Co(s)mic Horror

Abstract

H. P. Lovecraft, personally unassuming, hostile to modernity and pessimistic to the last, is perhaps an unlikely author to have inspired a cult global following, yet as Stephen Jones points out, “his relatively small body of work has influenced countless imitators, and formed the basis of a world-wide industry of books, games and movies based on his concepts and imagination” (494). The cultural currency of his work is such that Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’s comic series Neonomicon can be advertised as “a chilling tale of Lovecraftian horror!” (back cover). The idea that a work can be “Lovecraftian,” and marketed as such, is indicative of how much the work has taken on a life independent of its creator, thanks largely to the influence of his literary executor August Derleth and, later, fan culture. As Jones notes, “given their continued popularity and influence on modern horror fiction, it is perhaps surprising to discover that, of all Lovecraft’s stories, only around a dozen or so can actually be considered to form the core of the Cthulhu Mythos” (848). Despite this, the cult of Cthulhu has expanded through the years, especially in comics, and has become iconic in the age of the Internet. In many ways this is appropriate given Lovecraft’s history of publishing in pulp magazines, from which a clear line can be drawn to comics in terms of thematic content and readership. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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