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.

“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.

Shadows of Innsmouth (2014) by Gonzo

Eldritch Fappenings

This review deals with a work of pornography, and the history of erotic art and writing. As part of this review, selected images with cartoon depictions of genitalia and/or sexually explicit contact will be displayed.
As such, please be advised before reading further.

In 1992, author William Gibson and artist Dennis Ashbaugh published Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), consisting of a book with a 3.5″ floppy disk. It was an art project as much as anything else: the book was treated with photosensitive chemicals so that the words would begin to fade as they were exposed to light; the disk would run once and then encrypt itself. Buyers were purchasing a not so much a physical product as an experience and a challenge: how did they want to experience this, knowing that it would be rendered unreadable by the act of reading? How would they preserve it?

It was a very cyberpunk stunt, and clever programmers eventually cracked the encryption; even before that, copies of the text were available on the web, shared through networks of pirates and fans. The text survives today, even though it was designed to be forgotten, and now on a near-obsolete physical media format, because of determined interest and repeated, if often shadowy, lines of transmission. If you download the text of Agrippa now, you will probably get an accurate copy of the original text—but how would you know? What would you compare it to? The digital archivist finds themselves in a position not unlike a scholar of ancient manuscripts, comparing different and fragmented versions of texts to discern clues as to the route of transmission.

Early digital works, more than most, tend to illustrate the difficulties of preservation. The lack of physical substrate means the technological end of things—what’s the file format? Do we have a program that can open that? What operating system does it use? Do we have a computer that can run that?—means that trying to experience these works as they were originally is increasingly difficult. In many cases, the original project files and source code of a digital work, the programs used to create it, may be long gone. All we have is the end product, which may have been compressed, reformatted, or translated in various ways across its route of transmission.

Which is to say that you’re probably never going to read Shatter (1985) on a Macintosh Plus in MacPaint, or see the magic of how Batman: Digital Justice (1990) was put together on a Macintosh II that boasted a whopping 8MB of RAM. However, you can still buy print collections of those comics—which is more than most digital works can say.

The internet provides a direct market for creators to sell their works, in many cases bypassing middlemen and brick-and-mortar stories; for artists in particular, having a website meant they could sell directly to their customers through various paradigms—memberships, purchasable files, mail order—and the product didn’t have to be physical. Potential buyers who wanted a digital comic could go to the website, fork over a credit card number, and access the gallery of images or download a .zip or .PDF with the images. There was piracy, and various attempts at anti-piracy measures, because nothing was perfect, but they were generally good enough, especially for honest merchants and customers. Systems like this still exist today, although many creators have, for ease and because of issues with payment processors, opted to use middleman websites like Itch.io or DriveThruComics.

There are a lot of benefits to this kind of digital ecosystem: niche artists who would struggle to find a publisher can self-publish and still find an audience for their works; customers interested in such niche works have a better chance of finding such materials, which tends to foster the creation of more of it. This is especially true for works of parody and erotica, which often struggle with traditional print distribution channels.

Digital artist Gonzo began (as near as I can tell) with his own website, Taboo Studios, circa 2008. Gonzo created erotic comics using 3D rendering software, which has become increasingly available as a in the early 2000s thanks to the release of graphic processing cards for home use and improvements in software, often with horror settings and narratives, and frequently focused on monster sex as the kink of choice. In 2014, Gonzo published the first part of one of the first of his erotic monster sex comics based on the work of H. P. Lovecraft, “Shadows over Innsmouth.”

Shadows of Innsmouth is an almost faithful retelling of the H P Lovecraft classic, ‘Shadow over Innsmouth’. I say ‘almost’ faithful as all of the core events in the original book happens in the comic, but this time with more sex, a female lead character and its set in 2014 not 1914 – But I’m sure you will consider these changes all good changes 🙂

The story starts with Jennifer the new assistant librarian at Miskatonic University who happens to be going through a rough patch in her life, she finds the Lovecraftian novel and quickly discovers that the Innsmouth of legend is based on a real town. Her curiosity intrigued she sets off to Innsmouth to discover which parts of the book are true and which existed only in Lovecrafts twisted imagination�

This 94 page storyline based comic is the first part and features, weird mysteries, kinky sex, stranger sex, the deep ones, amphibian creatures from the sea, tribal island girls, cheating, monster breeding, emotional turmoil, selling out the future of a town in a demonic pact� and much more.

A must for any Erotic Horror fan and the first in a series of re-imaginings of his work.
—Gonzo, read me.txt file that accompanies “Shadow over Innsmouth”

Foreword to “Shadows of Innsmouth” (2014) by Gonzo

This is a work that should be seen in the same vein as “The Statement of Randolph Carter Twisted” (2024) by Lisa Shea or The Colour Out of Space (2024) by H. P. Lovecraft & Sara Barkat: artistic re-interpretations of the original work. “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is a likely suspect for an erotic adaptation in particular because the monster sex is already there—just off the page.

“Shadows of Innsmouth” (2014) by Gonzo, page 13

Gonzo’s style in this is reminiscent of 1970s European erotic comics, with two large panels taking up the entire page providing room for detail and dialogue or exposition, although Gonzo could and did juggle up his formats occasionally. Like most 2000s-era render artwork, the figures are relatively stiff, and Gonzo wasn’t above borrowing artwork to use as skins for books or wall art—you might recognize the cover of Lovecraft Unbound (2009) on the cover of the books stacked on the table, for example, and there are other borrowings as well.

“Shadows of Innsmouth” (2014) by Gonzo – page 71

Gonzo included sexually explicit artwork—it is a pornographic work, after all—but most of the action builds up to the explicit scenes. As is typical, the limitations of the software and modeling tend to show in difficulty rendering non-Caucasian features, and many of the skin textures on objects are distorted.

“Shadows of Innsmouth” (2014) by Gonzo – page 83

Gonzo also clearly took inspiration where he found it; the transition from human to Deep One may be reminiscent of an Animorphs, but is a familiar conceit to show the progress of time and transformation. The Deep Ones themselves tend to look a bit like cave trolls from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (2001), although Gonzo draws in the Gillman from the classic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) in the second part—as well as another Lovecraftian critter, this one with tentacles.

“Shadows of Innsmouth” (2014) by Gonzo – page 117

These erotic render artworks may seem a little strange and quaint today, because the state of the art has moved on. A decade of artists have worked creating custom textures, models, working with more advanced programs and faster hardware. Gonzo’s 2014 art reflects the time and tools with which they were made.

In their stated goal of creating an erotic adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” Gonzo was largely successful. It is certainly no worse than similar efforts like The Adult Version of Dracula (1970) or Evil Head (2012). Gonzo hits the beats of the story, with their own little twists for the sake of titillation.

Nor was Gonzo alone in creating Lovecraftian erotic works using rendering software and available through much the same way. Artist Iopriest created two Lexi Crane comics, and the artist known as Jag27/Otto Maddox worked Lovecraftian entities into their horror-themed erotic horror comics as well. This was a niche that obviously found at least some audience.

Besides “Shadows of Innsmouth,” Gonzo (now Gonzo Studios) completed adaptations of “From Beyond,” “Dagon,” “Azathoth,” and “Call of Cthulhu.” While Taboo Studios’ web page is defunct, Gonzo has moved their wares to Renderotica, where they are still available for purchase and download.

For the moment.

It has to be emphasized that there is no guarantee that “Shadows of Innsmouth” will be available in a decade, or a year, or even tomorrow. An issue with a payment processor, an untimely death, an accident with a server…and the files will be gone, less accessible than the text of Agrippa. Like “The Fluff at the Threshold” (1996) by Simon Leo Barber, there isn’t really a dedicated archive for these kind of digital creative works. You can buy them, for now, and pirates probably still circulate copies, but the continued existence of these comics remains tenuous. They might disappear at any time.

The world will be a little less weird when that happens.

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 Call of the Friend (2025) by JaeHoon Choi (최재훈) trans. Janet Hong

THE CALL OF THE FRIEND is part of the Lovecraft Reanimated project, where leading Korean speculative fiction writers reimagine the works of horror master H.P. Loveccraft, while honoring his eerie, grotesque imagery and the blurred boundaries between reality and fantasy, they update his ideas for a global audience.
—The Call of the Friend (2025), inside cover flap

The Call of the Friend (친구의 부름) is a standalone black-and-white graphic novel by Korean comic artist and writer JaeHoon Choi (최재훈), first published in 2020. The English translation by Janet Hong was published in 2025 by Honford Star. The story is set in contemporary urban Korea, where university student Wonjun checks in on his friend Jingu, whose sister (a K-pop idol) has recently committed suicide, implicitly because of a scandalous affair. It is in Jingu’s apartment that Wonjun spots a strange idol.

The story that unspools is not a straightforward linear narrative. It is intimate, focused on Wonjun, with everyone other than Jingu essentially faceless. Readers get pieces of the puzzle, but the full story isn’t spelled out for them, readers are forced to interpret the evidence as best they can. In this, they are given a single helpful hint in a short essay at the end of the book:

Some live a life of violence, while others make every effort to avoid stepping on an insect. But no matter the severity or type of sin, the moment we realize we have sinned, we experience fear. The fear isn’t so much the dread of punishment or retribution. It stems from the knowledge that we’ve hurt someone or caused their unhappiness, and the sin manifests as fear. Depending on the intensity of this fear, we can either be liberated from our guilt or ensnared by it.

While I don’t want the theme to be too obvious in this story, I hope readers might be able to tangibly experience Wonjun’s guilt. These long, nocturnal reflections on our current human condition, set against H. P. Lovecraft’s world of unexplained fears, have prompted me to contemplate the words we’ve spoken, the conflict and guilt we’ve endured, as well as the subsequent death and feat they cause.
—The Call of the Friend (2025), 104-105

As an essay, it is slightly reminiscent of Arthur Machen’s prologue to “The White People” on ‘sorcery & sanctity.’ The idea of fear as a fundamental response to a transgression—an instinctive response to some imbalance caused by action or inaction—and that this fear can liberate or ensnare guilt, has its attractions. Yet how does this philosophical approach jive with Lovecraft’s famous proclamation that “the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”?

When you don’t know what the sin was. When the only way you have to measure how badly you’ve hurt someone is the measure of the fear you feel in response to it. Whether this is what JaeHoon Choi intended with The Call of the Friend I cannot say, but the presence of the Cthulhu Mythos in this story is suggestive of something that goes beyond tawdry K-pop star drama and the suicide of the sister of a friend. It suggests that there’s something much bigger at work here, something unseen and unknowable, and it threatens to ensnare Wonjun entirely.

The Call of the Friend is somewhat reminiscent of Minetaro Mochizuki’s Hauntress (1993) in general outline—both of them deal with young university students living on their own, the one checking in on the other to whom something has happened, and with a supernatural horror creeping into their lives—and more importantly, that sensation of an urban legend unfolding in a space of familiar, contemporary surroundings. These are characters ill-equipped to deal with the psychological terrors of their experiences. They have no strong faith, no occult skills or leanings. They are regular people, with limited resources, facing the uncanny.

That works. JaeHoon Choi takes advantage of the prosaic setting and characters to make the distortions of perception all the more disturbing for taking place in setting of absolute reality. Readers will question how much of this is in Wonjun’s head, will wonder when we slip into dream, hallucination, or twisted memory. The idol forms a locus of manifestation, a central image to embody what it is happening, but even until the end, readers have to decide how much of this is really happening.

The comic ends like an unresolved chord. Readers don’t get answers. Only the impression that they have witnessed something. Perhaps that is the answer itself.

Janet Hong’s translation of the graphic novel into English is very readable and smooth. While most of the graphic novel itself has relatively sparse dialogue, the essay at the end is very clear and easy to understand, and a valuable key to understanding the work.

The Call of the Friend (2025) by JaeHoon Choi and translated by Janet Hong is available at the Honford Star website as an ebook or softcover.

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 y Negrito (2023) by Dolores Alcatena

Racist Language
This review concerns H. P. Lovecraft’s cat, whose name was a racial slur against Black people.
As part of this review, the cat’s name and variations are included. Reader discretion advised.

The first known reference to H. P. Lovecraft’s cat was in a letter from his grandfather when Lovecraft was only 5 years old:

You and Dumplin Mama must keep the Barn shut every night and take care of Nig.
—Whipple Van Buren Phillips to H. P. Lovecraft, 17 Oct 1895, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.1046

“Nig” was short for “Niggerman.” It was a black cat, at a time when the N-word was relatively common for pets with black coats. Whether it was Lovecraft who named the kitten, or a family member or friend, is not recorded in any of Lovecraft’s letters. It was his childhood pet—and, as it happened, the only pet he could afford during his life, although he retained a great fondness for cats throughout his life, often petting or playing with strays. In 1904, Whipple Van Buren Phillips died. Lovecraft’s family home was sold, he and his mother moved away from his childhood home, and the cat disappeared during the tumult, never seen again.

Lovecraft remembered his feline companion in later years, and based two cats in his stories on his lost pet: Niggerman in “The Rats in the Walls,” and Nig in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Neither appearance caused any particular outcry at the time of publication; Weird Tales was no stranger to the N-word and other terms, and it was not until “The Rats in the Walls” (1956) that any serious effort was made to censor or bowdlerize the cat’s name. Works in translation and adaptation were more likely to change the name; different languages, with different histories regarding race relations and Black slavery, have their own nuances of language to give shades of meaning or seek to avoid giving offense.

In 2023, Argentinian illustrator and writer Dolores’ Alcatena published Lovecraft y Negrito, a short graphic novel about Lovecraft’s friendship with his beloved pet. As she puts it in the opening:

Como amante de los gatos, Howard Philips Lovecraft frecuentemente incluía en sus relatos a estos elegantes y misteriosos animalitos. En su estilo deliberadamente desamorado y serio, los describía como símbolos de perfección, estética, libertad e independencia. Pero entre las cartas del escritor aparece Niggerman, un gatito negro que acompañaba a Lovecraft en su niñez. Al hablar de Niggerman (rebautizado ‘Negrito” para esta obra) las palabras del autor asumían un tono cálido, recordando con ternura cómo jugaban juntos en el jardín. Al hablar del gatito, el escritor no pudo, o no quiso, esconder sus sentimientos. El cariño que Lovecraft mantuvo a lo largo de su vida por Niggerman inspiró esta historia, permitiéndonos acceder a un costado más humano del gran autor del horror.

As a cat lover, Howard Philips Lovecraft often included these elegant and mysterious animals in his stories. In his deliberately dispassionate and serious style, he described them as symbols of perfection, aesthetics, freedom, and independence. But among the writer’s letters appears Niggerman, a black kitten who accompanied Lovecraft in his boyhood. When talking about Niggerman (renamed “Negrito” for this work), the author’s words took on a warm tone, fondly recalling how they played together in the garden. When talking about the kitten, the writer could not, or did not want to, hide his feelings. Lovecraft’s lifelong affection for Niggerman inspired this story, allowing us to glimpse a more human side of the great horror author.

Dolores Alcatena, Lovecraft y Negrito (2023)

English translation

“Negro” in Spanish is the color black, “-ito” is a diminutive suffix; context is important because in some usages “negrito” can mean bold type, or it can be a reference to certain Southeast Asian peoples, or a not-necessarily-kind reference to small Black children. In the context of this story, it might be best to think of it as a term of affection, like naming a black kitten “Blackie.”

Su gato, Negrito, lo acompaña. Y, como siempre, lo cuida.	His cat, Negrito, accompanies him. And, as always, takes care of him.
Dolores Alcatena, Lovecraft y Negrito (2023)	English translation

The story is told in black and white, mostly from Negrito’s perspective. The cat aids and protects Howard through his journeys, including the events that would inspire “The Cats of Ulthar” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” From a cat’s perspective, the cat-killing couple in Ulthar are particularly horrific.

“Ningún hombre debería matar a un gato” Pensó el niño mientras recordaba a Negrito ronroneando frente al fuego.	“No man should kill a cat,” the boy thought as he remembered Negrito purring in front of the fire.
Dolores Alcatena, Lovecraft y Negrito (2023)	English translation

There is a somewhat fairy-tale quality to the retelling, the traipse through Lovecraft’s fiction. Most of Howard’s waking life we don’t see…but then his cat was not there to see that.

Qué suerte que Negrito siempre había estado en esos momentos.	How lucky that Negrito had always been there in those moments.
Dolores Alcatena, Lovecraft y Negrito (2023)	English translation

The Lovecraft of these stories is a scared, almost a traumatized kid, with Negrito as his only friend; parental figures are absent. It is a very sympathetic view of Howard as a child, but in comparison to El Joven Lovecraft by José Oliver & Bartolo Torres it does not show Lovecraft’s occasional joyfully morbid side. Readers are meant to empathize with a young Lovecraft.

The ending, a wordless reunion between the dead Lovecraft and his lost cat, is the kind of afterlife that every cat-lover might wish to experience themselves someday.

Es un tributo muy distintivo ser elegido como amigo y confidente de un gato. H. P. Lovecraft.	It is a very distinctive tribute to be chosen as a friend and confidant of a cat. H. P. Lovecraft.	It is no compliment to be the stupidly idolised master of a dog whose instinct it is to idolise, but it is a very distinct tribute to be chosen as the friend and confidant of a philosophic cat who is wholly his own master and could easily choose another companion if he found such an one more agreeable and interesting.
Dolores Alcatena, Lovecraft y Negrito (2023)	English translation	H. P. Lovecraft, “Cats and Dogs”

Lovecraft y Negrito is a story about a boy and his cat. It is not a historical work that delves into the nuances of the cultural forces that went into such names, or how naming cats did or did not reflect Lovecraft’s racial prejudices in later life. If readers want a scholarly exploration of what we do and don’t know about the real animal, check out Ken Faig’s essay “Lovecraft’s Boyhood Cat” in Lovecraft Annual #19 (2025). If you want a heartwarming fantasy about Lovecraft and his beloved pet, which has gained a kind of literary immortality, then read Lovecraft y Negrito.

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 Colour Out of Space (2024) by H. P. Lovecraft & Sara Barkat

It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Colour Out of Space”

Comic and graphic novel adaptations of prose and verse literary works have always held a fascination. Because while you might declare one text as canonical, as a true text, immutable and eternal, the graphic adaptations of that text will always be different, unique to their vision and skill and ability to realize that text in illustrated form. Every artist has to pick and choose what images to convey and how to convey them, how to frame the story and the text, what to leave in and out, what to emphasize and how to do it. Give three artists the same story to draw, and you have three variations on the same story.

This sometimes arouses—at least among some readers and critics—the urge to compare different variations on the same works to each other. Because it can be fascinating to see the divergence and the commonalities, to look at all the different flowers that may blossom from identical seeds. Not necessarily to point out any one graphic adaptation of Lovecraft as better than the others, but to enjoy the diversity of views and skills.

When it comes to “The Colour Out of Space” in particular, however, there’s a fundamental question that every artist has to struggle with: how do you depict a color that is outside the visible spectrum?

Strictly speaking, outside of a technical trick like polarized lenses, you cannot. What usually happens instead is that the artist has to use visual rhetoric to convey the sense of the unknown color, even while using the colors that are available for printing. In the case of Sara Barkat’s The Colour Out of Space (2024) this is mostly accomplished by having the majority of the art in black-and-white.

However, instead of having the colored portions represent just the color itself, the color is used to illustrate those people and objects that the color has infected. So the addition is not just a single splash of magenta or red in a monochrome world, it is a spectrum of colors in a landscape, or a room, or a person.

Barkat’s style isn’t a demonstration of technical excellence in the same sense of Gou Tanabe’s The Colour Out of Space (2025), nor does it have the minimalist book-as-object approach of Amy Borezo’s The Colour Out of Space (2016). What she has is a loose, sketchy but heavily detailed pencil that captures a certain underground aesthetic, the rawness of the art adding a certain texture to the text, especially with the use of mixed media (primarily watercolors) to add color. As with Alberto Breccia’s Cthulhu Mythos adaptations, the result is a more profound experience than either the art or the text would accomplish on their own.

Which is ultimately what a lot of people are looking for in any graphic adaptation. Not a simplification of a text, or the addition of some pretty pictures to look at, but a new way of experiencing the story.

The Colour Out of Space (2024) by H. P. Lovecraft and Sara Barkat was published by T. S. Poetry Press. Barkat’s other works include a graphic adaptation of The Yellow Wallpaper (2020) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Drawing Dracula Daily (2023).

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 Burning of Innsmouth, Part 1 (2019) by Tammy Nichols

‘The Burning of Innsmouth’ is a Lovecraftian-themed tale of eldritch horror and hidden corruption. In the all-too-quiet Massachusetts port-town of Innsmouth, nothing is quite what it seems and no one is who they say they are. The story takes place in 1927, just after the fictional events described by HP Lovecraft in his classic tale ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’. Beautifully illustrated, it’s a cat-and-mouse story explores how the town and its cultish denizens came to be destroyed by a shadowy branch of the American government.
—descriptor for The Burning of Innsmouth, Part 1 on DriveThruComics

Tammy Nichols is a UK-based graphic designer and illustrator (Tears of Envy). In 2019 she released The Burning of Innsmouth, Part 1, the first of what was proposed to be a three-issue series. The other issues have not yet been seen; such things happen. As a result, what we have is an inherently incomplete story. Characters are introduced, mysteries set up, but we have no idea how things would end. The first issue doesn’t end so much on a cliffhanger as on a promise: Innsmouth isn’t burning yet, but it is a pile of dry tinder waiting for the spark.

The art shows a careful aesthetic: deep shadows and heavy blacks, digital shading that’s made to look like halftone. Nichols explains some of her graphic language on her blog, including the customized font for the Gilman House hotel, as well as the film noir influence and the colour journey she intends to take the reader on. These are elements of visual rhetoric that inform a story and how it is told in ways that prose text cannot capture. The Facebook group dedicated to the comic also includes some behind-the-scenes of pages and panels in black and white vs. colored.

From a storytelling standpoint, the decision for the federal government to employ outside agents—two pairs of twins, one of whom is African-American, and another a sister-brother pair with ties to the infamous Waite family of “The Thing on the Doorstep” fame—is interesting. It gives us characters who are outsiders, agents of a bigoted government but not a part of it, sympathetic in their motivations, at least insofar as they are being coerced into this dangerous task. It also adds a welcome bit of diversity into a Mythos that tends heavily to the white and male.

If there’s a criticism of the story, it plays a little fast and loose with the Innsmouth lore. Obed Marsh is portrayed as still alive in 1927, when Lovecraft has him die in 1878. There are hints of further divergences, but these aren’t developed fully in this 32-page first issue. Such shifts from Lovecraftian “canon” aren’t necessarily bad—it being remembered that mythologies are by their nature often cycles of stories with similar settings, themes, and characters, not a single continuity or cohesive narrative universe. I would have liked to see where this one went.

For now, The Burning of Innsmouth is incomplete. Someday, perhaps, Nicholls will finish it. Or perhaps she won’t. Such fragments and the what-might-have-beens they inspire are still a part of the broader constellation of Mythos materials, a part of the shared narrative for readers to muse over and enjoy. And if you don’t like how Nicholls did it, or where the story was headed at the end of part 1…write your own.

The Burning of Innsmouth, Part 1 by Tammy Nicholls is available at DriveThruComics. There is also merch (including a nice map of Innsmouth) on the associated Redbubble store.

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.

“Shadow over Darkcliff” (1993) by John Blackburn

Eldritch Fappenings
The following review of LGBTQ+ comic history includes images from selected works that depict cartoon nudity, sex, and violence. Reader discretion is advised.

Marriage and Sex

(1) Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable.
(2) Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
(3) Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for morbid distortion.
(4) The treatment of live-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.
(5) Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.
(6) Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.
(7) Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
—Comic Book Code of 1954

LGBTQ+ characters and themes received little coverage in the comic strips and comic books in the United States before 1954. When looking at the Pre-Code Lovecraftian Horror Comics, there are no characters or themes that jump out as explicitly gay or lesbian, transgender or genderqueer. After the Code was created in 1954, LGBTQ+ representation in commercial comics was implicitly forbidden.

Without access to mainstream publications, LGBTQ+ comics shifted to venues that were not controlled by the Comics Code Authority. Pornographic comics and underground comix formed a creative outlet for LGBTQ+ characters, stories, and creators—at the risk of being charged with obscenity. The late 60s and 70s in particular saw the birth of the underground comic scene, an outlet for readers and artists who wanted comics that were forbidden, transgressive, or mature—featuring themes of realism, sex, violence, drugs, politics, mysticism, and horror, often in some combination.

Tales from the Leather Nun (1973), for example, was an underground nunsploitation anthology comic. One of the episodes, “Tales of the Leather Nun’s Grandmother” by Spain Rodriguez, mixes Lovecraft’s Mythos with hardcore pornography, as Abdul Alhazred’s spells have accidentally turned the Leather Nun’s Grandmother’s vagina into a gateway to the realm of Cthulhu. Thus, one of the earliest appearances of Cthulhu in comics has the eldritch horror getting a face full of spunk.

*Tales from the Leather Nun* (1973); art by Spain Rodriguez

Cthulhu’s facial is a gag, not a homoerotic act. Tales from the Leather Nun isn’t the first LGBTQ+ Lovecraftian comic, just one of the first to begin to transgress in ways that combined sexual themes with Lovecraftian horror. It is difficult to say for sure what was the first LGBTQ+ Lovecraftian comic, if only because we have to look outside of the well-indexed mainstream.

“R. H. B.” (1978) by Andreas and Rivière is a likely candidate, because it focuses on R. H. Barlow, who was gay. However, Barlow’s homosexuality isn’t really the focus of comic, barely mentioned at the end. A later example is the Italian erotic comic Ramba #4 (1989), which features the bisexual Ramba facing down a demon named Azatoth summoned during a voodoo-esque ceremony:

*Ramba #6* (Eros Comix), Marco Bianchini (script) and Fabio Valdambrini (art)

Of course, most of Europe never had an equivalent to the Comics Code Authority, so they had a freer hand to explore such themes. In the United States, works like Ramba appeared in translation in the early 90s, after the CCA had been weakened or ignored by independent publishers. If we can’t quite answer the question of who came first (whether into Cthulhu’s visage or elsewhere), we can at least say there was another notable work that emerged in that period that combined Lovecraftian horror and explicit LGBTQ+ characters and themes.

In the 1970s, comic writer and artist John Blackburn created the character Coley Cochran, a 19-year-old uninhibited bisexual character with a penchant for sex, violence, and the occult and antipathy to prudes and authority figures. In the late 80s/early 90s Blackburn self-published four books of Coley’s sex-drenched adventures, a combination of erotica, character-driven drama, and graphic violence. In the first book, Coley on Voodoo Island (1989), Coley is kidnapped and transformed into a sex god in a voodoo ceremony; this supernatural element would re-emerge periodically throughout Coley’s adventures, such as Breathless (1991), which includes an adventure at a ruined temple titled “Flowers of Evil.”

In the 1990s Fantagraphics picked up the Coley adventures under their Eros Comix imprint, publishing a series of 2-3 issue miniseries, beginning with Return to Voodoo Island (1991). The problem with the Eros Comix series is that they never reprinted Coley’s earlier adventures (except when Blackburn summarized them for reprints), so that new readers come into a series that has already been going on for hundreds of pages.

John Blackburn’s “Shadow over Darkcliff” is the second part of the two-issue series Idol of Flesh (1993), and sees Coley and friends return to the temple ruins of “Flowers of Evil”—but this time featuring a strange cult, led by a man named Garth. While the 32-page episode involves a bit of drama and a good bit of sex, the core story is explicitly Lovecraftian:

*Idol of Flesh* (1992) #2, by John Blackburn

Garth, it turns out, isn’t exactly human and wants Coley for sex and sacrifice. This isn’t the first or the last time Coley would be in this sort of position, the magnetic sexual attraction to both men and women is one of his supernatural traits throughout all of Blackburn’s series, as are scenes of flagellation, bondage, and sexual violence—especially the threat of castration, which appears in Return to Voodoo Island and reappears here. As in “Flowers of Evil,” Coley’s escape from this particular peril is somewhat miraculous—not a great storytelling trick, and one which Blackburn overuses a bit. Not that readers would know that unless they hunted out some of the stories that Fantagraphics did not reprint.

Blackburn would return to Coley and the Cthulhu Mythos in a longer, more involved, and even weirder storyline titled Dagger of Blood (1997), which makes brief reference to Garth and the events of “Shadow over Darkcliff.” Yet it reading the stories in order gives a better sense of the ideas that Blackburn was developing. Coley is presented as this perfect bisexual heartthrob, while characters like Garth and the antagonist of Dagger of Blood are both attracted to and hate Coley because of their own deformed bodies. There is a strong element of body dysmorphia to those characters, really only implicit here and more fully developed (and exploited) in Dagger of Blood, which fixates on genital mutilation.

It feels like Blackburn was working through some things, if only in art and writing, and perhaps only for his own entertainment. Certainly Blackburn was aware of the main focus of his comics—Coley has no shortage of sexual partners on the page, in explicit detail, both men and women—and the mundane drama of trying to keep his lovers happy is a counterweight to the more fantastic elements of Lovecraftian horror, even as the action and horror plots provide some relief from the soap opera.

When you look back at the history of LGBTQ+ characters and themes in comics, Blackburn’s work arriving when and where it did—first in self-published underground comix, and then after the CCA waned in series from an independent press which stressed the erotic angle—makes sense. It took decades after the Stonewall Riots for LGBTQ+ folks to gain greater recognition, acceptance, and basic rights in the United States, and such works were slow to find a place in mainstream comic books and strips. The underground was more willing to accept these nonconforming works with LGBTQ+ characters and to have discussions about subjects like homosexuality, polyamory, bisexuality, kink—and, yes, how the occasional bit of Lovecraftian horror fit into the mix. At the time, homosexuality in the Mythos was limited to stories like Ramsey Campbell’s “Cold Print” (1969), and those were few and far between.

Reading all of John Blackburn’s Coley saga is damn near impossible these days. Fantagraphic’s individual issues and reprint collections are long out of print and command collectors’ prices; the Idol of Flesh comics are reprinted in Coley Running Wild Book One: The Blade and the Whip. Several other adventures by Coley were published or re-printed in the gay comics anthology Meatmen, though there is no complete index for that series as yet.

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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Minky Woodcock: The Girl Called Cthulhu (2025) by Cynthia von Buhler

Eldritch Fappenings

The following review is of a work that contains cartoon nudity, and some images are reproduced.
Reader discretion is advised.

In 2017, writer-artist Cynthia von Buhler introduced the world to Minky Woodcock, private detective, in a 4-issue series The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini, published under the Hard Case Crime imprint of Titan Comics. The series was a clever mix of hardboiled detective themes with historical characters, with the bisexual and extraordinarily intelligent and adaptable Minky Woodcock often ending up in dangerous situations and/or sans her clothes—but also finding or fighting her way out again. The series was followed up with a sequel, The Girl Who Electrified Tesla (2021), and then The Girl Called Cthulhu (2024), which was lettered by Jim Campbell.

*Minky Woodcock: The Girl Called Cthulhu* (2025)

The plot is drawn from history, dealing with Lovecraft’s relationships with Harry Houdini and Aleister Crowley, slightly fictionalized for purposes of the plot, but in general faithful to the timeline—with careful reproductions of Weird Tales covers and effort made to reproduce real people, places, and events. There are a number of fun little Easter eggs for Weird Tales fans in the pages, captured in von Buhler’s own style, who favors a heavy line and stylized coloring that echoes noir and giallo films.

At its heart, Minky Woodcock: The Girl Called Cthulhu is a rather traditional detective/mystery story, tied up in a historical setting and with some added titillation thrown in. The depiction of H. P. Lovecraft and his wife Sonia are synthesized from various sources, notably The Private Life of H. P. Lovecraft (1985) by Sonia H. Davis, but aren’t particularly cruel or inaccurate given the needs of the story. Buhler flaunts her artistic homages, such as Hokusai’s “Diver and Two Octopi,” and is one of the few artists not afraid to depict Howard’s penis. Whether that’s a warning or an enticement to read the book is something I leave up to the readers.

It is a fun book, and plays to both Lovecraft and Crowley’s particular legends. Cynthia von Buhler has obviously done a good bit of research, and she wears it on her sleeve, including a section at the rear of the collected edition (and in the individual issues) explaining some of the details:

The investigations portrayed in the Minky Woodcock series are grounded in fact, the result of my extensive research. I acknowledge that some of the details may seem peculiar leading to numerous questions. Here are my responses to them. – CvB

Is all the research correct? Well, there’s no evidence Sonia H. Greene heard Crowley at the Sunrise Club (though she did attend the club), and no evidence Crowley read Lovecraft. The comparison between Lovecraft’s fiction and Crowley’s magical writing is the stuff of wishful occultists, as shown in the opening of the Simon Necronomicon. But for fictional purposes, these are pedantic niggles, and certainly other authors that have posited Lovecraft/Crowley interactions have gone further and been more ahistorical. A more interesting tidbit is the question of Lovecraft’s prejudices:

Lovecraft was a racist and anti-Semite. Why would you honor him with the title of your book? I highly doubt he would have married a Jewish woman.

Lovecraft was married to Sonia H. (Haft), a successful Jewish milliner and amateur pulp fiction writer, from 1924 to 1937. She tried to educate him as best as she could, and by the end of his life, his views had changed somewhat, but he said some pretty awful things in his day. I make his outrageous beliefs absolutely clear in my book.
—Cynthia van Buhler, Minky Woodcock: The Girl Called Cthulhu

While von Buhler doesn’t answer the first question directly, I think the book itself makes the point clear: Lovecraft was weird, and is the connective tissue between Houdini and Crowley, the three together providing a bridge from rationality to occultism and weird fiction. Lovecraft comes across as a bit stiff and surreal, but that’s not unusual for fictional depictions of HPL, and if the effort is made not to hide Lovecraft’s prejudices, neither does she make the effort to depict him as a cartoon caricature of a bigot. Sonia gets less attention, unfortunately, but her part in the proceedings is a minor one.

Ultimately, this isn’t Lovecraft’s story, or Crowley’s, but Minky Woodcock’s. A dame detective who finds herself in strange company and dangerous situations, surviving largely by her ample wits. While not quite as bloody and fierce as Max Collins’ Ms. Tree, there is that same sense of a woman in a primarily male occupation dealing with society’s preconceptions and some quite ruthless characters—and, sometimes by the skin of her teeth, coming out alive if not always on top.

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.