to stay dead. It seems the creators of horror comics have been drawn into a horror comics themselves…literally.

Igual que nunca podré olvidar a los Hombres de Negro, a los Guardians del Libro.

Just as I will never forget the Men in Black, the Guardians of the Book.

“La Feromona”

“The Pheromone” is a return to the Lovecraftian-but-not-specifically-Lovecraft horror stories. A chemist makes a perfume that changes any male who breathes it into a mindless, sexually insatiable, incredibly strong brute.

Which leads to a scene of physical and sexual violence worth of some of the bolder French and Italian adult horror comics of the 1970s like Outre-Tombe and Satanik.

While featuring gore worthy of Re-Animator (1985), there is an odd twist at the end which is more reminiscent of Arthur Machen’s classic “The White People” (1904):

Sólo sé que sacó la receta de aquel maldito libro de brujería.

All I know is that he got the recipe from that damn book of witchcraft.

It is important at this point to appreciate what both Antonia Segura and Jaime Brocal Remohi bring to the table with this collection. The art is very Creepy-like, and the impression I get is that this is very deliberate; these were stories in the mold of the old Warren horrors. Yet the aesthetic sensibility is more a European: more sex, more violence, and a little more high brow concept to the writing, yet it never spills over into parody.

Brocal Remohi in particular uses a lot of photo-references to get the real-life characters’ faces and expressions correct, there’s a lot of work that goes into his backgrounds, and yet his page layouts are very restrained—no big splash pages, no Dutch angles, a very careful play between light and dark which gives a grounded, realistic scale to his art that helps make the horror more horrific.

“Un Mal Principio, Un Mal Final”

“A Bad Beginning, A Bad Ending” is the final tale in El Otro Necronomicón, and appropriately enough wraps back to where it all began: with Alberto Breccia.

It is almost a character study; an old man seduced by a young woman, the forces of darkness tempting and threatening and closing in—Alberto Breccia (1919-1993), he was the generation before Segura and Remohi, and this is an homage to Breccia’s legend as much as any of the homages penned by Lovecraft’s friends for the Old Gent from Providence. The difference being, Breccia was still around at the time to receive the sincere admiration.

Taken all together, the basic premise of El Otro Necronomicón has real potential: an excuse to write basically any horror story, and give it the added cachet that it supposedly came from the black book of secret tales that not even H. P. Lovecraft dared release upon the world. That basic formulae doesn’t last very long, though; Segura and Brocal Remohi kept extending the metafictional elements. It feels like the natural conclusion of the story might have to be their own destruction as the Men in Black reclaim the manuscript, but we don’t get that ending. Instead, they made a final tribute to the artist who had inspired them. The last words of the last story are:

El maestro que nos ensenó cómo contar lo que muchas veces resulta imposible de contar.

The master who taught us how to tell what is often impossible to tell.

When you think about Lovecraft’s fiction, and the difficulty that so many have faced in trying to adapt them to comics, radio, film, video games—how few seem to actually capture something of the horror in the tales—I think there is a fitting tribute to someone who did have the artistic vision and skill to not just realize adaptations of Lovecraft’s work, but to do it well. Much as we might praise Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein or Tanabe Gou’s At the Mountains of Madness for their outstanding masterworks.

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 Wingspan of Severed Hands (2020) by Joe Koch

My lost heart bled beneath the sands
Of distant, dead Carcosa.
My heart, once buried, fed the land
That grew the oak Carcosa.

The oak was felled and burned to light
Those dim shores of Carcosa.
Love’s but a candle. Soon I’ll die
To wander lost Carcosa.

My love’s a dream, and dreams must die
To resurrect Carcosa.
My dream is dead. My queen’s alive.
She conquers bright Carcosa.
—Joe Koch, The Wingspan of Severed Hands 79

A dry description of The Wingspan of Severed Hands might be something like: “a short novel that reimagines Robert W. Chambers’ mythology of The King in Yellow with distinct feminist themes, a nonlinear narrative, and surreal imagery.” Which would not do justice to the language or the story. This is a story with texture and attitude, occupying a grey area between cosmic horror, body horror, magical realism, surrealism, and splatterpunk. Like a gelatinous eyeball, it’s not easy to nail down; and it resists easy labeling.

Much of the effectiveness of the story lies in its deliberately ambiguous, unsettled nature. The narrative shifts from familiar scenes and scenarios to nightmarish episodes, the transition often seamless and in a condition of otherwise banal reality, so that the readers are left wondering how much is really happening and how much is undiagnosed psychotic episode or hallucination. There is a loving richness to the description of mutilation, decay, graphic violence, bodily corruption, and growth that is a stylistic hallmark of Koch’s work, an evident love and appreciation for the language and imagery of transformation.

Trying to capture in words that fascinating process of transition. From girl to woman, life to death, caterpillar to butterfly, steak to ground beef, health cell to cancerous, girlfriend to ex. Wrapped up in and around a reinterpretation of the Yellow Mythos.

There are, broadly speaking, two horizons of the Yellow Mythos. The first horizon derives directly from Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow (1895) and the mythology of the same. Folks might expand on it, re-intrepret it, but it is distinctly tied to the original snippets of the play. Works of this sort include “Cordelia’s Song from The King in Yellow” (1938) by Vincent Starrett & “Evening Reflections, Carcosa” (2011) by Ann K. Schwader, “Slick Black Bones and Soft Black Stars” (2012) by Gemma Files, and Black Stars Above (2019) by Lonnie Nadler & Jenna Cha. They’re not all consistent, the authors aren’t all in communion with each other, but they’re all drawing more or less directly on Chambers.

The post-Classical horizon of Yellow Mythos stories comes to the Yellow Mythos more indirectly, usually through popular culture like the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, which popularized images like the three-limbed figure of the Yellow Sign designed by Kevin Ross in 1989, or the American Gothic sensibilities of the first season of True Detective created by Nic Pizzolatto. Post-Classical is less beholden to Chambers, more directly influenced by the imagery and ideas of what the Yellow Mythos is in the popular consciousness—which can be both very freeing and very constraining, depending on whether the creator hews close to what someone else has done or pushes outward to define their own space. A good example of this might be the Alagadda series of the SCP-wiki, which draws inspiration from the first horizon stories but is more adjacent to it than directly connected.

The Wingspan of Severed Hands is in the second horizon. It’s a post-Kevin Ross piece, the three-legged image of the Yellow Sign derived from the roleplaying game; the Queen in Yellow is similar to the Hanged King in the Alagadda series, a new riff on a familiar concept. Yet the actual references to Chambers are few; Koch draws more strongly off the mass of post-Chambers ideas than Chambers himself. There’s no play, no Cordelia, and the madness inspired by the Yellow Sign is an outbreak more in line with an RPG in mid-apocalypse.

The Yellow Mythos in this story is a kind of lifeline to the reader. Something familiar that they can keep a hold of during a narrative that changes perspective as it winds its way through time and space. Yet at the same time, it’s not Chambers’ mythos. There are surprises in store, odd pieces that might not jive with what a reader familiar with Yellow Mythos stories thinks is going on.

It is, all in all, much more personal.

Three women. One battle.

A world gone mad. Cities abandoned. Dreams invade waking minds. An invisible threat lures those who oppose its otherworldly violence to become acolytes of a nameless cult. As a teenage girl struggles for autonomy, a female weapons director in a secret research facility develops a living neuro-cognitive device that explodes into self-awareness. Discovering their hidden emotional bonds, all three unveil a common enemy through dissonant realities that intertwine in a cosmic battle across hallucinatory dreamscapes.

Time is the winning predator, and every moment spirals deeper into the heart of the beast.
—Joe Koch, The Wingspan of Severed Hands back cover copy

This is a story focused on women. There aren’t many male characters, and while the actions of the men and boys are not peripheral to the story, we don’t get their viewpoint and their actions are critical largely with regard to how they treat the women who are the viewpoint characters. We don’t see husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons; there’s an implicit matriarchial arrangement to the story. Mothers, daughters, and grandmothers are the main relationships, and that’s the emotional heart of the book. The suffering that goes into these toxic relationships, invisible to so many, that finds manifestation in so many little ways.

Yet at the same time, the relationships in the book represent a closed circle. The viewpoint characters don’t really have any women friends to turn to, no support network. They are isolated, locked in—in a trailer, in a bunker, in a cage, in a decaying body, in a cycle of expectations and recriminations, haunted by a past that they cannot escape until the climax.

The end of The Wingspan of Severed Hands is the beginning of a new life. An opportunity for at least some of the viewpoint characters to move on, out of the shadow of motherly expectations, grief, and trauma. The reward for all the gooey, gory, traumatic, painful growth and transformation in the story is…the potential for more growth. Maybe even to be happy, although the ending is not itself exactly happy.

One of the themes suggested, but not fully explored, in The Wingspan of Severed Hands is the nature of The King in Yellow itself. So many writers have focused on what Chambers did, what he wrote, the things he hinted at. Yet if one day, if you opened up a book marked with the Yellow Sign on its spine, and found it blank—how would you fill the pages? What would you write? What would The King in Yellow be in your own words?

The Wingspan of Severed Hands (2020) by Joe Koch was published by Weird Punk Books.

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.

“Message in Stone” (1956) by Muriel E. Eddy

His funeral was held at High Noon at a funeral home, and, though the little gods of fate seemed to will that we should arrive there too late for the services, we did visit Swan Point Cemetery, with its many tombs, winding lanes and exquisite monuments—and did I imagine it, or did the spirit of our late beloved friend and fellow-writer hover over us as we bowed our heads in reverence and respect to the memory of one of the finest men—yes, and greatest geniuses, who ever walked this earth? A man little-known, perhaps, by the majority, but a man who, to those who came in more than casual contact with him, exemplified all that is fine and good in a fellow human being.
—Muriel E. Eddy, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” in Rhode Island on Lovecraft (1945) 21-22

From the very first, Muriel E. Eddy’s memoirs of H. P. Lovecraft were fairly rose-tinted—and, occasionally, given to flights of imaginative fantasy like the above. The Eddys did not make it on time to Lovecraft’s funeral; such things happen, but they did apparently visit his grave periodically. Lovecraft’s grave, initially unmarked, was not the point of pilgrimage for fans and admirers that it is today; but he had long known and expected this to be the resting place for his mortal remains, in the family plot, and it is clear from Lovecraft’s letters to the Eddys that they were well aware of that.

H. P. Lovecraft was an atheist and materialist; he had no expectations for survival of consciousness after death. His afterlife, as it is, lay in the publication of his work, the memories of his friends, and increasingly his appearance as a fictionalized character in various works. Muriel E. Eddy was, apparently, not a materialist, and was at least open to the idea of ghosts or consciousness that survived after death. At least, she was willing to write about it for Fate Magazine, which offered $5 for tales of evidence of existence after death. This was not exactly new territory for Muriel, who had sold a “psychic experience” to The Occult Digest in 1939. So it was that in the October 1956 issue of Fate, “Message in Stone” appeared.

Message in Stone

We were greatly saddened when Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the famous Rhode Island writer of weird and uncanny tales of the unknown, died in March, 1937. Mr. Lovecraft had been a friend of the family for years. He often had brought his weird writings, still in manuscript form, to our house, reading them aloud in his sepulchral voice and awaiting our approval or disapproval. He considered the Eddy family “good critics.” I still can see him, sitting in our humble abode and reading his famous horror tale, “The Rats in the Walls,” which has been reprinted frequently since his untimely demise.

We often discussed the mystery of death and one night Lovecraft expressed the opinion that the human brain was practically indestructible. He believed that, whether or not his body was embalmed, his brain would continue to function. He said that if his brain continued to “work,” as he believed it would after death, he would send a message in some material form that we could understand.

At that time he was in excellent health and death seemed distant. However, shortly afterward Howard Phillips Lovecraft suddenly became seriously I’ll and died in Jane Brown Hospital in Providence, R.I., in March, 1937. He was only 47 years old.

After the funeral I often visited his grave and placed floral offerings there. The grave is in Swan Point Cemetery and is marked by a tall granite shaft.

One night in September, 1937, I had a very vivid dream about Howard Phillips Lovecraft. In my dream I visited his grave, now covered thickly with grass, and was on my knees, parting the grass as I hunted for something.

My dreams haunted me and early the next day, a Sunday, I drove out to the cemetery. I felt driven by an invisible force.

As I stood beside Lovecraft’s grave, I seemed to hear his sepulchral voice again, intoning the words, “If my theory is correct, if my brain continues to function after my death, I will send you a message in some material form that you can understand.”

My eyes scanned the grass on the burial plot, still wet with dew, and then I glimpsed something white shining on Lovecraft’s grave. Stooping, I parted the heavy growth with my hands and picked up a heart-shaped stone, as smooth as satin and about two inches across. It was milky white and looked oddly like a quarried stone of the translucent variety. I recalled that Lovecraft’s grandparents, long dead, had owned a stone quarry in East Providence.

How the stone happened to be lying on Lovecraft’s grave may be only a matter of conjecture. However, he had known that I collected odd-shaped natural specimens, such as unusual shells, odd bits of wood and minerals, especially stones and rocks of unusual formation.

I could find no stone in the cemetery that resembled even remotely the one I found on Lovecraft’s grave. —Providence, R. I.

[Fate Magazine (Oct 1956), 103-105

Some of the details in the piece are correct, others likely honest mistakes. The description of the grave is accurate; at the time, there was no individual marker for HPL, only the granite shaft for the family plot. Lovecraft was 46 at the time of his death, but if Muriel E. Eddy was counting by year, it’s an easy mistake to make. The Phillips did not own a quarry in Providence, but they owned a small mortgage on such a quarry, and in Lovecraft’s letters he talks about sometimes getting mineral samples from there for his friend James F. Morton, who was curator of a museum of geology in New Jersey.

As for the more imaginative part of the Fate piece—there is no account in Lovecraft’s letters or other memories of him hoping for the functioning of his brain after death. However, it is notable that several of his stories for Hazel Heald, notably “Out of the Æons” (1935) and “The Horror in the Burying-Ground” (1937) both deal with a kind of living death, with the mind functioning in a paralyzed or petrified body. Muriel E. Eddy claims to have introduced Heald to Lovecraft, and Heald features prominently in Eddy’s later memoirs, so possibly she remembered either the stories or Lovecraft writing or talking about the stories.

Another likely influence on “Message in Stone” is the magician Houdini, whom both Lovecraft and her husband C. M. Eddy, Jr. had worked with:

I remember Mr. Eddy’s painstaking revision of Houdini’s “Thoughts and Feelings of a Head Cut Off”….an experience which the master magician had undergone in his youth. Harry Houdini said in his story that somewhere in his travels he came across an ancient supersitition that if a head was severed quickly and unexpectedly from a body, the brain in the head kept on thinking for several seconds! […]

I am quite sure this story was never offered for sale by Harry Houdini, as it lacked the ring of veracity . . . perhaps it was somewhat exaggerated! When we told H.P.L. about it, he exclaimed, “Oh, what I could have done with that story, but perhaps Houdini wouldn’t have liked it if I’d changed it too much. I took a lot of liberties with his ‘Pharaoh’ story and he seemed satisfied, but this one!” And a far-away look was in his eyes. . . .

Later on, were were discussing the possibility of the truth of a brain functioning after death, and Lovecraft averred that perhaps the brain did function . . . for a few minutes after the death of one’s body. It was a weird subject, and there I ended! I sometimes wondered what Lovecraft’s true feelings regarding this matter really were. […]

My husband spent some time investigating Spiritualism at Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts, for Harry Houdini, and when he returned home with much data about some of the mediums he’d met, Lovecraft came over to see us and seemed much interested in the subject. He scoffed at the idea of communion with the dead, and said that, in his opinion, death was the absolute end.
—Muriel E. Eddy, “A Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in A Gentleman from Angell Street 20-21

The Harry Houdini Circumstantial Evidence blog relates a possible manuscript related to this story, titled “Thoughts and Visions of a Head Cut Off.” Houdini is an important connection as well because of a tradition that began after his death; his wife Bess began to hold séances annually on Hallowe’en, in an attempt to contact her husband’s spirit. Muriel was aware of this:

By the way, Houdini’s last desire was that on every Hallowe’en his resting-place should be visited by friends to see if his (Harry Houdini’s) ghost appeared. . . . he made light of ghosts and Spiritualism, you jnow. As Lovecraft was a “ghost-writer” also for Harry Houdini . . . . . . well! Mrs. Harry Houdini . . . and Harry’s brother Hardeen . . . have joined the ranks of every human’s ultimate glory . . . . could not supervise the weird visition at Houdini’s grave this Hallowe’en. I supose that trek will now be abandoned . . . . Houdini proved his own point . . . he STAYED dead! Somtimes, in a joking mood, Lovecraft used to say that . . . . . PERHAPS . . . . the human brain NEVER stopped functioning . . . . . even after death. A weird thought, and, visiting H. P. L.’s grave one day recently . . . . . your friends the Eddys . . wondered . . . just vaguely. But OF COURSE H.P.L. was just joking!
—Muriel E. Eddy to Winfield Townley Scott, 2 Nov 1945, MSS. Brown Digital Repository

Muriel’s information was a little out of date; while Bess Houdini died in 1943 and Theodore Hardeen in 1945, Bess had passed the séance tradition on to Walter B. Gibson in 1936, who in turn would ask Doroth Dietrich to carry on the tradition, which is still ongoing.

Something said in jest would definitely be more in keeping with what we know about Lovecraft, and of course Muriel E. Eddy would have had to play up the belief in his posthumous existence to get published in FATE Magazine. Her account, minor enough as it is, caught the attention of at least one journalist, who distilled it for a fluff piece to fill a few column inches:

*The Register, Santa Ana, CA, 11 Oct 1956, p50*
This item was reprinted in other papers as well.

“Message in Stone” was never republished, and the whole incident is largely ignored in Muriel E. Eddy’s most well-known memories. Yet in H.P.L.: The Man and The Image (1969), she ends a rambling collection of memories with the note:

On one of my visits to H.P.L.’s grave, I found a heart-shaped stone. I wondered if he had seen it there, what type of storey might have been concocted by his fertile brain.

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.

Untitled poem (1976) by William Davis Manly

In the summer of 1976, a one-shot ‘zine of of weird poetry and art emerged from 5115 South Mead St., Seattle Washington. The publisher titled it Visions of Khroyd’hon, which probably meant nothing to anyone at the time, and it was published in the spirit of good fun:

There are many interesting poetry publications popping up every now & then, and I thought it wou’d be fun if I join’d—if only for a moment—ye crowd and publish’d this first and only issue of VOK. I’ve assembled lots of good poetry here, with a number of talented youngsters contributing clever rhymes, love sonnets, and exciting verse. There’s something for everyone’ I’m sure each reader will be able to find some moments of entertainment.
—W. H. Pugmire, Visions of Khroyd’hon 1

Among the contributors were luminaries such as Brian Lumley, H. Warner Munn, J. Vernon Shea, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and William Davis Manly, the latter of whom included several untitled verses, including this one:

Weird and wonderful, these tales,
Each an eerie world reveal;
Imagination freely sails
Reaching worlds that can’t be real—
Darkened worlds of daemon-lore.

Time is but a shadow-thing,
All reality has flown;
Listen—Dagon’s children sing!,
Eerily, in tongue unknown.
Surely, I can’t ask for more.
—william davis manly

It is a poem in praise of weird fiction, from someone who loves the strange, eerie, horrific, and awesome. A paean from one Mythos fan to every other. The artist is unknown, but the subject is writer Fritz Leiber, Jr., and appears to be traced from a scene from the 1970 film Equinox.

*Equinox* has several parallels with *Evil Dead II*, including a recording of a professor (Leiber) who unwisely reads aloud an incantation from a very evil book…although the book in *Equinox* is not specifically called the *Necronomicon*.

The hidden joke is that William Davis Manly is, like Robert E. Howard’s Justin Geoffrey or H. P. Lovecraft’s Abdul Alhazred, not a flesh-and-blood poet at all, but a character in Pugmire’s stories—a staple name in what would become the Sesqua Valley stories. Pugmire had begun producing poetry under the name William Davis Manly in the 1970s, probably first “The Cryptic Power” in the ‘zine Bleak December #8. The first bit of fiction referencing Manly was “From ye Journal of William Davis Manly” (Old Bones #1, Summer 1976), and in “The Thing in the Glen” (Space and Time Sep 1977) the story begins with a poetic epigraph:

“Beneath the old narcotic moon
It preys upon mortality,
Hungry to devour hope,
And whispering to darkness.”
—William Davis Manly, Visions of Khroyd’hon
(quoted from Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror 57)

So Pugmire’s poetry ‘zine became, in the context of his Mythos fiction, a volume of poetry, much like Justin Geoffrey’s People of the Monolith in Robert E. Howard’s “The Black Stone.” William Davis Manly (or at least, his legend) would grow and develop in Pugmire’s tales, as would his slightly more diabolical counterpart, the sorcerer Simon Gregory Williams.

There is no definitive collection of W. H. Pugmire’s poetry, and maybe such a thing would be difficult to put together, given how much of it was published in ‘zines and scattered hither and yon. The quality and focus of it varies considerably, as Pugmire was equally disposed to either fulfilling some weird and fantastic corner of the Mythos or just praising his aunt in verse, but for readers who enjoy his fiction, Pugmire’s poetry is an indelible part of his larger body of work.

As far as I have yet been able to determine, the untitled poem from Visions of Khroyd’an has only ever been reprinted in the chapbook Sesqua Rising (2016) by Graeme Davis, which collects many other early Pugmire rarities.

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 in Brooklyn” (2008) by The Mountain Goats

And then the girl behind the counter
She asks me how I feel today
I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn
—final chorus

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” is the eighth track on Heretic Pride (2008, 4AD) the eleventh studio album by The Mountain Goats, an indie/folk-rock project by singer/songwriter John Darnielle and his collaborators. The song was written and performed by Darnielle, and produced by Scott Solter and John Vanderslice. The tense 3:49 recording is narrated by an individual in a city, expressing muted frustration and horrific fantasies. References to Lovecraft and his work are few and vague, beginning with the second chorus:

Rhode Island drops into the ocean
No place to call home anymore
Lovecraft in Brooklyn

And ending with a reference to what might be the Fungi from Yuggoth:

Someday something’s coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It’ll store our brains in Mason jars

…or perhaps just a paranoid ramble from an undiagnosed schizophrenic. While nothing happens in the narrative of the song, there is the implicit promise of violence about to occur, and “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” is the narrator’s common reference point for how they feel, a reference that they expect others to understand.

As part of the promotion of the album, comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis produced a three-page comic illustrating Darnielle’s notes about the songs.

American horror icon H. P. Lovecraft moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn to be with the woman he loved. He had never really seen any people who were not white folks from Massachusetts. Immigrants were spilling into Brooklyn from the four corners of the globe. Lovecraft’s xenophobia during his time in Brooklyn resulted in some of the weirdest, darkest images in all American literature; one must condemn Lovecraft’s ugly racism, of course, but his not-unrelated inclination toward a general suspicion of anything that’s alive is pretty fertile ground.

In a 2008 interview about the science fiction influence on his work, Darnielle was asked specifically about the song:

[Charlie Jane Anders]: Your new album includes a song about H.P. Lovecraft, “Lovecraft In Brooklyn.” Why should we identify with H.P. Lovecraft’s feelings of alienation and xenophobia during his exile in Red Hook? What about that image appeals to you? In Lovecraft’s case, that alienation leads to all his best speculative horror… do you think xenophobia creates better speculative fiction than xenophilia?

[John Darnielle]: Well the song is not really about Lovecraft — it’s sung by a guy who’s identifying with Lovecraft at his most xenophobic and terrified. Why does that appeal? I think I’m just attracted to hermits in general — to people who don’t feel like they’re part of the world, who have a hard time feeling like they’re really present in the same space as everybody else.
—Charlie Jane Anders, “The Mountain Goats Explain Why Ozzy Osbourne Is A Scifi Visionary” (Gizmodo, 27 Mar 2008)

An apocryphal account of the 22 March 2008 live session The Mountain Goats played at the Black Cat club in Washington, D.C. captures an opener John Darnielle gave before playing this song:

Once again, to express my affection for you, I’d like to play this song about a fellow who is really so filled with anger and rage that the mere sight of other human beings makes him feel even more angry. He’s angry already when he wakes up, before he remembers that there’s other people on the planet. But once he thinks of those other people, then he starts to really get going. And heaven help you if he should have to go and get some kleenex or whatever from the corner store, then he will really be filled with a special kind of contempt. Why? Because you have bodies and they make him sick. That’s what this song is about. I know everyone can relate to the tender feelings expressed in it.

John Darnielle is not a Lovecraft scholar; his understanding of Lovecraft as represented in the promotional materials, lyrics, and intra-show commentary reflects a popular depiction of Lovecraft as an angry xenophobe trapped in a place surrounded by people who weren’t like him, and it made him go crazy. “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” reflects the legend of Lovecraft’s 1924-1926 sojourn to New York, much like Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom” (2016) represents an interpretation of “The Horror at Red Hook,” one of the stories Lovecraft wrote during that period, with an emphasis on Lovecraft’s racism.

The reality was more complicated. 1924 wasn’t the first time Lovecraft had been to New York; it wasn’t the first time Lovecraft had been out of state, or seen people of color or different ethnicities. Lovecraft had experiences leading up to his 1924 elopement with Sonia H. Greene, who gave her version of their married life in The Private Life of H. P. Lovecraft (1985), which he thought prepared him for life in New York.

As it happened, Lovecraft was wrong. He failed to find employment; soon after marriage, his wife fell ill and required hospitalization and then rest. Without either of them working, money swiftly became an issue. Sonia eventually found a job out in the Midwest, but Lovecraft would not follow her there, so he was left alone, in the poor Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. Largely alone, unable to make his own way, dependent on a wife he didn’t see for weeks and distant aunts, Lovecraft tried to make the best of it with his local friends.

Then thieves broke into his apartment.

Letters from Lovecraft to his aunts Lillian D. Clark and Annie Gamwell show how unhappy he was. While he never blamed the immigrants or people of color for his own failures, his letters to them during this period show how much Lovecraft’s prejudices were exacerbated during this final, stressful period in New York…until, at last, his aunts and wife prevailed upon him to return to Providence, Rhode Island, where he could be happier.

So he did.

Most of Lovecraft’s New York experiences did not make it into his fiction; not even the fiction he wrote while living in and set in the city. “The Horror at Red Hook” is unusual because through Lovecraft’s letters and various anecdotes in memoirs we can trace it back to a specific incident—overhearing some hardboiled toughs talking a little too loudly about criminal goings-on at a local cafeteria—from which Lovecraft spun out his fantasy of an immigrant gang-cum-cult involved in human trafficking, murder, and more esoteric activities.

“The Horror at Red Hook” reads pretty baldly racist; the equivalent today might be a story of an MS-13-type group that was also a survival of ancient Aztec religion that still practiced human sacrifice. That was very explicitly fiction, though—a play on contemporary prejudices, not Lovecraft just putting his own prejudices onto the paper. A fine distinction for a lot of readers who don’t always like to distinguish between what Lovecraft thought and how he portrayed things in the pages of Weird Tales.

New York-based rapper and producer Aesop Rock (Ian Matthias) did a remix of “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” which at 3:31 retains all of Darnielle’s lyrics but quickens the beat and reworks the soundscape with added effects to add to the tension and air of alienation of the song, and providing a densely-packed fourth verse of his own. The added lyrics are grounded much more firmly in Brooklyn itself, and suggest a deeper understanding of Lovecraft’s time in New York (“Summer lovin’ snuck him toward the tarnished arms of liberty”), and perhaps reflect W. Paul Cook’s assessment that Lovecraft’s time in New York was pivotal toward his development as a writer (“Little Howie’s parachute has flowered down the rabbit hole”).

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” is an expression of the pop cultural phenomenon that is Lovecraft; his legend used to evoke certain ideas, attitudes, and aesthetics completely rather than any attempt to relate a distinct biographical episode from his life. It showcases how Lovecraft’s reputation as a bigot and xenophobe has become so rampant; of course, the fact that he was racist (if not always to the degree or in the way folks like Darnielle portray) cannot be ignored and shouldn’t be downplayed.

While Darnielle’s particular impression of Lovecraft may be factually incorrect, Darnielle was right in that Lovecraft’s legacy continues to be fertile ground for artists to fuel their own imaginations.

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” – The Mountain Goats (Youtube link)

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” (remix) – The Mountain Goats / Aesop Rock (Youtube link)

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 Invaders vs. The Milford Mafia” (1967) by Joanna Russ

Most science fiction writers were once fans. There’s a habit they have, not of paying back, but of paying forward; I know of no other branch of literature where the established “names” so keenly encourage wannabe writers to become their competitors.
—Terry Pratchett, “Paperback Writer” (2003) in A Slip of the Keyboard 18

The development of organized science fiction/fantasy fandom in the United States during the 1930s was essential for the culture of writing that exists today. Fandom is older than those first fanzines, but the marriage of genre fiction and the amateur journalism organizational framework resulted in a movement that engaged people of all ages across a relatively narrow common interest, and encouraged recruitment, participation, and publication. Professional writers and fans didn’t just connect, they encouraged each other.

While not every fan was part of organized fandom, nearly every science fiction writer was a fan—and the extent of fandom networks in the United States, especially in the 1940s-1980s, is often remarkable. Big name fans and big name authors past, present, and future rubbed shoulders at conventions, corresponded, contributed to the same fanzines. Before the internet, social media consisted of the letters-columns of fanzines which might be read by as few as a handful or as many as dozens of people. It was smaller, more intimate, with all of its feuds and silliness that comes from people just being people, developing their own lingo and sharing an interest—which might include fiction, poetry, comics, radio, film, television—any media that existed, science fiction and media had touched, and so was fair game.

Over the past decade or so, efforts have been made to preserve and digitize some of these fanzines; to capture these communications (however poorly and cheaply printed) for future generations. While many pages have about as much interest as your average forum thread from the 1990s, there is gold dust among the spill, if you’re willing to sluice it out.

One nugget that emerged from the depths of the Fan History Project (fanac.org) is Lighthouse #15 (1967), which includes “The Invaders vs. The Milford Mafia” by Joanna Russ. For readers used to Russ’ professionally published fiction, stories like “I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket … But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life!” (1964) and “My Boat” (1976), this is something different. Fanfiction in the oldest sense of the word, not a story based on some fandom, but a story written by a fan, for fans. The title alone might clue savvy readers at the time what they’re in for: The Invaders (1967-1968) was a vaguely Hitchcokian science fiction thriller television series that ran for two seasons on the ABC network, a melodramatic cash-in on the UFO craze with perhaps a more than generous dollop of Red Scare paranoia thrown in.

Of course, alien invasion plots were standard fare for science fiction fans in the 60s and 70s—which is where the Milford Mafia comes in.

The Milford Science Fiction Writer’s Conference in 1956 was formed by three of Futurians: Damon Knight, James Blish, and Judith Merrill. Then as now, science fiction and fantasy fandom had a tendency toward cliquedom, and the Milford conference in particular addressed the literary quality of science fiction. Just as, thirty years before, H. P. Lovecraft had striven to raise the general literary level of amateur journalism, so too did the Milford attendees seek to raise the literary standards of science fiction, which eventually led to the formation of professional writers associations like the Science Fiction Writers of America. Those put out at the high-minded literary standards referred to attendees (or those pushing higher standards) as “the Milford Mafia”—and Russ would be using the term in a jocular fashion, counterpoising the rehashed plots of The Invaders episodes against the higher standards that some folks in science fiction were pushing for.

It’s a fun piece, silly and light-hearted, and in keeping with that spirit, Russ slipped in a little joke about Lovecraft:

Anyhow, here’s this poor slob of an architect, David Vincent, who alone knows that They are invading—though how he could find out, or why on earth he should be an architect, I can’t imagine, unless the Aliens have begun their plan to insidiously warp the human psyche by distorting the lines and angles of our better known architectural monuments like, for example, Grand Central Station. (Something of the sort happens in a Lovecraft story called The Call of Cthulhu, which I offer you free of charge, especially since it isn’t mine.)

Which is poking fun at a familiar element of Lovecraft’s story:

Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to any thing right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.

“Non-Euclidean architecture” has become a trope, sometimes parodied and sometimes taken quite seriously (H. P. Lovecraft and Non-Euclidean Geometry by Zeno Rogue). Nor was Lovecraft such a sacred cow he was beyond a little jesting; “At the Mountains of Murkiness, or From Lovecraft to Leacock” (1940) by Arthur C. Clarke had taken the piss on Lovecraft decades earlier.

For readers who are familiar with Joanna Russ only for her fiction or her writings about fiction, this is an example of the fannish side of her: more playful, with all the in-jokes one would expect of someone that’s been part of the scene for a while. A good-natured piece of fluff that jokes about how bad television writing could be…and, perhaps, how bad science fiction could be, if writers didn’t strive harder.

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.

“La Maldición del Amuleto” (1985) by Joan Boix & H. P. Lovecraft

Hay quienes consideran el género de TERROR como un subproductio. Es cierto que, como en todo, a veces domina una calidad ínfirma, pero no sólo en los Comics. También en cinema, televisión, literature…

Tal vez porque el tema se ha explotado a fondo con abusos commerciales aprovechando que a la gente le gustan las emociones fuertes y muchos, sin saberlo, las utilizan para liberarse de sus propios miedos. Pero también es cierto que otros se han servido de sus miedos para expresar sus sentimientos y emociones segun su condición psicológica dando lugar a las mejores obras del género. Tal as el caso de POE, LOVECRAFT, KAFKA, y muchos más.

El experto en la materia no dejará nunca de reconocer que el TERROR es un tema de gran interés que además nos revela la personalidad más intrínseca de sus autores. Por eso, repito, el TERROR no se debe subestimar a la ligera sin un previo análisis.

Conociendo lo suficiente (presumo) sobre la vida atormentada y la obra de Los maestros del terror, he seleccionado una serie de relations pasándolos al Comic, Bien adaptando fielmente algunos, Bien dando mi toque personal a otros.

Y aquí está el resultado: Este libro con el que deseo rendir homenaje a los «GRANDES DE LO MACABRO».

Espero que lo pasen de miedo.

There are those who consider the TERROR genre as a by-product. It is true that, as in everything, sometimes a low quality dominates, but not only in Comics. Also in cinema, television, literature…

Perhaps because the topic has been thoroughly exploited with commercial abuse, taking advantage of the fact that people like strong emotions and many, without knowing it, use them to free themselves from their own fears. But it is also true that others have used their fears to express their feelings and emotions according to their psychological condition, giving rise to the best works of the genre. Such is the case of POE, LOVECRAFT, KAFKA, and many more.

The expert on the subject will never fail to recognize that TERROR is a topic of great interest that also reveals the most intrinsic personality of its authors. Therefore, I repeat, TERROR should not be underestimated lightly without prior analysis.

Knowing enough (I presume) about the tormented life and work of The Masters of Terror, I have selected a series of relations, transferring them to the Comic, either faithfully adapting some, or giving my personal touch to others.

And here is the result: This book with which I wish to pay tribute to the “GREAT OF THE MACABRE.”

I hope you have a scary time.

Introduction to Homenaje: Grandes de Los Macabro (1985)

English translation

Joan Boix (born Juan Boix Sola Segales in Badalona, Spain) is not well-known to English-reading audiences, although he has had a long career both in Spain and internationally, able to turn his hand from everything from romance comics in the 1960s to being one of the artists that drew The Phantom comic strip in the 1990s. Yet for those who appreciate horror comics, Joan Boix holds a special place for his work in that field. Even there, in English his work is a bit of a footnote: a story in Marvel’s Monsters Unleashed #5 (1974), which was reprinted in the Monsters Unleashed Annual (1975). Yet his Spanish-language work, never translated into English, is his best. And in 1985 he published a collection of adaptations of classic horror fiction: Homenaje: Grandes de Los Macabro (Tribute: Greats of the Macabre).

“La Maldicion del Amuleto” is an adaption of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Hound.” In Spanish, the story is typically translated as “El Sabueso,” and while there are many words for dog in Spanish (perro, can or canino, cacharro (“puppy”), chandoso, etc.) “sabueso” has the specific meaning of a hunting dog; we might even say “bloodhound” in English. Which is a nice shade of meaning, given the context.

Boix’s tastes in terms of illustration are gloriously Gothic, redolent of an 18th-century macabre that recalls the horror films of Hammer Films in Britain and Profilmes in Spain. There’s that sense that Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, or Paul Naschy could step onto the panel at any time, and be right at home.

The starkness of the black-and-white works to Boix’s advantage; there are single panels that could be glorious two-page spreads, with a lot of detail that might have been muddied by a careless colorist. The chiaroscuro effect is glorious, the kind of deep shadows that drink in the light which would inspire the likes of Mike Mignola’s signature aesthetic.

It is always tempting, when reviewing one of these adaptations of Lovecraft, to compare it against all the other adaptations. Jack “Jaxon” Jackson in Skull Comix #4 (1972), Stuart Gordon and Tula Lotay in The Thought Bubble Anthology #1 (2011), Chad Fifer and Bryan Baugh in The Lovecraft Anthology: Volume II (2012), Tanabe Gou in H. P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories (2017)—and all of these have their charms and advantages, their different takes and take-offs on the material.

For sheer joie de morte, however, Boix’s tendency to revel in a single panel is hard to top. It’s a world where the moon is always full and glaring like the eye of some forgotten God, where every tombstone is encrusted with grave-mould, and the collection of the pair of necrophiles would put Hammer’s prop department into giddy ecstasies of macabre delight.

As horror comics have gained new appreciation, so too has awareness of Joan Boix’s work begun to grow, with new critical editions in Spanish like Grandes de la Macabro (2021), and Joan Boix. Antología: Relatos pasados, recuerdos presentes, maestría absolute (2022). Very fortunately for English-reading audiences, for the first time ever his horror comics have been translated into English: Terror! The Horror Comics Genius of Joan Boix (2022).

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.

“To Clark Ashton Smith” (1951) by Evelyn Thorne

TO CLARK ASHTON SMITH

I think quicksilver leaps along his veins,
And if you look too deeply in his eyes,
You’ll see behind the ice-thin laughter there
The smouldering glimpse of fateful sorceries.

I think that if you listen while he speaks
You’ll catch a foreign ac[c]ent on his tongue,
That hints a language built of stars and wine
A syntax all with fiery jewels strung.

I think that if you miss him some dark night
You should not be surprised or wonder where
He’s gone; look up, Arcturus greenly burns—
Do you not see him on that shining stair?
—Evelyn Thorne

The second issue of Alan H. Pestetsky and Michael DeAngelis’ fanzine Asmodeus (Fall 1951) was devoted primarily to Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft had been receiving accolades in The Acolyte in the 1940s, so it was only fair. The issue republished a poetic tribute by Lovecraft to his friend, as well as “The Cup-Bearer” (1951) by Lilith Lorraine, and buried among other works was the above dedication by Eveyln Thorne.

While she is mostly forgotten now, in the 1950s Evelyn Aixa Thorne was actively involved with science fiction fandom, not necessarily a Big Name Fan, but not insignificant either. A brief biographical essay in Poets in the South says she was born in Nebraska in 1898, educated in the College of Puget Sound and the University of Arizona, and lived all over the country “working as an interior decorator, an X-ray txnician, and a botancial illustrator” (78). She married William Richmond Tullos in 1946, they divorced in 1952, remarried in 1954, and remained married until his death in 1974.

Thorne is probably best-remembered as co-publisher/co-editor of the New Athenaeum Press with Will Tullos, which published Epos: A Quarterly of Poetry, from 1949 until 1975, which published three of Clark Ashton Smith’s poems. She was also associate-editor of Challenge (1950-1951) under Lilith Lorraine, who also published some of Thorne’s poetry elsewhere. Her books of poetry were Design in a Web (1955), Ways of Listening (1969), and Of Bones and Stars (1982); she also published anthologies of poetry from Epos.

There is a certain incestuous quality to fantastic poetry in the 1950s, an intersection between the “little magazine” movement and science fiction/fantasy fanzines which echos the intersection between amateur journalism and science fiction fandom in the 1930s. That Evelyn Thorne knew and appreciated Clark Ashton Smith as a poet is clear. The reference to “Arcturus” in particular is curious; Smith refered to Arcturus in three poems first published in The Star-Treader and Other Poems (1912): “To the Sun,” “The Song of a Comet,” and “Saturn”—all cosmic poems that echoed or were influenced by Smith’s mentor George Sterling’s “The Testimony of the Suns” (1903).

A detail Smith no doubt appreciated, when he read that tribute.

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.

Skinny Dipper (2023) by Sex and Monsters

Eldritch Fappenings

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

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee” (1849)

Skinny Dipper was a successfully crowdfunded multimedia project by Sex and Monsters, who are best known for their retro chic combinations of horror, pulp fiction, and tiki culture to produce works like the comic/cocktail booklet Tiki Surf Witches Want Blood.

The form of this particular project is a 32-page mixed-media comic ‘zine that remixes Poe’s “Annabel Lee” and “The Night Ocean” (1936) by R. H. Barlow with H. P. Lovecraft, re-imagining them against a palette of mixed comic and photographic work by Emily Roberts, April Snellings, Jelena Đorđević, May Nguyen, Dennis Swiatkowski, Sam McKenzie, Slime Sunday, Brite Lite Tribe, and Will Penny; and a 7″ vinyl record by Nite Jewel that contains a soundtrack to accompany the piece. Various Kickstarter bonuses to the campaign add decals, instant film shots of May Nguyen, and other goodies.

The crux of the re-imagining is model May Nguyen, who appears both in photographs and as the character model for the character of Annabel Lee in the story. Told in sparse, evocative images, Annabel Lee shifts from the bright and crowded daylit beach to a lonely moonlit scene, to go skinny dipping alone in the night ocean.

Chunks of Poe’s and Barlow and Lovecraft’s texts are taken out of context and reframed as poetry. The artists are each distinctive in their style and approach to the material; the center black-lettering on black-pages at the center of the story is incredibly evocative of the dark abysses hinted at in poem and short story, here rendered visually—and the combination of Poe’s verse and select snippets from Barlow and Lovecraft work well together with the visuals, terribly suggestive of far more than appears on the page.

Kitsch is a dirty word, but in this case the artists are trying to recapture specific moods and art styles, from the Charles Atlas bully-kicks-sand-in-your-face comics of the 50s to 80s glossy magazine photo spreads that are terribly suggestive of exotic vacations, where the sea foom can lap at your feet as you read and relax on holiday. It is a deliberate effort to reproduce an aesthetic that existed, even if that exact place never did.

One thing that both “Annabel Lee” and “The Night Ocean” capture is a sense of loneliness and longing; that may be why giving Annabel in Skinny Dipper such a distinctive face adds something to the text. May Nguyen provides a sense of reality that might have been missing if this a more traditionally-made comic book; there’s a fotonovella-style sense that these could be stills to some ancient straight-to-video movie that graced the shelves of mom & pop video stories.

It is not horror in any strict sense; not int he bloody bones and a shark coughing up a limb. It’s closer to a vacation where all the time away reminds you that the one thing ou can’t get a vacation from is yourself, can’t get out of your own head. That loneliness and the endless, ageless warm waters of the ocean might swallow you up forever, given half a chance.

Nite Jewel’s Skinny Dipper single is a soundtrack to the story; I’d call it synthwave or retrowave, while the tags for the album on call it chillwave and hypnogogic pop. Combined with the stylistic flourishes of the comic, it grounds the reader in that almost-never-when promised in a thousand 80s and early 90s magazines, comics, films, and music videos. The idea of the beach as this place of escape, the music a poppy invitation that’s a bit more upbeat than tiki exotica, but holds many of the same audio cues, just for a later generation.

At this time of writing, the album is the only thing available for direct purchase, although many stills and videos associated with the project are located on Sex and Monsters’ Facebook page.

Skinny Dipper is an interesting collaboration, one that showcases the abilities and visions of the individual artists that went into it. Copies are still available through the Kickstarter store (click “Order Now”), and will hopefully receive a wider release in the near future.

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.