HPLinks #1
Tentaclii is back, after a summer break. Rather than trailing out itty-bitty daily posts of link-based items, I’ve decided to experiment with a chunkier weekly news-digest format. At least for a while. Tuesday or Wednesday seem like the best weekdays for a weekly posting-day, though I’ll see how that notion settles down over time. There may also be other posts, such as ‘breaking news’ or longer research-based posts, but only as-and-when.
Thus here, on Lovecraft’s birthday, is my HPLinks #1…
* Druillet – Lovecraft. Due for publication 18th Oct 2024, as a 288-page hardcover. Likely to sell out in a micro-second, so you may want to pre-order quickly when that option is available.
This work brings together in a single volume everything that Druillet produced around [Lovecraft and his mythos]: the complete reissue of Demons et Merveilles published by Opta in 1976, now legendary; its pages from the Necronomicon; the covers he created for H.P. Lovecraft’s novels published by J’ai lu; and finally rare or unpublished paintings and sketches. A major meeting in the field of fantastic arts!
Note that Galerie Barbier, Paris, is… “launching a pre-order campaign on Ulule [French crowd-funding site] on 26th August 2024. Numerous goodies and exclusive rewards will be offered during this campaign.” The book appears to follow the gallery’s brief one-month Paris exhibition of the originals, in June-July 2024.
* The German Lovecraftians now have their own online shop. They also report that their annual magazine The Lovecrafter is on track to issue number 13 in paper in August. German writers should note that the rolling Web version, Lovecrafter Online, requires a new editor.
* A polished and long-running ‘Lovecraft as character’ webcomic set in 1926. The free Lovecraft is Missing was by Larry Latham of Oklahoma, whose day-jobs were Disney animator and animation teacher. Archive.org now newly has the collected pages for arcs that ran 2008-2014, packaged as handy .CBZ files for your comic-book reader software.
Larry sadly passed away in 2014 and Lovecraft is Missing .com site has long vanished. There were hopes that the concluding story arc(s) and any loose ends could be covered by collaboration with other artists, shortly before he passed away. But the story was very complex and it seems that these hopes could not come to fruition. Though note that ArtStation has pencilled pages from that possible collaboration, hinting at what might have been. Ten years after his passing, it appears unlikely there’ll now be a collected book and a rounded-out finish.
* Newly posted, a scan and transcription of a Postcard from H.P. Lovecraft to R.E. Howard, postmarked 13th November 1932. The front shows the gardens Lovecraft revelled in at Maymont, and the back discusses the prevalence of blond “Scandinavian types” he had seen on the streets. Note that… “The owner of the postcard, Mitch Kirsner is contemplating selling it. It has been in his possession for several years.”
* New on YouTube, “The Thing on the Doorstep” read by Wayne June (78 minutes). Joshi states of this later and lesser tale that… “This tale was written frenetically in a matter of four days, 21st–24th August 1933, in a scribbled pencil draft” that was almost illegible, presumably at the new address of 66 College St. Lovecraft was at this time “disgusted at much of my older work”, and thus “Thing” has the cosmicism of earlier tales only as a relatively thin veneer.
* New on Archive.org, a downloadable .PDF for the anthology Creeps By Night (1944). Featuring Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann”, along with Wandrei’s “The Red Brain” and Frank Belknap Long’s “A Visitor from Egypt”.
* A table-of-contents for The Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter for Spring 2024 (mailed July 2024). “Contains the first known typescript of Worms of the Earth”, as well as a Lovecraft letter.
* “Lovecraft’s Murder Mystery: Revisit Poe’s Haunted House” (2024), being a new paper which offers… “a comparison and contrast of Lovecraft’s murder stories and those of Poe”.
* Anime News Network, “Visualizing Lovecraft: An Interview with Manga Creator Gou Tanabe”, along with his translator and publisher. Tanabe’s 288-page Call of Cthulhu is to be released in English in mid October 2024, by which time his Dunwich book should also be shipping in French and German. Possibly this interview is actually a transcript of a recent panel that I recall he was on, at some large U.S. comics convention? On visualising the 1920s in America, he says…
“When it comes to Lovecraft, one thing that’s pivotal to making manga is that you draw daily life as being extremely ordinary as possible. It’s a period piece set in the ’20s, so I tried to use movies as examples.”
* Francois Baranger’s illustrated “The Shadow over Innsmouth” in its French edition, titled L’ombre sur Innsmouth: Illustre, due in mid October 2024 according to an early listing on Amazon UK.
* Set for mid November,
* The Lin Carter papers at Duke University Libraries. Found while looking for Crypt of Cthulhu #70 (1990) which has all… ” the Lin Carter Necronomicon as survives in his notes.” This is out-of-print, unavailable in .PDF and not on Archive.org, as it turns out.
* A large new Public Work mega-repository of public-domain re-usable images, all ingested from the wealth of university and museum repositories now online. Slickly and speedily presented, and with a choice selection of results for the search-word “Lovecraft”. No actual Lovecraft images in the results, you understand, but all Lovecraft-adjacent and worth browsing…
* Call for Submissions: A Bestiary of New England’s Creatures, Creepers, and Cryptids and an accompanying online Bibliography. Both dated August 2024.
* And finally, should you wish to emulate a Lovecraftian binge at some rural ice-cream slurperie… there’s a new map showing a 100-place “ice cream trail” in Massachusetts, New England.