Check Out These H.P. Lovecraft Characters As You’ve Never Seen Them Before
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It’s impossible to know what legendary author H.P. Lovecraft would have thought of the Internet had he lived to see it come into existence, or how he would have accepted the rampant admiration and works of written and visual art that pay him respect. (It’s quite possible he wouldn’t have been able to afford a broadband connection.) In any case, we’re pretty sure he would have had a hearty chuckle at the work of comic artist Patrick Dean, who created the “Underwhelming Lovecraft Monsters” webpage earlier this year, for which he has given some of Lovecraft’s most celebrated beasts and stories a more casual flair. You can leave your nightmares next to the thing on the doorstep.
Dean started out by simply putting Great Old Ones and other creatures in simple settings and situations. As you can see in the image above, which you can find on his site here, Dean’s version of Cthulhu doesn’t mind kicking back in a lawn chair, sipping on a cold drink while either spying on neighbors or bird watching. (What else does one do with binoculars these days?) The fact that it’s wearing a hat is the icing on the cake-thulhu.
He’s also has a shot of Dagon in a muscle shirt and listening to an iPod and Yog-Sothoth rocking a sweet Spin Doctors tee, among others. I rather love the image below of a Moon-Beast just standing around in a robe holding some hot coffee. It’s like the epitome of “there’s not much else I could be doing right now.”
The same goes for the Shoggoths, which is seen here bored as all hell and wearing a baseball cap. It’s hard out here for a protoplasmic pimp.
Luckily, it’s not just about one-off sketches with Dean, as he’s upped his ante in the past month to include one-page comic synopses of some of Lovecraft’s stories. Like the creatures, these summarized comics are meant not to impart fear, but laughter. Not the easiest thing to do with such dense subject matter, but he pulls it off with flying colors out of space. Spoilers in “The Outsider” image below, if such things exist for a 90-year-old story.
Go out there into the social media world and let Patrick Dean know he’s killing it with this stuff, so that he’ll be inspired to continue forevermore. Just don’t do it at night, ’cause that might be too scary for all involved.
