Lovecraft Sketch MWF: Deep Ones
The Deep Ones are among my favorite Lovecraft creations — aren’t they everybody’s? Their greenish-gray, scaly, slippery bodies, their simple-but-oh-so-catchy admixture of amphibian and man, their terrible relation to humanity, these “blasphemous fish-frogs” are some of his simplest, best creations. And “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” is such a good story. The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast did a great job with it. “Shadow”, up there with “Rats in the Walls”, may be Lovecraft’s best story period: he distilled all his fears of race and poverty and sexuality and decay into a great tale that even the most Lovecraft-averse reader can enjoy.
The Deep Ones are among the more frisky of Lovecraft’s creations, so I ended up drawing three of them helping another one out of its clothes, although I’m sure that’s all they’re doing. As with Wilbur Whateley, their half-human (or formerly human) nature makes them scarier than a purely alien life form with no relation or similarity to humanity. And as with any zombie story or body-snatcher story, the possibility of CONVERSION makes them scarier still. “Their croaking, baying voices… held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked.” Drawing this also reminded me that I ought to read Alan Moore and Jacen Burrow’s Neonomicon, although I may end up regretting it. (I do love both creators, but ah… Alan Moore… it’s true what they said about you in Mythomania!)
Other news: there’s a new strip up at King of RPGs! If you have a favorite Lovecraftian or general-horror monster you’d like me to draw, commission a sketch! And lastly, I’ll be at booth P-18 at Seattle’s big comic convention this weekend, Emerald City Comic Con!
“Shadow Over Innsmouth” is another of my favourite Lovecraft stories as well. I’d guess from his many oblique approaches to the matter that Lovecraft would have been horrified at being faced with the physical realities of such species interbreeding, however. “Neonomicon” certainly pulls no punches in that regard.
“Dagon” really is a kind of lead in to “Shadow Over Innsmouth.” It sets the stage for what is going on in the oceans of the world that is all but unknown to Mankind. Except in queer myths and vicious rituals handed down from ages past. Some say that they are based and predate before humans. (But that is only crazy speculation by those that follow Charles Fort and such.)