The Beast in the Cave, Page 1
Happy Monday morning (or afternoon, to you East Coasters)! I just got back from a great weekend at Sakuracon, and now it’s back to work. My new Lovecraft project isn’t ready, so I wanted to put up another project from last year that I never posted on the site before: my adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s “The Beast in the Cave”.
Since this isn’t a Dreamlands story, I fear that it seems out of place on the site, but I’ll be doing other non-Dreamlands horror stories (of my own invention) on mockman.com eventually, so hopefully this won’t seem like too much of an intrusion. Like “The Cats of Ulthar”, this is one of my “quick & dirty” comic adaptations, drawn much quicker than Sarnath etc., in a few days for the Couscous Collective comics anthology Beards. I couldn’t think of a more Lovecrafty story featuring beards than this one. I also agree with the HP Podcraft folks that this is one of Lovecraft’s better early stories, particularly considering he wrote it when he was a teenager. (Of course, Ramsey Campbell also jumped kicking & karate-chopping onto the horror-fiction scene when he was only 18 or so, but Lovecraft’s primary work wasn’t written ’till he was 27 and 28 and older — ages that seemed sooooo old & creaky when I myself was a teenage Lovecraft reader.)
In other news, I’ve been doing a bit of work for Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically, I just finished a pair of maps of classic Dungeons & Dragons adventures, Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain! Both have recently been re-released as part of the “Dungeons of Dread” adventure collection, and I’ll be doing more maps in the future, so please check ’em out and, if you like them, leave a comment on the Wizards site! I also illustrated Mark Monack’s hilarious article Queen of the Interwebz Pits.
In still other news, there’s a new Amazon Kindle release that every Dreamlands fan should read: The Country of the Worm by Gary Myers, collecting all of Myers’ short fiction from his 1975 Arkham House book The House of the Worm and an even larger number of new stories! I *knew* there had been more Myers stories printed in hard-to-find back issues of “Crypt of Cthulhu” in the ’80s and beyond, and those ones are all collected here, together with new work. I really enjoy Myers’ Dunsany-esque short, dark fantasy tales, and I recommend you check ’em out. Incidentally, due to a one-day promotion, all of Myers’ Kindle books are FREE today only (April 1st, 2013). If you’re reading this on April 2nd, though, please shell out your cash and get them! I don’t even own a Kindle, but I’ll be reading them on the Kindle emulator for the Mac.
NEXT UPDATE: More Beast in the Cave on Thursday!
Discussion (7) ¬
” I also illustrated Mark Monack’s hilarious article Queen of the Interwebz Pits.” And you did a kickass job of it. My kids want a plushie of your displacer LOLcat!
This is one of the rare surviving stories of Lovecraft’s earlier stint at writing as a child that he didn’t manage to burn. A nice attempt at what he will later become quite good at. Turning mundanity into horror.
Looks amazingly good for such a rush job.
Who cares if it’s not a “Dreamlands” story? Not I! I would love to see you adapt “In the Walls of Eryx” or “The Challenge from Beyond”. Or perhaps even an illustrated version of “Something about Cats”.