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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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