HP Lovecraft

Charming and Appalling Wonder: Alan Moore’s Providence Ends Deep in the Heart of Lovecraft Country

April 11, 2017 // 0 Comments

So I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that ST Joshi appears as a character in the final issue of Alan Moore’s Providence. And yet, I was. Which just goes to show: never underestimate the ability of the Wizard of Northampton to keep his audience on its toes. Oh, and yes. Providence ended last week. After a brief delay, issue 12 finally hit the stands, and… This is most likely going to get a bit SPOILERY, just so you know. So if you’re uninitiated… if you [...]

The Multitudinous Mister Black: My Poor Reading of Providence (Hopefully) Redeemed

March 28, 2017 // 0 Comments

So Alan Moore’s Providence… …has been kind of a vexing title for me. My reading of it has been a comedy of errors, from my underestimation of it in its earlier issues, to my many wrong ideas about where the story might be going, to (perhaps most embarrassingly) my mistaken belief that it was ending with issue ten. Well, now it really is ending, with the TWELFTH issue, which is due out this week. (EDIT: And the parade of mistakes continues! It looks like issue 12 got [...]

A Very Lovecraft Apocalypse: Alan Moore (Doesn’t) Bring Providence to a Close

August 16, 2016 // 2 Comments

So I was going to devote this week’s column to whittling down this giant stack of unreviewed funnybooks I’ve got sitting on my desk, a full month’s worth of comics I just haven’t gotten around to talking about. But then Alan Moore released a new issue of his meditation on HP Lovecraft, and well… That’s worth a whole column on its own… Providence 10 by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Before we begin… I have a confession to make: I read this issue, and [...]

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Providence

June 2, 2016 // 3 Comments

So last night I fell asleep reading the new issue of Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence. It’s never a good idea, reading that book before bed. When your brain is tired. Impressionable. About to launch off into several hours’ worth of subconscious meandering. Not because it’s scary, necessarily, but because, especially at this advanced point in the run, I’m keeping so much of its theme and plot and ties to HP Lovecraft biography and bibliography in my head, [...]

Just Another White Guy Talking About Feminism and Race

April 13, 2016 // 1 Comment

What an embarrassment of funnybook riches last week: Grant Morrison’s long-awaited Wonder Woman: Earth One, the comics debut of journalist Ta-Nehesi Coates on Black Panther, and the latest issue of Alan Moore’s Providence. So… That’s a comic about a feminist icon, a comic about the first black super hero, and a comic about a massively influential horror author who never wrote about women and was a noted racist. Sometimes, these things just write themselves… Wonder [...]

Pickman’s Proletariat: Alan Moore Examines the Politics of Lovecraft

February 16, 2016 // 0 Comments

Providence 7 by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows So I’ve come to the realization that I’ve been a bit lazy in my reading of this series. I mean, I knew there were greater depths to be plumbed. I just wasn’t plumbing them. In part, that’s because I’ve been hesitant to analyze it too deeply before it’s done. That would be like getting halfway through The Sound and the Fury and stopping to write a treatise on Faulkner’s use of the idiot man-child. But if [...]

Sex and the Starry Wisdom: Alan Moore’s Providence Hits a Disturbing New High

December 8, 2015 // 2 Comments

So I took a week off for Thanksgiving, with the full intention of writing up a big fat review of multiple comics for the week after, but then one of the books that came out Thanksgiving week drew me into its undertow, and I’ve been trying to write my review of it ever since. It’s complicated, and ugly, and compelling. The more I wrote, the more I saw in it, so I re-wrote, and re-wrote again, my opinions and impressions changing almost daily. I’m afraid that some of [...]

Countdown to Halloween, Day 29: Yig Snake Daddy

October 29, 2015 // 0 Comments

Dipping back into the HP Lovecraft bucket for tonight’s entry in the Halloween mixtape. We’re also revisiting Yig, this time in a form a bit more in keeping with the original story. Well… I DID say “a bit.” That, as you can probably tell, is the cover for Cthulhu Strikes Back, what may have been the first proper full-length album from the Lovecraft-influenced rock band Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. They take their name from a line in Lovecraft’s story [...]

Cool Air and Yellow Kings: Alan Moore’s Providence Debuts in Style

June 2, 2015 // 2 Comments

Taking a quick detour from our magnum opus on Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers to talk about something that’s more along the lines of our usual fare… Providence 1, by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Any new book by The Wizard of Northhampton is kind of a big deal, but here we have what may constitute a major publishing event: the beginning of a new Alan Moore series of a depth and structure we haven’t seen since From Hell. That’s what he’s saying about it, anyway: [...]

Countdown to Halloween: The Music of Erich Zann

October 25, 2013 // 0 Comments

“The Music of Erich Zann” isn’t, honestly, one of HP Lovecraft’s truly great stories. It’s relatively early work, written well before that great mid-career surge that would give us stuff like “The Call of Cthulhu” or “The Colour Out of Space.” It’s not paced particularly well, and it probably hints at its horror at little too vaguely. But something about it appeals to me. Something about Lovecraft’s concept of a wild weird [...]