Providence #4: "White Apes"

[superboyprime]

"It’s a repurposing of the Lovecraft pastiche to make it a vehicle that tells us more about Lovecraft and his world rather than simply extending the roll call of unpronounceable gods. And rather than regurgitating tropes that were brand new and exciting back in the 1920’s, I wanted to create stories that were true to the essence of Lovecraft, but were as shocking and unprecedented as Lovecraft’s stories were when they first started to appear in small circulation fanzines and in the pages of Weird Tales." - Alan Moore

Comments

[alicemacher]

I liked this issue. Even the incest description (and one-panel flashback, not posted here which is understandable) didn't make me go "geez, Moore, not again" as such things normally would, because it made sense within the story's context (also, Wheatley was possessed).

Willard (the stand-in for Lovecraft's Wilbur Whately of "The Dunwich Horror") is suitably creepy, as is Leticia's childlike drawing.

[big_daddy_d]

Is this a retelling of The Dunwich Horror?

[alicemacher]

This particular issue draws from elements of "The Dunwich Horror," as other issues have drawn from one or more elements of other Lovecraft tales. The overall story is an ongoing one, though.

[nyadnar17]

I wanted to like it, but Moore's weird sex stuff and his dedication to phonetic accents just kept me out of the story.

[razsolo]

Yeah I couldn't get past the accents either!

[baihu]

In relation to the crayon drawing, I present to you the Centipede demon from Dark Souls, whos is the latest boss I'm having trouble getting past: Also have to imagine him in an arena of pure lava

Incidentally, the game Bloodborne, by the same creators, is inspired by Lovecraftian imagery and concepts; combined with judicious slaying and violence of course.

[leoboiko]

How I'm reading Providence :

1. Read the issue. Eh, that was kinda cool.
   
2. Check out the "Read before" list in Facts in the Case of Alan Moore's Providence
   
3. Re-read or read the relevant stories in HPL's website
   
4. Re-read the issue, following the relevant post in Facts in….
   
5. Realize that I had missed all the things
   

[captainbellman]

I'm pretty convinced by comments that Willard's description of the "Redeemer", above, matches up with HP Lovecraft himself, and by Prof. Alvarez's references to Dr. Livingstone being found by a Herald journalist, that Black's quest will end up with him encountering Lovecraft and/or gifting him a copy of his book.

[espanolbot]

This series is interesting, not just as a travelogue of sorts of various Lovecraftian people and locations (updated to make them more historically/culturally accurate, such as the Kurdish immigrants in one of the earlier issues) but as a kind of perspective flip of these usual kinds of stories.

In most Lovecraftian literature, the folks involved in this are generally kind of flat characters, being horrible people interested in horrible things that horrible things often happen to. Y'know, like the graverobbers in that one story who are hunted down and eaten/carried off by some kind of monster for stealing a statuette from a crypt.

Moore appears to be taking the effort to actually offer some characterisation to the villains of Lovecraft's work (such as the people of Innsmouth) to flesh them out more as people. People who are involved in some heinous stuff (such as the people who fed children to a monster for immortality in one of the earlier issues), but at least they're human enough to not immediately set off alarm bells when the protagonist approaches them.

Kind of reminds me of the film the Ninth Gate, which is a Johnny Depp film about an unscrupulous rare book seller looking around Europe for a spellbook that legend states is a means to immortality, wealth and other such Faustian goodies. That story too had a lot of mystical stuff going on in the background, but it wasn't made clear until the very end whether the supernatural was actually real or Depp's character just happened to keep bumping into folk who believed it WAS real regardless.

[thezmage]

Is the Great Race of Yith involved in this at all? That's always been my favorite Lovecraft story

[bruinsfan]

I am left wondering exactly what Black will turn out to be the herald of. I'm not expecting Moore to incorporate Derleth's later additions to the Chthulhu Mythos, so I doubt it's the Elder Gods. Was there something that Yog-Sothoth would have viewed as a competitor in Lovecraft's original writings?

[pyrrhocorax]

I think this would have been more effective if the crayon drawing had not been included. It doesn’t really live up to the description, though the different orientations of its bodily elements are a good effort.