Cool Air

[cyberghostface]

Here is Berni Wrightson's adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's 'Cool Air' from Eerie #62.

The narrator of the tale offers a story to explain why a "draught of cool air" is the most detestable thing to him. His tale begins in the spring of 1923, when he was looking for housing in New York City. He finally settles in a converted brownstone on West Fourteenth Street. Investigating a chemical leak from the floor above, he discovers that the inhabitant directly overhead is a strange, old, and reclusive physician. One day the narrator suffers a heart attack, and remembering that a doctor lives overhead, he climbs the stairs and meets Dr. Muñoz for the first time.



The doctor's room is kept at approximately 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) using an ammonia-based refrigeration system; the pumps are driven by a gasoline engine. As time goes on, the doctor's health declines and his behaviour becomes increasingly eccentric. The cooling system is continuously upgraded, to the point where some areas of his rooms are sub-freezing, until one night when the pump breaks down.

Comments

[lamashtar]

Oh, what Lovecraft would have done with the concept of cryogenically frozen people..

[veleda_k]

That last panel is wonderfully gruesome. Exactly the sort of imagery Lovecraft deserves.

[alicemacher]

This has proven a popular story for comic-book adaptations. In 1951, Al Feldstein and Graham Ingels did a loose adaptation, "Baby...It's Cold Inside!", for The Vault of Horror. The Batman Elseworlds book The Doom That Came to Gotham cast Mr. Freeze in a Muñoz-like role (I haven't read this one). More recently, the first issue of Moore's and Burrows's Providence featured Dr. Alvarez, an analogue of Muñoz (though he isn't shown having defrosted and decomposed until Issue #11).