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.
The friend whose daughter had gone to school with Asenath Waite repeated many curious things when the news of Edward’s acquaintance with her began to spread about. Asenath, it seemed, had posed as a kind of magician at school; and had really seemed able to accomplish some highly baffling marvels. She professed to be able to raise thunderstorms, though her seeming success was generally laid to some uncanny knack at prediction. All animals markedly disliked her, and she could make any dog howl by certain motions of her right hand. There were times when she displayed snatches of knowledge and language very singular—and very shocking—for a young girl; when she would frighten her schoolmates with leers and winks of an inexplicable kind, and would seem to extract an obscene and zestful irony from her present situation. —H. P. Lovecraft, “The Thing on the Doorstep”
The most subtly pervy moment in all of Lovecraft’s fiction is near the end of this paragraph, when the reader realizes that the mind of an old man is trapped in a young woman’s body as she goes to high school. It’s the kind of body-swapping setup that could serve as the premise for bad porn…or, in the hands of a competent writer, for a particular kind of tongue-in-cheek horror story. But who would write such a tale?
Molly Tanzer.
There has been considerable discussion about whether or not “The Thing on the Doorstep” is a transgender story (see: Must I Wear This Corpse For You?: H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1937) by Joe Koch ), but there is general agreement that Lovecraft deliberately avoided or elided any question of sexual attraction or the sex act itself in the tale. The pornographic possibilities went unrealized, but so did any potential interrogation of the character’s sexual identities with regard to gender. That has left a blank space on the Lovecraftian map for other writers more comfortable with such ideas to explore.
There’s a definite element of the quintessential queer film But I’m a Cheerleader! (1999) in the mix of influences Tanzer is drawing on, and the first half of the story plays it relatively straight when prudish, sheltered Victoria comes to terms with the complicated feelings aroused when her cousin Asenath reappears at Miskatonic High dressing like a boy and going out with girls. But Tanzer only plays out the high school melodrama and teenage angst so long, and even then, it’s with tongue-very-much-in-cheek.
Veronica rolled her eyes. “So what—you’re Laura Palmer now?”
“Maybe Bobby Briggs,” Asenath lowered her voice. —Molly Tanzer, “The Thing on the Cheerleader Squad” in She Walks in Shadows122
The plot in this story is very slight, Veronica’s treacle-sweet faith in Jesus and her utter frustration at how Asenath’s bad reputation is affecting her own showcase the kind of general ignorance, vapid insecurities, and rampant cruelty that are the hallmarks of high school. The story is told well; Tanzer keeps the pace ticking, doesn’t get too bogged down in secondary characters, or feel the need to jam a shoggoth out of left field into act three. The surprises, when they come, feel like they’ve always been there, waiting to be discovered.
What makes it work is the ending. Readers of “The Thing on the Doorstep” have their preconceptions of what is going on and how events will play out; those familiar with narratives of homosexual awakening might imagine that Tanzer is going to take the But I’m a Cheerleader! route with a Lovecraftian twist. The truth is, this was always a horror story, and the finale brings together all the elements in a way that readers probably won’t expect.
Is this a transgender story? When considering it in the context of Lovecraft’s original story, there’s a definite argument to make that it is more of a trans story than “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Asenath never comes out and makes the claim to be transmasculine directly, but that ambiguity is part of what makes the story work. The reader sees, through Veronica’s eyes, how Asenath acts and dresses and presents, and must make their own determination of which gender Asenath identifies with. That still leaves plenty of room for other authors to play with the unrealized possibilities of sex and gender in “The Thing on the Doorstep.”
If something more had been made of the kind of harm done by the release of atomic energy, there might be great possibilities for original & unusual development. How about it? What could you imagine as a sufficiently hellish consequence of the conquest of energy? The opening up of another dimension & the submergence of our familiar physical universe by some influence from ‘outside’? The explosion of all the matter in the immediate space-time continuum? The total or partial suspension of physico-chemical laws, or the disastrous ability of users to effect such a suspension locally or universally? Any of these lines—& many others—would be promising. But at any cost get away from the beaten track! —H. P. Lovecraft to Richard F. Searight, 31 Aug 1933, LRS 10
It is difficult for many people today to understand what it was like to live during the Cold War. A period when the world was divided between great superpowers whose direct conflict would lead to mutually assured destruction, and whose proxy wars consumed generations. A war that was won, not ideologically, but by the unsustainability of the conflict itself, the inability of the human government systems to maintain the constantly escalating costs of preparing for a conflict that would destroy them both.
There were people who, for decades, were told that at any moment the world might end and all they could do was hide under a desk and pray to survive the blast wave. People who grew up being told that equitable government distribution of resources was a blacker evil than conscription of troops to fight in a foreign military intervention, or that breadlines and internal passports were the cost of security for the nation as a whole.
It was not a conflict that Lovecraft lived to see.
Such were the ways of the elder gods, of which these engineers had been told nothing, nothing at all. —Susan Shwartz, “Red Star at R’lyeh” in Cold War Cthulhu(2025) 41
The gold standard stories of Cold War Cthulhu Mythos fiction are “The Unthinkable” (1991) by Bruce Sterling and “A Colder War” (2000) by Charles Stross. Both stories capture more than just the chronological era of the Cold War, the trappings of cars, clothing, hairstyles, language, music. They focus on the psychology of the period, the mix of ideology and rapid technological progress, the paranoia and, especially, the sacrifices made in pursuit of victory. Sometimes, the technology and the sacrifices went hand in hand.
“Red Star at R’lyeh” by Susan Shwartz is a Mythos-inflected take on a real Cold War event, the Nedelin Catastrophe. It plays out in the form of a secret history: the Cold War has turned colder as the superpowers, so consumed with their conflict, dabble with eldritch forces beyond their understanding. The unthinkable becomes pragmatic, almost prosaic; a toxic cosmic byproduct repurposed as rocket fuel, the better to lift the U.S.S.R. to the stars. Ultimately, due to human hubris, this leads to disaster.
Shwartz captures the mood. The culture of bad decisions that led to lost lives. Like the victims of nuclear radiation, the victims of the Nedelin Catastrophe were an acceptable human cost in pursuit of technological, economic, and ultimately ideological supremacy over their foe. The question to ask is: does it make a difference if Cthulhu was involved, however peripherally?
Knowing how it turned out in the real world, effectively no. The Cold War was a tragedy on a global scale, and the Nedelin Catastrophe happened without the help of Cthulhu or shoggoths. In terms of the story, however, it hints at darker bargains being struck. Lies and omissions that went beyond Cold War norms. It is one thing to have an industrial accident using dangerous technology, enabled by inadequate safeguards and dangerous pressure for an accelerated schedule. It’s something else to have that and know that the dangerous technology is something that humans know they shouldn’t be playing with, bought at some unknown but likely obscene cost, and placed in the hands of those who were unaware of what dangers they truly faced.
Perhaps that’s what makes it a colder war. The realization that someone, somewhere, knew how dangerous this all was, and decided that the human cost was an acceptable risk. That kind of obscenity isn’t unique to the Cold War, but….it is emblematic of the darker side of the conflict, where both sides were willing to sacrifice their own for whatever advantage they thought it would give them, only to be pawns in a much older, vaster game.
There are not a vast number of women mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls.” However, two stand out:
The worst characters, apparently, were the barons and their direct heirs; at least, most was whispered about these. If of healthier inclinations, it was said, an heir would early and mysteriously die to make way for another more typical scion. There seemed to be an inner cult in the family, presided over by the head of the house, and sometimes closed except to a few members. Temperament rather than ancestry was evidently the basis of this cult, for it was entered by several who married into the family. Lady Margaret Trevor from Cornwall, wife of Godfrey, the second son of the fifth baron, became a favourite bane of children all over the countryside, and the daemon heroine of a particularly horrible old ballad not yet extinct near the Welsh border. Preserved in balladry, too, though not illustrating the same point, is the hideous tale of Lady Mary de la Poer, who shortly after her marriage to the Earl of Shrewsfield was killed by him and his mother, both of the slayers being absolved and blessed by the priest to whom they confessed what they dared not repeat to the world. —H. P. Lovecraft, “The Rats in the Walls”
While it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that Lovecraft scholarship has ignored these women, it would be accurate to say that the picklocks of literary critics and historians haven’t turned up any particular connections or likely historical or literary inspirations for Margaret Trevor and Mary de la Poer. While we know Lovecraft drew inspiration for this tale from Sabine Bearing-Gould’s “S. Patrick’s Purgatory” in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, and while there is no lack of mysterious ladies therein, one stands out as a possible inspiration:
It is worthy of remark that the myth of S. Patrick’s Purgatory originated among the Kelts, and the reason is not far to seek. In ancient Keltic Mythology the nether world was divided into three circles corresponding with Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven ; and over Hell was cast a bridge, very narrow, which souls were obliged to traverse if they hoped to reach the mansions of light. This was—
“The Brig o’ Dread, na brader than a thread.”
And the Purgatory under consideration is a reflex of old Druidic teaching. Thus in an ancient Breton ballad Tina passes through the lake of pain, on which float the dead, white robed, in little boats. She then wades through valleys of blood. (248-249)
This is speculative; Lovecraft borrows some of the imagery for “The Rats in the Walls,” and it includes a woman recalled in a ballad associated with pain and blood, which may have been the seed from which Margaret Trevor and Mary de la Poer (and their respective ballads) grew. One might also wonder if the legend of Elizabeth Bathory worked on Lovecraft’s imagination, or any of the prospective cultists included in Margaret Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, and these are certainly possible. The image is, in both cases, of women of the line who do not shrink away from the family cult, but become active participants.
Trish Thawer in The Witches of BlackBrook (2015) famously wrote: “We are the daughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn.” While that may not be historically true (convicted witches during the Salem Witch hysteria were hung, not burned at the stake), there is a sentiment that applies to readers and writers in Lovecraft’s Mythos: who are the daughters and granddaughters of Lovecraft’s women cultists, who had such a bad reputation that they haunted the ballads of the country for centuries thereafter?
Which is the theme that E. Catherine Tobler assays in “Lockbox,” one of the stories in She Walks in Shadows. The brief story is a return to Exham Priory by a female descendant of the de la Poer (or Shrewsfield) line and her not-quite-trustworthy lover…and the thing that makes the story work is that it is her story, her reconnection with this ancestor and all the mystery and horror that Margaret Trevor of Cornwall represents, not as a member of the cult she was marrying into, but as a black saint in her own right:
The worst thing was, despite the horrors around her, Margaret Trevor was something to be worshipped, a glory even in the blood and ruin that streaked her. The stories said that she loved the old cults well, but had taken a passive role beside her husband. But here, in the horrible cellar with the collapsing girders, she was a gold-and-silver goddess while her husband cowered. —E. Catherine Tobler, “Lockbox” in She Walks in Shadows 94-95
The story is told with many footnotes, many caveats, things that cannot be said and perhaps dare not be remembered. It gives the suggestion of a maddening experience that has snapped a thread of sanity and memory, but the title is the crux of the story, because it is a mystery and a memory that the narrator can choose to recall whenever she wishes—whenever she is ready to leave her placid isle of ignorance and remember what really happened down there, in the buried ruins of Exham Priory.
Have any of these yokels even seen a Black woman before? —Sarah Hans, “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Inspection Report No. IF-32651” in Arkham Institutions(2024) 137
“The Shadow over Innsmouth” is one of Lovecraft’s most quintessential tales, not just in the sense that it has become one of the core stories for his artificial mythology, but because when you strip down the story to its fundamentals it is one of the quintessential stories of its type: a civilized intruder tale. Someone from wider civilization travels to a liminal community, someplace that is, whether or not it is physically far away, somehow isolated culturally from the wider network of the world we know, and there’s something wrong there.
What is wrong and who does the intruding vary. In The Wicker Man (1973), a police officer finds a neo-pagan religion up to no good. In Midsommar (2019), tourists go to a remote Swedish village and find a pagan survival group up to no good. The essential framework is supremely adaptable, and most importantly, it leaves a great deal of room for novelty and reinvention. When Lovecraft used the idea in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” the idea wasn’t new; he was riffing off stories like Herbert Gorman’s “The Place Called Dagon” (1927) and Algernon Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries” (1908). What Lovecraft added was the twist: that the intruder was not really an intruder at all, but was akin to the horrors.
Innumerable versions of this basic idea have played out through the Cthulhu Mythos, sometimes revisiting and recapitulating “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” sometimes with other locations. Stories like “Satan’s Servants” (1949) by Robert Bloch and “The Moon Lens” (1964) and “The Horror Under Warrendown” (1997) by Ramsey Campbell all riff on the basic concept, while La Planète aux Cauchemars (2019) by Mathieu Sapin & Patrick Pion, “The Chabad of Innsmouth” (2014) by Marsha Morman, and now with “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Inspection Report No. IF-32651” (2024) by Sarah Hans are examples of revisiting and updating the Innsmouth story itself.
With a few changes.
Before I exit the truck, I get my gun out of the glovebox. I do have a permit for it, but I’m not supposed to carry one while I’m on official duties. I can’t risk being caught in the middle of nowhere unarmed, though. I work alone most of the time and sundown towns don’t exactly advertise themselves —Sarah Hans, “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Inspection Report No. IF-32651” in Arkham Institutions(2024) 138
The pitch for Arkham Institutions is “to explore how the people who run these towns and their institutions deal with the eldritch abominations of Lovecraftian terror” (back cover text). Which is as good a reason why a Fish & Wildlife Service agent will pop into Innsmouth for an inspection of the Innsmouth Fisheries as any other reason why someone might intrude on this liminal community.
Hans’ Innsmouth isn’t exactly Lovecraft’s, and the story doesn’t try to recapitulate the whole narrative. It is a contemporary setting, there’s no mention of the government raid of 1927, no reference to the Marsh Refinery. The business of the town is fishing, and Agent Cherise Brown has no ancestral links to the inbred locals. What plays out is a very different story that takes inspiration from Lovecraft—and probably wouldn’t be very comprehensible unless you’re familiar with that story—but tries to do something original with the idea.
The central idea is one I can dig: no liminal community can remain unvisited forever. Innsmouth was always going to receive some outside visitor who would cause problems. The question was not a matter of if it would happen, but who would intrude and when, and how the community would respond to that intrusion. It is an idea that suggests different possibilities—when would Innsmouth be no longer able to hide? As timeless as the locale seems in Lovecraft’s tale, in the context of how the world has developed after his death, it is easy to see how fragile Innsmouth’s isolation really was.
This review deals with a work of erotic content. As part of this review, selected art displaying cartoon nudity will be included. As such, please be advised before reading further.
En Parcourant l’Univers . . .
L’Élue a toujours affronté avec sérénité les plus grands dangers—ainsi on raconte . . . . qu ‘une fois, elle a combattu deux périodese fois . . . Elle aurait m pour délivrer ajejona, prisonniére d’un cyclone stellaire éperoument amoureux, de son . . . amie . . .
Une autre fois . . . Elle aurait mème . . . oui … Elle aurait vaincu Yog-Sothoth l;abominable!! . . .
Oui . . tout celà est vrai . . . MAIS … en verité, je vous Le ois . . ce que ne connaître pas l’élue c’est . . . . L’HOMME !!
L’Homme le champion de toutes Les abominations de l’univers—! . . . et Les affres Les plus atroces de l’angoisse . . . . Elle Les subira devant Le hideux spectacle de nos haines . . . .
Le grand vaisseau de lumiére SE place en orbite author de la terre . . .
Et amorle Le processus de descente . . . celle qui arrive de l’entremonde observe Le globe nébuleux envahir ses écrans . . .
L’aventure … commence pour toi . . Saga de Xam!
Traveling the Universe . . .
The Chosen One has always faced the greatest dangers with serenity—thus it is said . . . . that once, she fought twice . . . She would have to free Ajejona, prisoner of a stellar cyclone, desperately in love, from her . . . friend . . .
Another time… She would have even… yes… She would have defeated the abominable Yog-Sothoth!!…
Yes… all this is true… BUT… truly, I tell you… what not knowing the chosen one is… MAN!!
Man, the champion of all the abominations of the universe—! . . . and the most atrocious pangs of anguish . . . . She will endure them before the hideous spectacle of our hatreds . . . .
The great ship of light places itself in orbit above the earth . . .
And begins the process of descent . . . she who arrives from the in-between world observes the nebulous globe invade her screens . . .
The adventure… begins for you . . Saga of Xam!
Saga de Xam (1967), chapter 1
English translation
In 1967, French director Jean Rollin had not yet made his mark on cinema. While he had directed a few films, his moody, unconventional erotic horror/fantasies like Le viol du vampire (1968, “The Rape of the Vampire”), La vampire nue (1970, “The Nude Vampire”), and Le Frisson des Vampires (1971, “The Shiver of the Vampires”) all lay in the future. However, he was in contact with Éric Losfeld, a French publisher of literary and artistic works that challenged the sensibilities of the day, including fantasy, science fiction, and erotic comics like Barbarella by Jean-Claude Forest, Lone Sloane: Mystère des Abîmes by Phillipe Druillet, and Phoebe Zeit-Geist by Guy Peellaert, as well as Nicolas Devil (Nicolas Deville), who served as art director for Rollin’s short Les pays loin (1965, “The Far Countries”).
Together, they produced Saga de Xam. Rollin’s scenario had been intended for a science-fiction film that never materialized. Nicolas Devil took that script and realized it artistically. The blue-skinned woman Saga from the planet Xam is on a mission to Earth, and moves through a series of surreal adventures that expose her to the best and worst of humanity in a blend fantasy, science fiction, and eroticism for six chapters, plus a seventh chapter that is largely splash pages. Barbara Girard, Merri, Nicolas Kapnist, and Phillipe Druillet all lend their talents, and actor Jim Tiroff provides a poem in English, “Grease and Oil Myth.” While Devil is the primary creator, the final chapter uses the ExquisiteCorpse approach, with creators building on each other’s work.
Credits page
The creative team.
Saga de Xam was released as a single large hardbound album by Éric Losfeld in 1967. Because it was drawn on large boards and reduced to fit the page size, some of Devil’s hand-lettered text is very difficult to read without a magnifying glass, but the overall production quality was high, with excellent print quality and vibrant colors. It was in every sense of the word an avant-garde production, a psychedelic graphic novel that played with all manner of artistic styles, techniques, layout, coloring, and storytelling. Published in an edition of 5000 copies that quickly sold out, the book was somewhat legendary until relatively recently: there were reprints in 1980 and 2022, and an English translation is due for release in 2025.
Lovecraft’s Mythos are subtly but consciously present in the text, woven into the storyline at different points. At one point, for instance, Saga encounters Abdul Alhazred; in another, a poem by “Klarkash-Ton” is quoted:
Klarkash-Ton avait tout dit, etc Le passage:
Pour que vive le diable Le bruit du silence Laisse toute éspérance. Les rivages de la nuit, De flamme et d’ombre Dans un manteau de brume Le marque du démon
Klarkash-Ton has said it all, and the passage:
Long live the devil The sound of silence Leaves all hope. The shores of the night, Of flame and shadow In a cloak of mist The demonic mark
Saga de Xam (1967), chapter 4
English translation
While such blank verse isn’t a translation of any poem of Clark Ashton Smith’s that I could find, it is a nice homage to the master of Averoigne. There are several other references scattered throughout the book, not necessarily playing a large part in the proceedings but adding to the charm for fans of the Mythos. Among Fruillet’s pages in chapter 7 is one ripped straight from the Necronomicon, or at least definitely in keeping with the pages that would be published in the Métal Hurlant/Heavy Metal/Metal Extra Lovecraft Special a few years later. It’s tempting to speculate that all the Mythos elements in the book might come from Druillet’s contributions, but it is impossible to tell on such a collaborative work.
Abdul Alhazred name-drops Y’ha-nthlei from “The Shadow over Innsmouth”Abdul Alhazred consults the Pnakotic ManuscriptsDruillet’s Necronomicon page
The visual style and politics are both very ensconced in the 60s counterculture; Saga is often nude but rarely powerless, violently rejecting rapists, leading women to free themselves, and developing love affairs with other women. There is a certain quirky mid-century aspect to the depictions, for example. Chapter 5 is specifically set in China, and the color tone literally renders the Asian women yellow, just as Saga is depicted as blue.
The ending is also a bit stark; when the hideous and violent Troggs invade, rather than destroying them Saga chooses to make love, not war—literally, by conceiving a hybrid child with the Grand Trogg. In an era dominated by the Vietnam War, the idea of finding a peaceful means of coexistence had its appeal.
That, then, is the story of Saga of Xam: to learn that love and sex should be given freely, not taken by force.
Back cover of the first edition.
Nicolas Devil had another major graphic novel, Orejona ou Saga Generation (1974), in the form of an enormous softcover with soft paper. Despite the name, there is no direct connection to Saga de Xam except philosophically, continuing the countercultural vibe. Stylistically, it is another masterpiece of the moment, a collage of American underground comix, newsprint, original art, photographs, occult designs, and even some H. R. Giger thrown in for good measure, but there is no explicit Mythos material that I can see.
While the original Saga de Xam and its 1980 reprint remain scarce, the 2022 French reprint and the 2025 English translation remain available, and hopefully this book will continue to find an appreciative audience as something more than a scarce collector’s item.
Alberto Breccia (1919-1993) was an Argentine comic artist, acknowledged as a master of the form. He began working professionally in 1939, working on comic magazines like Tit-Bits, and providing illustrations for Narraciones terrorificas, a Spanish-language horror fiction magazine which reprinted (in unofficial translation) stories from the U.S. Weird Tales.
Saturain: Ce qui t’a pousse a creer Captura, outre le fait de gagner des sous, c’etait ton interet pour le genre, evidemment. Et la litterature d’epouvante, tu l’as toujours aimee ou ca t’est venu apres?
Breccia: Avant. J’ai commence ave la collection Narraciones terrorificas des editions Molino. J’ai dessine des couvertures [pour cette collection], Albistur aussi Ce’etait dans les annees 1930, en gros, j’etais encoure celibatair. Ca a dure quelques annees. C’est la que j’ai commence a acheter et lire des recits d’epouvante. Jusqu’alors, je connaissais seulement Poe, qui est plus ou moins un auteur d’epouvante. Ou Conan Doyle et Sax Rhomer avec Fu Manchu, mais ce ne sont pas des auteurs de genre a proprement parler.
Saturnin: Ils combinent l’aventure, les feuilleton et l’epouvante.
Breccia: Oui, et le policier. Mais avec Narraciones terrorificas, je me suis plonge dans le genre, en y decouvrant Bloch, Lovecraft tous ceux dont j’ignorais alors jusqu’au nom.
Sasturain: Et tu commences a les lire pour de bon.
Breccia: Tout a fait, et je ne savais pas que la revue etait une replique de cette celebre revue americaine (Weird Tales), tu vois? Je m’en suis rendu compte longtemps apres. C’est la-dedans que j’ai lu Lovecraft, entre autres. Je possedais surement tous les Mythes de Cthulhu, et j’ai du tout vendre. Parce que j’avais cette idee fixe d’etre un lecteur cultive. Alors j’ai commence a vendre ce qui me paraissait inutile pour m’acheter a la place des livres ennuyeux a mourir Les pensees d’un tel, les maximes de La Rochefoucauld et toutes ces conneries qui ne m’ont absolument servi a rien. Maintenant, j’ai un mal de chien a reuperer ces tresors, que je tretouve mais abimes, manges aux mites. Tu sais, Lovecraft, je pense l’avoir lu bien avant. J’imaginais l’avoir decouvert lors de mon voyage en Europe, mais je l’avais probablement lu tout gamin, sans le savoir.
Sasturain: Quend tu lis de l’histoire, des romans, etc., quelle epoque preferes-tu?
Breccia: J’aime le dix-neuvieme siecele des romans de Dickens, tu vois? Cette epoque me plait: les auberges, les diligences. Mais davantage la litterature europeenne qu’americaine. J’aime les recits dont l’action se situe vers la moitie du siecle dernier, voire avants. Jusqu’en 1915, 1920.
Saturain: What pushed you to create Captura, besides earning money, was your interest in the genre, obviously. And horror literature, have you always liked it or did it come to you later?
Breccia: Before. I started with the collection Narraciones terrorificas from Molino publishing. I designed covers [for this collection], Albistur too. It was in the 1930s, basically, I was still single. It lasted a few years. That’s when I started buying and reading horror stories. Until then, I only knew Poe, who is more or less a horror author. Or Conan Doyle and Sax Rhomer with Fu Manchu, but they are not genre authors strictly speaking.
Saturnin: They combine adventure, soap opera and horror.
Breccia: Yes, and the detective story. But with Narraciones terrorificas, I immersed myself in the genre, discovering Bloch, Lovecraft, all those whose names I didn’t even know at the time.
Sasturain: And you start reading them for real.
Breccia: Exactly, and I didn’t know that the magazine was a replica of this famous American magazine (Weird Tales), you see? I realized it a long time later. It’s in there that I read Lovecraft, among others. I probably had all the Cthulhu Mythos, and I had to sell everything. Because I had this fixed idea of being a cultured reader. So I started selling what seemed useless to me in order to buy instead the boring books The Thoughts of So-and-So, the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld and all that crap that was absolutely useless to me. Now, I have a hell of a time finding these treasures, which I find but damaged, moth-eaten. You know, Lovecraft, I think I read him long before. I imagined I had discovered it during my trip to Europe, but I probably read it as a kid, without knowing it.
Sasturain: When you read history, novels, etc., what era do you prefer?
Breccia: I like the nineteenth century of Dickens’ novels, you see? I like that era: the inns, the stagecoaches. But more European literature than American. I like stories whose action takes place around the middle of the last century, or even before. Up to 1915, 1920.
Breccia: Conversations avec Juan Sasturain 349-350 (This interview was conducted in Spanish by Breccia’s collaborator Juan Sasturain and first published in that language, but I only had access to a French translation.)
English translation
Breccia continued working for local publishers for twenty years before he made his first trip to Europe in 1959, and began working with European publishers. It was then that Breccia became more thoroughly acquainted with the works of H. P. Lovecraft. In the 1970s, Breccia would create adaptations of several of Lovecraft’s stories, not for any specific publisher, but on his own, and using that as an opportunity to experiment artistically with the form:
Sasturain: C’etait un systeme de pensee tres profondement ancre en toi, non?
Breccia: C’es la que ‘ai pris conscience que je devais creer pour moi. C’est la que j’ai commence a dessiner Les Mythes de Cthulhu sans avoir un editeur precis en vue. Je me rendais compte que ce marche s’ouvrait a moi, alors je me suis mis a travailler pour ce marche.
Sasturain: Tu dis toujours que Les Mythes, cette idee de dessiner due Lovecraft, est nee bien avant. Qu’un jour, bien des annees plus tot, tu t’etais achete un petit livre de lui et que tu l’avais lu…
Breccia: Je l’avais achete en 1959, au cours de mon premier voyage.
Sasturain: Et quel a ete le detonateur pour te lancer la-dedans dix ans apres?
Breccia: A l’epoque, j’avais rassemble tous les Mythes, je les avais tudies a fond, et je me sentais capable de m’y attaquer. D’ailleurs, j’avais plaisieurs versions du premier, Le Ceremonial, toutes ratees – j’ai tout jete.
Sasturain: Le Ceremonial est le premier.
Breccia: Le premier que j’adapte. Je ne me souviens plus dans quel order, mais j’ai fait La Ceremonial, Le Cauchemar d’Innsmouth, Le Monstre sur le seuil, et an 1973 j’ai decide d’aller montrer tout ca.
Sasturain: Tu pars avec plusieurs episodes termines. Les autres, tu les as faits a ton retour. Je crois que le dernier date de 1975.
Breccia: Je crois que c’est Celui qui chuchotait dans les tenebres.
Sasturain: Tu es parti en Europe avec ces nouvelles planches.
Breccia: Oui, just celles-la. [179] Sasturain: C’etait la premier fois que tu produisais quelque chose sans savoir qui allait le publier.
Breccia: Exactement, avec amour, en prenant mon temps. C’est tout un horizon qui s’ouvre a moi, je ne suis plus un salarie un professionniel qui y consacre le temps necessair. Je commence a jouir du dessin d’une autre manier. Enfin bref, h’ai du mal a expliquer ce que j’ai ressenti.
Sasturain: It was a very deeply rooted system of thought in you, wasn’t it?
Breccia: That’s when I realized that I had to create for myself. That’s when I started drawing The Myths of Cthulhu without having a specific publisher in mind. I realized that this market was opening up to me, so I started working for this market.
Sasturain: You always say that The Myths, this idea of drawing by Lovecraft, was born well before. That one day, many years earlier, you had bought a little book by him and that you had read it…
Breccia: I bought it in 1959, during my first trip.
Sasturain: And what was the trigger that got you into this ten years later?
Breccia: At the time, I had collected all the Myths, I had studied them thoroughly, and I felt able to tackle them. Besides, I had several versions of the first one, The Festival, all failed – I threw them all away.
Sasturain: The Festival is the first.
Breccia: The first one I adapted. I don’t remember in what order, but I did The Festival, The Innsmouth Nightmare, The Monster on the Doorstep, and in 1973 I decided to go and show all that.
Sasturain: You leave with several episodes finished. The others, you did them when you returned. I think the last one dates from 1975.
Breccia: I think it’s The Whisperer in Darkness.
Sasturain: You left for Europe with these new boards.
Breccia: Yes, just those. [179] Sasturain: It was the first time you produced something without knowing who was going to publish it.
Breccia: Exactly, with love, taking my time. It’s a whole horizon that opens up to me, I’m no longer an employee, a professional who devotes the necessary time to it. I’m starting to enjoy drawing in a different way. Anyway, I have a hard time explaining what I felt.
Breccia would complete ten adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories, the majority of them between 1972-1974, six of them from scripts developed by his collaborator Norberto Buscaglia. The first six stories were published in the Italian comic magazine Il Mago, but were translated and reprinted in other languages, such as the Métal Hurlant/Heavy Metal/Metal Extra Lovecraft Special. Multiple collections of these comic stories have been published over the decades, although ironically, few of Breccia’s influential Lovecraft adaptations have been published in English. While the first nine are relatively well-known and widely republished, after Breccia’s death a new collection of adaptations was published, Sueños Pesados (2003, “Heavy Dreams”). These are painted, in color, and contain one additional Lovecraft adaptation.
It is difficult to overstate how influential Breccia’s Lovecraft adaptations were, from their first publication in the 1970s right up until today, when they are still being reproduced. These are experimental comics, playing with the form, the medium, often combining elements of collage, photography, paint, and watercolors in addition to traditional pen and ink. Breccia’s assistant Horacia Lalia would go on to produce his own highly-regarded series of adaptations of Lovecraft stories, and his son Enrique Breccia provided the artwork for the graphic novel Lovecraft(2004), with Hans Rodinoff and Keith Griffen.
While it wouldn’t be accurate to say that Breccia was the first to adapt Lovecraft to comics, he single-handedly raised the bar for the quality of Lovecraft adaptations. So it is only fitting to take a look at each in turn.
These works were not published strictly in order of completion, although there is considerable stylistic variation between the earliest stories and the last (“El Que Susurraba en Las TInieblas”), and the exact publishing history is a little hazy (since they were all first published in non-English periodicals and collections), so this is a roughly chronological order of publication.
“La Sombra Sobre Innsmouth” (1973)
17 pages. Script by Norberto Buscaglia, art by Alberto Breccia. First published in Il Mago (Nov 1973). This adaptation of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is verbose, selective in its imagery, evocative and often ambiguous in terms of landscape but with detailed faces and figures that give evidence of “the Innsmouth Look.”
“La Cosa en el Umbral” (1973)
11 pages. Script by Norberto Buscaglia, art by Alberto Breccia. First published in the album Il piacere della paura (Oct 1973), and then in Il Mago (Jan 1974). This adaptation of “The Thing on the Doorstep” begins very sedately, with a heavier emphasis on traditional line work, Breccia’s other techniques mainly adding texture. However, that texture soon comes to grow and dominate as it reflects Edward Pickman Derby’s relationship with Asenath Waite; the depiction of “the Innsmouth Look” is very consistent with Breccia’s adaptation of “The Shadow over Innsmouth.”
“El Ceremonial” (1974)
9 pages. Written and illustrated by Alberto Breccia. Signed “Breccia ’72,” this is the first adaptation of Lovecraft that Breccia completed, but wasn’t published until Il Mago (Mar 1974). Breccia makes the most of the chiaroscuro possibilities, with the white space sometimes doubling for snow, sometimes for light, or simply negative space. The combination of the surreal painting and collage with the ultra-realistic photographs and sketches that bookend the story add to the dreamlike nature of the narrative.
“La Ciudad sin Nombre” (1974)
6 pages. Script by Norberto Buscaglia, art by Alberto Breccia. First published in Il Mago (Sep 1974). The shortest of the adaptations, and dominated by photographs of sandy deserts and rock outcroppings, which are collaged with sketched figures in a way suggestive of alien vistas that pure pen and ink could not capture alone.
“El Llamado de Cthulhu” (1974)
11 pages. Script by Norberto Buscaglia, art by Alberto Breccia. First published in Il Mago (Dec 1974). At 11 pages, this is a very truncated version of Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu,” though it captures all the essential plot points, it also abbreviates the complicated narrative story-within-story structure. What is really striking about this brief adaptation is how well Breccia restrains himself from revealing Cthulhu, even in the image in clay, until the moment that title entity appears on the page, at which point he presents something so truly outlandish that readers almost don’t notice the miniscule human figures that give it scale.
“El Horror de Dunwich” (1975)
15 pages. Script by Norberto Buscaglia, art by Alberto Breccia. First published in Il Mago (Nov 1975). Arguably, this adaptation of “The Dunwich Horror” is the most famous and widely-republished of Breccia’s adaptations, because of its including in theMétal Hurlant Lovecraft Special, and the works that followed from that. Possibly some of Breccia’s finest figure and face work went into the goatish countenance of Wilbur Whateley. Like most of Breccia’s adaptations, the backgrounds and setting details are relatively spare but evocative.
Sasturain: Ce qui explique peut-etre que, pour la creature extraterrestre de <<Tres ojos>>, dans Sherlock TIme, tu n’as pas dessine un monstre. Dans L’Eternaute, tu les as desintegres. Les monstres sont intangibles: tu as dessine la sensation que genere l’epouvante chex les gens, pas l’object qui la prodout. Et tu as fait pareil pour Lovecraft.
Breccia: Je n’aime ni voir ni dessiner des monsters. Ca ne m’interesse pas.
Sasturain: Which may explain why, for the extraterrestrial creature of <<Three Eyes>>, in Sherlock Time, you didn’t draw a monster. In L’Eternaute, you disintegrated them. Monsters are intangible: you drew the sensation that generates terror in people, not the object that produces it. And you did the same for Lovecraft.
Breccia: I don’t like to see or draw monsters. I’m not interested.
Despite Breccia’s comment, when the time came at the end of the story to reveal Wilbur’s unnamed twin, he pulled out all the stops.
“El Color que Cayó del Cielo” (1975)
13 pages. Written and illustrated by Alberto Breccia. This adaptation of “The Colour Out of Space” first appeared in his album Los mitos de Cthulhu (1975), which contained all but one of his Lovecraft adaptations (the last not being published until years later). Compared to the previous stories, this one is much more experimental in style, bolder in its use of collage, stark blacks and blinding whites.
“El Morador de las Tinieblas” (1975)
15 pages. Written and illustrated by Alberto Breccia. This adaptation of “The Haunter of the Dark” first appeared in his album Los mitos de Cthulhu (1975). Again, Breccia pushes the envelope of his experimental style, his pen-and-ink illustrations taking on the more exaggerated style characteristic of his work in the 80s like Drácula, but still playing with texture, shape, and strong contrasts.
According to a note by Latino Imperato in later collections, many of the original pages for this story have been lost, and subsequent reproductions were made from the first Italian printing.
“El Que Susurraba En las Tinieblas” (1979)
15 pages. Script by Norberto Buscaglia, art by Alberto Breccia. First published in the Argentine magazine El Pendulo (Sep 1979). This adaptation of “The Whisperer in Darkness” was the last of Breccia’s Lovecraft adaptations to be published, and the last to be collected. It is in many ways the apex of the artistic experiments and strongly points to some of Breccia’s stylistic choices in subsequent works during the 1980s like Perramus. For the most part, however, it is the most deliberately choppy and nightmarish of Breccia’s adaptations.
“El anciano terrible” (2003)
7 pages. Painted, in color, as are the other works in Sueños Pesados. The last page is dated “Breccia ’81.” Here, Breccia takes more liberties with the text than usual, eschewing much of Lovecraft’s exposition and description to give the characters a bit of dialogue, letting the art do most of the talking. The art is characteristic of this period, with vibrant colors, rich textures, but muddier faces, deliberately stylized and evocative.
He noticed only the tiny waist, the flaring lower hourglass of her hips, and the bushy white triangle at the junction of her sturdy legs. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice the malformations on her flanks, her hips, the myriad tiny eyes embedded there, blinking lashless lids in the flickering orange glow. —Angela Slatter, “Lavinia’s Wood” in She Walks In Shadows 69
Readers and scholars often talk about the body of fiction inspired by Lovecraft in terms of religion and folklore. That is the nearest real equivalent we have to a very unusual phenomenon, where so many different authors are riffing off similar ideas, similar characters and stories. Terms like canon get thrown about a great deal, and some of Lovecraft’s own stories are as close to the Biblical canon get. Most authors agree that the events of “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth” happened, though they might fiddle with the details, and expand in different ways on what came before and after.
Yet the Mythos is not a single coherent body of internally-consistent works, or some divine text interpreted by many different authors. It is a sprawling mass of stories by different writers who often work in familiar cycles. The point is that not all of the stories do agree, or can agree. There is no one absolute, true, final, and complete version of any story. There are multiple different takes on the same subject, and they are often strongly divergent. Readers might be able to reconcile “The Dunwich Horror,” “The Shuttered Room” by August Derleth, “The Devil’s Hop Yard” by Richard Lupoff, and “The Cry in the Darkness” by Richard Baron as all being episodes in a single tale, but it is harder to fit in Lavinia Rising by Farah Rose Smith, The Dunwich Romance by Edward Lee, or “Lavinia’s Wood” by Angela Slatter.
At some point, there are too many differences to gloss, too many points of disagreement.
Too many different versions of Lavinia Whateley (or, in some versions, Whatley).
“The Dunwich Horror” is Lavinia’s story as much as that of her sons, though she is given short shrift by the folk of Dunwich. Various authors have expanded on her character. In some, she is a pure victim, like her predecessor Mary in Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan.” In many stories, Lavinia lacks agency, utterly dominated by her overbearing father Wizard Whateley. In a few, she is more active, even malevolent, an active participant rather than a meek vessel to be filled.
It is a rare story that suggests that Wilbur and his brother take as much from Lavinia as they do from Yog-Sothoth. Angela Slatter’s version in “Lavinia’s Wood” is more complicated than most, giving evidence of Lavinia’s dreams, desires, and actions that go far beyond the woman seen in Lovecraft’s account. Someone who dreams of a world beyond Dunwich, and who herself is not quite completely human.
There is a degree of pathos to Dunwich prequels. Readers already know Lavinia’s fate, or at least one of her possible fates. How she gets there is where authors diverge; what details they choose to emphasize, and what aspects of the character they develop in new directions. In “Lavinia’s Wood,” Angela Slatter gives Lavinia context. Social, geographic, biographical, biological. Lavinia as a part of the decayed Whateleys, in contrast to her richer and more educated cousins; as an outsider even among the inbred rural folk of Dunwich; her relation with her father and his books; and even how her body differed from others in ways not immediately obvious.
“Lavinia’s Wood” is not the prequel to “The Dunwich Horror.” It is one of many. Yet it is an interesting, insightful take on Lavinia, one that sheds a different light on the preceding events—and who knows what elements of that might make their way into further stories in the Dunwich cycle?
“Lavinia’s Wood” by Angela Slatter was first published in She Walks In Shadows, and its reprints. It has not otherwise been reprinted.
It was Arkham House that perpetuated the Big Lie in this case, and from there a mechanism of critical bandwagonism took off and continues to this day. The tenet is, if you tell a lie big enough and enough times, people will believe it. That’s why Lovecraft has been raved about for all these decades. It’s a big lie that readers have been force-fed by a pro-Lovecraftian syndicate designed to make money. —Edward Lee & Mary SanGiovanni, Strange Stones(2025) 3
Professor Robert Everard, who speaks those words at a horror convention, is a Lovecraft-hating asshole. That is his point. If the sentiment gets a rise out of you and makes you want to refute it, congratulations: the authors have succeeded at their characterization. It is a very unconventional way to draw readers into a rather meta short Lovecraftian horror novel, but Everard’s arguments and the context in which they take place are important to understand, because they’re fundamental to the plot of the novel.
Fiction genres in the sense that we think of them today tended to emerge around the turn of the 20th century. Western dime novels were a staple of 19th century popular literature in the United States; science fiction, mysteries, fan clubs, etc. all preceded the emergence of pulp magazines in the 1910s and 1920s, but it was really the pulp magazines that began to crystallize genre as we think of it today, and especially organized fandom as we think of it today. The horror conventions today are all descended, more or less, from the early science fiction fan conventions of the 1930s in the United States.
Genre is only secondarily a literary convention; the primary purpose was marketing. Specialization allowed pulp magazines to carve out niches and develop dedicated readership that they could directly market to. Magazines in the same genre competed with one another for the same dimes and quarters; Weird Tales had to struggle against Ghost Stories, Tales of Magic and Mystery, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Terror Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Unusual Stories, and others, and tried to draw in readers from science fiction magazines like Astounding Stories, Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, and Planet Stories.
Hardbacks, paperbacks, comics, and movie makers all learned this lesson, that specialization has the benefit of attracting a specific, dedicated readership. And once you have that audience, the quality of the content is less important than if it stays in genre. Decades of genre products have been, essentially, disposable pap, churned out quick and cheap for an eager audience that cared less about quality than if it was horror or science fiction. This is the kind of silly, low-quality stuff that gives genre media a bad name, but it’s also the stuff that’s generally predominant at any given moment. True genre classics are rare, and stand out because so much of the run-of-the-mill material is generic, familiar monsters and spaceships.
In this sense, what is a genre convention, then, then a target-rich environment? The earliest conventions weren’t entirely uncommercial, but they weren’t dominated by dealer rooms or particular creators promoting their latest film or book, which are common attributes of contemporary conventions. What creators and companies learned was that it’s a lot easier to sell your product if your customers are all in the same place; genre conventions in the United States in particular have become an important part of the economic ecosystem of various celebrities, independent dealers, small companies, and boutique shops.
The cultural phenomenon of the convention has developed to the point where it’s become a key aspects of organized fan culture, to the point of becoming the setting of new creative works, like I Am Providence: A Novel(2016) by Nick Mamatas and Screamland: Death of the Party(2012) by Harold Sipe, Christopher Sebela, and Lee Leslie. And it’s this crux of the commercialization of horror and the convention experience which forms the springboard setting for Edward Lee and Mary SanGiovanni’s novel Strange Stones (2025).
Richard Everard’s grudging kvetch against Lovecraft’s ascendance in horror media is in part a tongue-in-cheek jab at a genuine aspect of fandom and how Lovecraft and his Mythos have faced posthumous commercialization and pop culture significance way beyond its initial tiny dedicated genre audience. Everard’s own interaction with the convention circuit has been primarily a lecherous attempt to get in the pants of as many women as he could, a series of sexual conquests that is both a kind of wish fulfillment and a genuine recognition that yes, fans do hook up at conventions. Rachel Bloom wasn’t being entirely inaccurate with Fuck Me Ray Bradbury in the way genre literary figures can attract groupies.
There is a dark side to that, too: many prominent or even beloved genre literary figures have been revealed as sex pests or abusers. Alec Nevala-Lee’s excellent Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (2018) contains accounts of bad behavior by writers like Isaac Asimov, for example. This kind of contact between fans and creators is mainly possible because of events like conventions, where individuals who would normally be separated by hundreds or thousands of miles are brought into geographical proximity and with shared purpose.
So Everard is a caricature of specific figures in convention culture: a lecher (right there in the name: “Everard”/”Ever-hard”), a high-minded academic who snobbishly looks down on the tastes of the masses, a shit-stirrer more focused on selling his own books and tearing others down instead of creating something positive. All of which makes him less than sympathetic when he does encounter some real horror.
The back three-quarters of the short novel are a whirlwind tour through several of Lovecraft’s Mythos stories, but not in a way that readers might think. Lee and SanGiovanni are very carefully and deliberately introducing Lovecraftian settings like Innsmouth, Arkham, and Dunwich in ways that are very accurate to Lovecraft’s fiction—often focused on small details, which are then blown up and expanded upon—but not trying to pastiche Lovecraft’s particular style or language. So it is very deliberately Lovecraftian, with Everard’s familiarity with Lovecraft’s corpus letting him recognize where and when he is, yet at the same time the settings are fresh, parts of the setting that Lovecraft himself never put on the page.
Readers might be curious if there are any connections with Edward Lee’s “Hardcore Lovecraft” series which includes books like The Haunter at the Threshold and The Wet Dreams of Dead Gods. Strictly speaking, the answer is no; Lee’s own Lovecraftian novels remain very distinct in setting and approach, and Strange Stones is in general much less explicit in terms of violence, gore, and sexual activity. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there, but it is less prominent in the plot. In part because the focus of the story isn’t on titillation or exploitation-level sex and violence, while there is definitely transgressive grue and sexual activity, the pace of the story is such that the writers don’t dwell on it in anything like the detail of Lee’s more extreme solo works.
One important characteristic of Strange Stones, however, is that it is not nostalgic for Lovecraft. Works of the type “Lovecraft was right! The Mythos was real!” or revisiting old stomping grounds like Dunwich and Innsmouth can lead to much more watered-down horrors. Like Bela Lugosi’s Dracula or Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein or Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolfman, there comes a point where Cthulhu becomes overly familiar, to the point that the appearance of the Big C comes across more as a friendly face than a stark horrific reality that haunts the imagination. A point Ken Hite touched on in “Cthulhu’s Polymorphous Perversity” in Cthulhurotica, discussing the plush toy incarnations of Lovecraft’s primal alien horror.
Instead, Lee and SanGiovanni present Lovecraft’s Mythos as terrifying.
Dismembered corpses. Perverse sexual defilements. Sudden violence. The Mythos in Strange Stones has all the subtlety of a Goatwhore album cover or an issue of Crossed by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows. Readers are going to have to make their way through dead babies, threats of anal assault by oversized piscine pricks, and an alien orgy in which dismembered torsos feature prominently. The Mythos is not a dry, abstract, intellectual horror in this novel; it is a living, breathing cult simmering with malice, madness, and strange and terrible hungers. That this is not quite as extreme in terms of sex and violence as Edward Lee gets up to on his own is not the same as saying that this novel is tame or soft in any way.
It is a difference in emphasis. Everard doesn’t see the clean Mythos that Lovecraft presented to the world, with its carefully-constructed narratives where all the orgies and most of the violence happens off the page. What Everard sees is Lovecraft with the blinders taken off; what Lovecraftian fiction could look like, if writers approached his Mythos with the imagination normally reserved for a particularly lurid Cannibal Corpsealbum or exploitation film. Fairly reminiscent in many ways of what Antony Johnston, Alan Moore, and Jace Burrows did in The Courtyard and Neonomicon, though without quite as elaborate a working-out of details.
Strange Stones is, after all, a fairly short novel, briskly paced, and not concerned with a unified theory of the Cthulhu Mythos as much as keeping the story moving through each step of Everard’s ordeal. While there is room for a sequel, as a one-and-done novel it stands alone effectively enough. While not perfect, it is fun and a quick read, quite unlike the majority of Mythos fiction published these days.
France, 1974. Jean Giraud (Mœbius), Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and Bernard Farkas came together to create Les Humanoïdes Associés, a publisher for a new type of comic magazine: Métal Hurlant (“Howling Metal,” 1974-1987). Initially released as a quarterly and focused on science fiction, Métal Hurlant featured some of the best international comic artists of its time, as well as some of the most daring content, not just featuring sex, drugs, and rock & roll—but humor, horror, gory violence, politics, and philosophy.
The magazine was successful enough to inspire spin-offs in other countries, largely based, at least initially, on material translated from Métal Hurlant. So in the United States and Commonwealth countries, Anglophones could read Heavy Metal (1977-2023), with various special issues, spin-offs, graphic novels, and other projects; in Italy, the localized version of Métal Hurlant lasted only 12 issues (1981-1983), with several standalone Metal Extra issues, though the sister magazine Totem lasted longer (1980-1984). In West Germany, Schwermetall (“Heavy Metal,” 1980-1984) lasted a respectable 57 issues under its first publisher, and eventually ran to issue 219/220 (1998). Spain had their own translation of Métal Hurlant in the 1980s, the Netherlands had Zwaar Metaal (“Heavy Metal”), Denmark had Total Metal, Finland had Kylmä metalli (“Cold Metal”), Sweden had Tung Metal (“Heavy Metal”) and Pulserande Metal (“Pulsing Metal”), Turkey had Heavy Metal Türkiye…most of these international runs didn’t last long, but they spread the stories and art far and wide.
The creation of Métal Hurlant coincided with a number of other trends. H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and other early contributors to the Cthulhu Mythos became more widely available thanks to paperback reprints, and with the death of August Derleth, Arkham House lost its grip on the Mythos. New anthologies like The Disciples of Cthulhu(1976) proved that anyone could now play with the shared universe that Lovecraft and his friends had created. Argentinian master Alberto Breccia began and completed a series of Lovecraft adaptations for comics from 1973-1979, many of which first appeared in the Italian magazine Il Mago. Underground comix in the United States like Skull Comix (1970-1972) were giving way to semi-prozines like Star * Reach (1974-1979), and publishers also found they could side-step the Comics Code Authority by publishing magazines like Creepy (1964-1983) and Eerie (1966-1983) instead of standard-size comics, all of which featured material inspired by or adapting Lovecraft. H. R. Giger’s Necronomicon art collection was published in 1977, and quickly inspired the aesthetic for the film Alien (1979).
There was, in other words, a small revolution in Lovecraftian art, comics, and fiction in the 1970s. Not all at once, but from many different angles—and Métal Hurlant, the international crossroads where underground American artists like Richard Corben; French masters like Mœbius, Druillet, and Nicollet; Swiss artists like Giger; and Argentinian masters like Breccia could all come together at once.
That is what happened in September 1978, when Les Humanoïdes Associés published a 150-page special issue of Métal Hurlant dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft. The idea was so attractive that the next year, the English-language Heavy Metal magazine released their own Lovecraft special issue to coincide with Halloween, and when Métal Hurlant was translated in Italy, they released a one-off Metal Extra special issue dedicated to Lovecraft.
All three of these magazines share certain common elements, largely because the English- and Italian-language productions included material translated from the French special Lovecraft issue. Yet they were each different as well…and that’s kind of fascinating in itself, how these three magazines represent three different takes on the material, each tailored for their respective audience.
What follows is a survey: what each Lovecraft special issue contains, and by comparison, what they do not contain. To avoid excessive repetition, each issue and its unique contents are discussed separately, and then a single section discusses all the shared features. Because this is a long, image-heavy post, a table with links is provided to aid navigation:
150 pages, counting covers, the table of contents, ads, etc., Métal Hurlant Special #33 bis (“extra”) was one of several themed issues released by Les Humanoïdes Associés, with the other themes including Fin du monde (“the End of the World”, #36), Rock (#39), Guerre (“War”, #42), and Alien (#43). Not every feature in this issue involves Lovecraft or the Mythos, but a majority do. There are errors in the table of contents as printed, so a full list is given here.
Features involving Lovecraft or his creations are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c].
Front Cover: H. R. Giger
“La cimetière” (illustration) by Souchu, 2-3
Advertisement for Heilman by Voss and A l’Est de Karakulac by Daniel Ceppi, 4
Table of Contents, 5
Edito triste./Edito gai by Philippe Manœuvre, 6
“La Chose” by Alain Voss, 7-12
“Lettres de Lovecraft” by François Truchaud, 13
“La Retour de Cthulhu” by Alan Charles & Richard Martens, 14-15
“La Nuit du Goimard: Un ecrivain nommé Habileté-à-l’amour” by Jacques Goimard, 16-18
“Le Monstre Sur le Seuil” by Norberto Buscaglia & Alberto Breccia, 19-29
“Je m’appelle Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by François Truchaud, 30-32
“L’Homme de Black Hole” by Serge Clerc, 33-36
“Hommage à HPL…” (uncredited), 37-39
“Petite bibliothèque lovecraftienne” by François Truchaud, 40-41
“La Trace Ecarlate” by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi, 42-43
“Excursion Nocturne” by Frank Margein, 44-47
“Le langage des chats” by Nicole Claveloux, 48-49
Untitled illustration by Richard Martens, 50
“L’Indicible Horreur d’Innswich” by Philippe Setbon, 51-52
“Amitiés Rencontres” by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 53-57
“Barzai le Sage” by Marc Caro, 58-65
Advertisement for Richard Corben’s Den, 66
[c] “Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury” by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 67-70
[c] “L’énigme du mystérieux puits secret” by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 71-74
“A la Recherche de Kadath” by François Truchaud & M. Perron, 75-78
“H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by George Kuchar, 79-81
“Les Bêtes” by Dank, 82-84
Advertisement for Le Diable by Nicollet and Les Naufragés du Temps by Paul Gillon, 85
“Le Necronomicon” by Druillet, 86-96
Advertisment for La Boite Oblungue by Edgar Allan Poe and La Rivier du Hibou by Ambrose Bierce, 97
Advertismenet for Les Trafiquants d’Armes by Eric Ambler
“Les 3 Maisons de Seth” by Dominique Hé, 99-101
“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton” by Yves Chaland, 102-103
Advertisement for back issues of Métal Hurlant, 104-105
Advertisement for Métal Hurlant posters, 106
[c] “H.P.L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 107-109
[c] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 110-114
“Plat du Jour” by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 115-117
“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau” by Luc Cornillon, 118-119
“Cauchemar” by Alex Niño, 120-129
“H. P. Lovecraft au cinéma” by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, 130-131
“L’Abomination de Dunwich” by Alberto Breccia, 132-146
Back cover by Richard Martens
Unique Content
Front Cover: A plate from H. R. Giger’s Necronomicon(1977).
“Cauchemar” (“Nightmare”) by Alex Niño is a 10-page black-and-white comic that showcases a series of nightmares realized in surrealistic and highly detailed form; Niño pays homage to the styles of other artists, naming Heinrich Kley, Arthur Rackham, Phillip Druillet, and Jean Giraud (Mœbius). Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
Edito triste./Edito gai (“Sad Editorial/Gay Editorial”); “Edito triste” is written as by “Abdul Fernand Alhazred”, while the “Edito gai” (as in happy, not homosexual) is by Philippe Manœuvre. Both concern how the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft Special came together.
“Je m’appelle Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (“I am called Howard Phillips Lovecraft”) by François Truchaud is a brief biographical sketch of Lovecraft’s life, fairly accurate for the compressed time and space, with illustrations by Richard Martens and Druillet; the Druillet illustration is the same as the cover to the Lovecraft special issue of L’Herne(1969).
“La Nuit du Goimard: Un ecrivain nommé Habileté-à-l’amour” (“The Night of Goimard: A Writer Named Able-to-Love”) by Jacques Goimard is an essay on Lovecraft’s fiction, illustrated by Perry’s silhouette of Lovecraft.
“Le Monstre Sur le Seuil” (“The Monster on the Threshold”) by Norberto Buscaglia & Alberto Breccia is an 11-page black-and-white comic adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Breccia’s art combines traditional pen-and-ink with collage, which leads a strange, otherworldly aspect to the artwork.
“L’énigme du mystérieux puits secret” (“The Riddle of the Mysterious Secret Well”) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon is a 4-page color comic where an investigative duo investigates a mysterious well and uncovers some counterfeiters; slightly reminiscent in overall style to Hergé’s Tintin. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“Lettres de Lovecraft” (“Lovecraft’s Letters”) by François Truchaud is a review of Lettres 1 (1978), the French-language translation of the first volume of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters. Illustrated by Mœbius’ cover for Lettres d’Arkham (1975).
“L’Indicible Horreur d’Innswich” (“The Unspeakable Horror of Innswich”) by Philippe Setbon is a short fiction that purports to be the last story written by H. P. Lovecraft, complete with a mock reproduction of the original manuscript written on an envelope, based on the famous At the Mountains of Madness envelope.
“Petite bibliothèque lovecraftienne” (“Little Lovecraftian Library”) by François Truchaud is a brief survey of Lovecraft-related material available in French publications, as well as some related publications such as The Occult Lovecraft (1975) and H. P. Lovecraft: A Biography (1975) in English.
Back cover by Richard Martens, based on a photo of Lovecraft.
Heavy Metal H. P. Lovecraft Special Issue (Oct 1979)
This material is taken, for the most part, from a bizarre and eldritch tome written in a strange tongue, the “Homage á Lovecraft” issue of Métal Hurlant. We trust it will add just the right touch to your Hallowe’en festivities. —Sean Kelly, editorial for Heavy Metal vol. III, no. 6
96 pages, counting the ads, table of contents, etc., which makes for a thinner magazine that can still be side-stapled. Heavy Metal magazine vol. III, no. 6 is part of the normal numbering rather than an extra or one-off issue. While it draws much of its material directly from the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special, the publishers chose not to reproduce all of the Lovecraft material from the French.
What didn’t they translate? The text pieces, the Georges Kuchar reprint, several of the more humorous and less Lovecraft-related comics, a couple pages of Druillet’s Necronomicon, and oddly the Breccia adaptation of “The Thing at the Doorstep.” What remains isn’t exactly entirely dedicated to Lovecraft, either, so that the “Lovecraft” issue has rather less Lovecraft-related material in it than might be expected.
Maybe there was a crunch with time to put the issue together, or some issues with the right. However, they also added a few things that didn’t appear in the Métal Hurlant issue, notably the J. K. Potter cover and “The Devil’s Alchemist,” a work of fiction. Unlike the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special, the majority of Heavy Metal pages are in color, including colorizing some works that were in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant.
Lovecraftian items are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c]; items from the Métal Hurlant special are marked with an asterisk (*).
Front cover (“Mr. Lovecraft”) by J.K. Potter
Advertisement for Strategy & Tactics, 1
[c] Table of Contents, 2
[c]Advertisement for Job Cigarette Papers, 3
“…Thirty-one…” (editorial) by Sean Kelly w/ J. K. Potter, 4
[c] Advertisement for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 5
[c] “Final Justice” by Chateau, 6-14
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal posters, 15
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal subscriptions, 16
[*] “The Dunwich Horror” (“L’Abomination de Dunwich”) by Alberto Breccia, 17-25, 74-80
[c] [*] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 25-29
[c] “Xeno Meets Dr. Fear and Is Consumed” by Terrance Lindall & Chris Adames, 30-31
[*] “The Thing” (“La Chose”) by Alain Voss, 32-37
[*] “The Beasts” (“Les Bêtes”) by Dank, 38-40
[c] [*] “The Man from Blackhole” (“L’Homme de Black Hole”) by Serge Clerc, 41-44
[c] [*] “H.P.L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 45-47
[c] “Love’s Craft” by Sean Kelly & Matthew Quayle, 48-49
[c] [*] “Dewsbury’s Masterpiece” (Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 50-53
[c] Advertisement for back issues of Heavy Metal, 54-55
[*] “The Necronomicon” by Druillet, 56-61
[*] “The Language of Cats” (“Le langage des chats”) by Nicole Claveloux, 62-63
“Chain Mail” (letters page, but comic by Christopher Browne) 64
[c] Advertisement for Dragonworld, 65
[c] “Pat and Vivian” by Frank Margerin, 66-68
[c] “The Alchemist’s Notebook” by David Hurd & William Baetz, w/Walter Simonson, 69-73
[“The Dunwich Horror” continued, 74-80]
[c] Advertisement for The Grailwar by Richard Monaco, 81
[c] “Bad Breath” by Arthur Sudyam, 82-89
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal books/graphic novels, 90-91
[*] “The Agony Column” (“Amitiés Rencontres”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 92-96
Back cover (“Elizabeth”) by George Smith
Unique Content
Front cover: “Mr. Lovecraft” by J.K. Potter. Before digital image manipulation programs existed, Potter was producing strange, disturbing images with a combination of photographs, airbrush, and traditional pen and ink. The effects, with Potter’s imagination, could be quite stunning. In this instance, he uses it to place Lovecraft in a cosmic scene. Potter would lend his talents to several future Lovecraft-related projects, including the cover for Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1990).
“The Alchemist’s Notebook” by Byron Craft (as by David Hurd & William Baetz) is an original work of Mythos fiction, with illustrations by Walter Simonson. A note on the first page says that this story is “an excerpt from the novelization of the upcoming movie, The Cry of Cthulhu“—but the film never made it past pre-production (Cthulhu Calling: An Interview with Byron Craft). In 2016, Craft published the full version of the novelization as The Alchemist’s Notebook, which was later changed to The Cry of Cthulhu.
“Bad Breath” by Arthur Sudyam is an 8-page comic that is principally black-and-white with color tints on Selected panels and figures; it follows an amorous young man whose bad breath is impacting his love life, and the solution he attempts has horrific—and amusing—consequences. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“Final Justice” by Chateau is a 9-page color comic where a couple in Europe to write a book on historical crimes watch the re-enactment of a medieval murder at an ancient chateau. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“Love’s Craft” by Sean Kelly is a poem, accompanied by an illustration by Matthew Quayle. Tentatively Lovecraftian based on the title, but with no direct references to Lovecraft or the Mythos.
“Pat and Vivian” by Frank Margerin is a 3-page humorous comic about a woman awoken by a strange entity at the door. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
“…Thirty-one…” (editorial) by Sean Kelly, discussing Lovecraft in brief. Accompanied by a photo-manipulated image of Lovecraft by J. K. Potter.
“Xeno Meets Dr. Fear and Is Consumed” by Terrance Lindall & Chris Adames is a two-page color fantasy/horror comic with a distinct textured painting style. Young Xeno, asking a fundamental question about certainty, sets off in dreams to find Dr. Fear—and does. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.
Metal Extra Speciale Lovecraft (Nov 1982)
Cui, questo numero speciale di Métal Hurlant e un vero e proprio “omaggio” nei limiti è nei termini in cui puo esserlo una realizzazione a fumetti. Essa però dimostra sino a che punto è giunta oggi l’influenza del “solitario di Providence” e del suo mondo di sogni, di miti, di realtà alternative. E’un “ommagio” che ciascun disegnatore o scrittore ha estrinsecato secondo la sua predisposizione, il suo modo di vedere, il suo atteggiaento mentale, culturale, di spirito. E cosi (non ci si meravigli di ciò) vi saranno controbuti (fumetti) “seri” e meno seri o aprtamente ironici, allucinati e satirici. Un autore è amato non soo quando si prende sul serio il suo universo incubico (come ne L’uomo del Buco Nero, Il capolavoro di Dewsbury, ecc.), ma anche quando ci si scherza su, fra il serio e il faceto (Cthulhu), lo si prende aperamente in giro (La traccia scarlatta, Escursione notturna, Il ritorno di Cthulhu e cosi via).
Hence, this special issue of Métal Hurlant is a real “homage” to the extent that a comic book production can be. However, it demonstrates how far the influence of the “solitary of Providence” and his world of dreams, myths, and alternative realities has reached today. It is an “homage” that each artist or writer has expressed according to his predisposition, his way of seeing, his mental, cultural, and spiritual attitude. And so (don’t be surprised by this) there will be “serious” and less serious or overtly ironic, hallucinatory and satirical counterparts (comics). An author is loved not only when his nightmare universe is taken seriously (as in The Man from the Black Hole, Dewsbury’s Masterpiece, etc.), but also when he is joked about, half-jokingly (Cthulhu), and openly made fun of (The Scarlet Trail, Night Excursion, The Return of Cthulhu, and so on).
Gianfranco de Turris, Metal Extra Speciale Lovecraft, 5
English translation
Instead of trying to publish this as part of their regular series of issues, the editors in Italy essentially excerpted the majority of the Lovecraft comics content from the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special and squeezed it into a 100-page (counting covers) square-bound Metal Extra issue. They also added some additional materials not in either the Métal Hurlantor Heavy Metal Lovecraft special issues
Lovecraftian items are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c]; items from the Métal Hurlant special are marked with an asterisk [*].
[*] Front Cover by Mœbius
Table of Contents, 3
“Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by Gianfranco de Turris, 4-5
[*] “Annunci sul Gironale…” (“Amitiés Rencontres”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 6-10
[*] “Barzai il Saggio”(“Barzai le Sage”) by Marc Caro, 11-18
[c] [*] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 19-25
“Il Nome e la Cosa” by Luigi de Pascalis, 24-26
[c] [*] “La Traccia Scarlatta” (“La Trace Ecarlate”) by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi, 27-28
[*] “H. P. Lovecraft al Cinema” (“H. P. Lovecraft au cinéma”) by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou [uncredited], 29-30
[c] [*] “Il Capolavoro di Dewsbury”(Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 31-34
[*] “Il Ritorno di Cthulhu” (“La Retour de Cthulhu”) by Alan Charles & Richard Martens, 35-36
[*] “La Cosa” (“La Chose”) by Alain Voss, 37-42
[*] “Alla Ricerca di Kadath” (“A la Recherche de Kadath”) by François Truchaud & M. Perron, 43-46
[*] “H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by Georges Kuchar, 47-49
[*] “Il Linguaggio dei Gatti” (“Le langage des chats”) by Nicole Claveloux, 50-51
[*] “Il Piatto del Girno” (“Plat du Jour”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 52-54
[*] “Escursione Notturna” (“Excursion Nocturne”) by Frank Margerin, 55-58
“R. H. B.” by Andreas & François Rivière, 59-66
[*] “H. P. L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 67-69
“Incubo Londinese” by Riccardo Leveghi, 70-72
[c] [*] “Il Ponte dull’acqua” (“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau”) by Luc Cornillon, 73-74
[c] “Oltre L’autore Lovecraft” by Onomatopeya, 75-82
[*] “Le 3 Case di Seth”(“Les 3 Maisons de Seth”) by Dominique Hé, 83-85
[*] “La Bestie” (“Les Bêtes”) by Dank, 86-88
[*] “L’Uomo di Black Hole” (“L’Homme de Black Hole”) by Serge Clerc, 89-92
[*] “Le 2 Vite di Basil Wolverton” (“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton”) by Yves Chaland, 93-94
[*] “Omaggio a H. P. Lovecraft” (“Hommage à HPL…”), 95-97
“Piccola Bibioteca Lovecraftiana” by Gianfranco de Turris & Sebastiano Fusco, 98
Unique Content
Front Cover is a colorized version of Mœbius’ depiction of Lovecraft at his desk from Lettres d’Arkham.
“Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by Gianfranco de Turris is a two-page editorial-cum-introduction to the issue and Lovecraft, illustrated with reproductions of photos of Lovecraft.
“Il Nome e la Cosa” (“The Name and the Thing”) by Luigi de Pascalis is a short work of fiction about the Golem of Prague, accompanied by illustrations by Massimo Jacoponi, a photo of Lovecraft, and Perry’s silhouette of Lovecraft. Other than the illustrations, no explicit Lovecraftian content.
“Incubo Londinese” (“London Nightmare”) by Riccardo Leveghi is a short work of fiction. Illustrated by Bradley, Druillet’s cover art from L’Herne, a photo of Lovecraft, and two images from Lovecraft’s letters. Other than the illustrations, no explicit Lovecraftian content.
“Oltre L’autore Lovecraft” (“Beyond the Author Lovecraft”) by Onomatopeya is an 8-page fotonovela-style comic about Lovecraft’s life and literary afterlife, a montage of photos tinted, textured, and collaged together with speech bubbles and text boxes to provide a humorous but largely accurate narrative.
“Piccola Bibioteca Lovecraftiana” (“Little Lovecraftian Library”) by Gianfranco de Turris & Sebastiano Fusco; while sharing essentially the same title as its counterpart in Métal Hurlant, this is a brief listing of the relevant Arkham House volumes and the Italian translations of Lovecraft and related materials, including August Derleth’s “posthumous collaborations.”
“R. H. B.” by Andreas & François Rivière is an 8-page, black-and-white comic about Lovecraft’s friend R. H. Barlow.
Shared Content
Listed below are the shared features, drawn from the original Métal Hurlant issue and also appearing in either or both of Heavy Metal and Metal Extra, along with notes on differences between the versions and necessary context.
“A la Recherche de Kadath” (“Alla Ricerca di Kadath,” “In Search of Kadath”) by François Truchaud & M. Perron is a 4-page black-and-white fantasy pictorial map of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands in a lavish, detailed style. Appears in Métal Hurlant and slightly smaller in Metal Extra.
“Amitiés, Rencontres” (“Annunci sul Gironale…,” “The Agony Column”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi is a 5-page black-and-white comic. The French title translates literally as “Friendships, Meetings”, and the Italian as “Announcements in the Daily,” but in context it might better be called Personal Ads. The nameless protagonist is in police/medical custody, and flashes back to when he answered a personal ad in the paper, and received a response. When he goes to meet the woman, he is waylaid: the whole setup has been a trap. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“Barzai le Sage”(“Barzai il Saggio,” “Barzai the Sage”) by Marc Caro is an 8-page comic composed of several extremely dark, heavily-exposed photos of a sculpture of a figure in various poses and backgrounds; the text is derived from Lovecraft’s “The Other Gods.” Appears in Métal Hurlant and in Metal Extra, where text boxes replace the original typed text annotations.
“Excursion Nocturne” (“Escursione Notturna,” “Noctural Excursion”) by Frank Margerin is a 4-page black-and-white comic that is wordless until the final panel; the whole is a careful set-up of horror tropes with a comedic flourish. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“Hommage à HPL…” (“Omaggio a H. P. Lovecraft,” “Homage to Lovecraft”) by uncredited is nominally a 3-page black-and-white cut-out diorama inspired by Lovecraft; though the content is more descriptive of general witchcraft and I haven’t been able to source any particular Lovecraftian inspiration. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“H. P. L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet is a 3-page color fantasy painted comic. A pair of fantasy creatures travel through a city to where a suited, winged figure sits on a throne atop a pillar, and asks a sphinx-like riddle. A panel reveals the figure has the face of Lovecraft. While slight in terms of content, and the events play out with a dry humor, the artwork is fantastic. Nicollet would go on to do many painted covers for weird fiction translated into French, including collections of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, etc. The winged, demonic Lovecraft would reappear on the cover of Robert Bloch’s Retour à Arkham(1980). Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by Georges Kuchar is a 3-page biographical comic of Lovecraft’s life, which first appeared in the U.S. underground comix Arcade #3 (1975). Kuchar exaggerates certain elements of Lovecraft’s life and personality for comedic effect, but largely follows the available scholarship and characterization of H.P.L. in 1975. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“KTULU” by Mœbius is a 5-page color comic; a group of politicians, finished with a week’s work, descend to a strange place and ask Lovecraft where to find a Ktulu to hunt. A surreal, sardonic work that owes little to the Mythos but echoes Mœbius’ other work of the period, like Le Garage Hermétique; the image of Lovecraft on a high throne oddly echoes Nicollet’s “H.P.L.” Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“L’Abomination de Dunwich” (“The Dunwich Horror”) by Alberto Breccia, a 15-page black-and-white adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”—and a fairly faithful and evocative adaptation, with particular care given to Wilbur Whateley and his unnamed twin. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal; many of Breccia’s adaptations of Lovecraft stories first appeared in Italian in the magazine Il Mago, which may be why Metal Extra chose not to reprint it.
“La Chose”(“La Cosa,” “The Thing”) by Alain Voss is a 6-page black-and-white adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter.” Voss elaborates on Lovecraft’s story a bit, making Harley Warren more sinister and flamboyant, and the grave they break into becomes an elaborate sepulchre, but is otherwise very faithful. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“La Retour de Cthulhu” (“Il Ritorno di Cthulhu,” “The Return of Cthulhu”) by Alan Charles & Richard Martens is a 2 -page black-and-white comic. “Uncle Nyarlathotep” narrates a tongue-in-cheek account of the ritual that results in the reincarnation of H. P. Lovecraft. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“La Trace Ecarlate” (“La Traccia Scarlatta,” “The Scarlet Track”) by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi is a two-page, slightly humorless, mostly wordless spectacle. Métal Hurlant printed the comic in black and white, but Metal Extra added a bit of red to actually illustrate the “scarlet trace,” which works much better.
“Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury” (“Il Capolavoro di Dewsbury,” “Dewsbury’s Masterpiece”) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon is a 4-page color comic that ells an original Lovecraftian story, somewhat in the vein of “Pickman’s Model,” with the mysterious Dewsbury taking the place of Pickman, but truncated and dedicated to not showing the unnamable horror. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“Le langage des chats” (“Il Linguaggio dei Gatti,” “The Language of Cats” ) by Nicole Claveloux is a 2-page black-and-white comic, and adapts an excerpt from “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” involving the cats of the Dreamlands. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau” (“Il Ponte dull’acqua,” “The Bridge over the Water”) by Luc Cornillon is a 2-page comic where a man attempts to commit suicide by leaping from a bridge, and finds himself embattled by a protoplasmic tentacled entity. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related, though some might call it Lovecraftian. Published in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant, and colorized in Metal Extra.
“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton” (“Le 2 Vite di Basil Wolverton,” “The Two Lives of Basil Wolverton”) by Yves Chaland is a 2-page black-and-white comic. In Lord Whateley’s residence is uncovered the diary of an old servant, Basil Wolverton (after the comic artist), who had long served the family. The diary describes how Wolverton was a mad genius who sought to use the life-forces of others to extend his lifespan and rule the world—but he chose as his experimental subjects Black slaves, and found afterward his he fell into idleness and stupidity. The story is effectively a brief echo of the kind of weird racism typical of 1920s and 30s pulp fiction, although the artwork is excellent. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“Les 3 Maisons de Seth” (“Le 3 Case di Seth,” “The 3 Houses of Seth”) by Dominique Hé is a 3-page black-and-white comic in the form of a document about an artist’s visit to an ancient temple in Egypt, where he received a vision of the eldritch entity Suthluhlu. The artistic depiction of Egyptian pyramids, temples, statues, hieroglyphs, etc. is exquisite in its precision, though the Lovecraftian content itself is slight. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
“Les Bêtes” (“La Bestie,” “The Beast”) by Dank is a 3-page black-and-white comic. The narrative is slight, a soldier or servant informs a man that the Beasts are back, which turn out to be a collection of fanged dinosaurs (and, bizarrely, a rhinocerous of unusual size) that are mowed down with guns; the hunter leaves strange three-toed tracks as he leaves after the slaughter. It’s a surreal bit of fluff, striking for its visuals, but deliberately obtuse. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.
“L’Homme de Black Hole” (“L’Uomo di Black Hole,” “The Man from Blackhole”) by Serge Clerc is a 4-page comic. Howard Phillip Wingate, horror author, recalls a visit to Arkham, where he encounters Nathaniel Jenkins, a retired doctor who lived at Blackhole Cottage, and participates in his experiments. What he sees there causes him to flee, but he hears once more from Jenkins, whose brilliant mind has succumbed… The story is a pure pastiche of Lovecraft, with little visual and written nods scattered throughout. Published in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra, but in color in Heavy Metal.
“Le Necronomicon” (“The Necronomicon”) by Druillet is 11 pages of black-and-white pseudo-script and illustrations, laid out as pages from an alien manuscript; a photograph of Lovecraft is included on the frontispiece. Druillet’s recension of the Necronomicon was released near-contemporaneously with Al Azif (1973) by L. Sprague de Camp, the Necronomicon (1977) by Simon, and The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names (1978) ed. by George Hay. Yet where the others focused primarily on producing some kind of decipherable content or referenced existing cultures and systems, Druillet deliberately made his pages evocative but untranslateable—and as a result, universal across all languages. Published in Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal, with some slight differences in presentation.
“Plat du Jour” (“Il Piatto del Girno,” “Dish of the Day”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi is a 3-page black-and-white comic. A hooded figure buys a spider, takes it home, cooks it up, and serves it to a bed-written individual in a rat costume. The tone is slightly ghastly, but also slice-of-life. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related. Published in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.
Cultural Impact
In the decades after the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft Special was published, many of the stories and artwork have been reprinted in various formats and languages. Today, you can find collections of Druillet and Breccia’s Lovecraft comics and art in several languages. What might strike readers, however, is that the bulk of the three issues do not consist of adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories, but also comics, art, fiction, and nonfiction about Lovecraft himself. That issue, and to a degree the English and Italian magazines it inspired, was a nexus of Lovecraftian art and fiction that helped to further the spread of not just Lovecraft’s Mythos, but the myth of Lovecraft and his life, inexplicably entwined with his creations.
For many readers, one of these issues was their first introduction for Lovecraft. For some, it was an example of what Lovecraftian comics and art could be, unfettered by censorship or expectations to conform to commercial standards of what a comic or Lovecraftian work should be like. These works aren’t pornographic or particularly graphic, but they vary from reverent to irreverent, ghoulish to enchanting. Lovecraft and his work are interpreted many different ways by different creators—and that’s okay. There’s room for all those different approaches, and many more.
Métal Hurlant is being published in a new series. Perhaps appropriately, in August 2024 they published a new Lovecraft special—reflecting a new generation of talents to flex their imaginations and showcase their skills. It is a testament to the cultural impact of that first mammoth issue, but also a reflection that these specials are part of an enduring tradition. Creators that are happy not just to read about Lovecraft, his fiction and letters, but to participate in the process and add to the body of art and literature he inspired.
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 