Lovecraft Country

I received an interesting email the other day from Christopher Allen. No, not beloved/respected/uncircumcised comics critic Christopher Allen, but the Christopher Allen who comes up as #1 and #2 if you Google the name. He has a blog about privacy issues. But now he's in MY kitchen, or at least has his elbows on the counter/bar thing that connects the kitchen with the family room, since he's publishing the online comic Lovecraft Country: Return to Arkham. As I'm writing comics now myself for publication next year, I was a little wary of this, but apparently he's just publishing/producing it. The comic is written by Shannon Appelcline and illustrated by "Saffronrage Solutions", and I was thinking we'd found someone absolutely ready for the big time. But it turns out it's really a team of artists and designers, some of whom have already worked for Marvel and elsewhere. As distasteful as I find assembly line art to be 99% of the time, I do have to say that it's very hard to see the seams here, and in fact it's really nice, lush, detailed artwork perfectly appropriate for the setting.

The story, well, it's quite a nice introduction, with a young scholar going to Arkham to learn how his father died and finding all sorts of strang menaces and temptations, but it's really not a story yet. I'm not sure how many parts this will eventually be, but I'd be inclined at this point to wait it out and see it all of a piece. Actually, I see from their site this story is set between the continuity of two role-playing games from the same company, so make of that what you will. I'm not a Lovecraft aficionado, but even so, it seems to have most of the tropes even a novice like me would expect; I wasn't surprised by anything, at least. I don't get a sense that there's a story in Appelcline's head that is burning to get out, but that he thought it would be fun to write a story very much in the mold of a major inspiration for him. He was a line editor for Call of Cthulu prior to this, so while I don't hold that against him at all, it does make sense that even if he had original ideas to inject in this framework, he may not have any interest in doing so for fear it wouldn't be faithful to "the Mythos." Take a look for yourself, it's free.