“limX→∞(3x²+x)/(x²+1)=3": The horror of strange math in Hill House Comics’ ‘Plunge’
In the DC Comics title Plunge, published under DC’s horror imprint Hill House Comics, writer Joe Hill and artist Stuart Immonen (with colorist Dave Stewart) use arcane mathematics to create an atmosphere of dread. Strange numbers and equations are prominent on the covers rendered by artist Jeremy Wilson, mysterious equations on a ship’s bulkhead — seemingly written in blood — start each chapter, and the comic’s protagonists discover mathematic wonders with unnerving implications. In Plunge, math adds creepy ambiance to the story.
Plunge begins with a tsunami that triggers the discovery of the lost survey ship Derleth near a remote subarctic Pacific atoll; the ship disappeared almost forty years ago, its crew presumed dead. Corporate executive David Lacome hires a ship (the MacReady, under the command of Gage Carpenter, an apparent tribute to director John Carpenter’s horror film, The Thing, which features the character R. J. MacReady) for a quick salvage operation; the salvage team discovers that the lost Derleth crew are alive on the island, seemingly not having aged since their disappearance, but missing their eyes and possessing strange knowledge.
Plunge is influenced by the fiction of writer H. P. Lovecraft. From the tentacle embedded in the title’s logo design (suggesting Lovecraft’s acclaimed Cthulhu Mythos), to the name of the lost ship (the Derleth is an apparent nod to Lovecraft’s publisher, August Derleth), to the deformed fauna and horrid ancient fetish found on the island, Plunge incorporates the tropes of Lovecraftian fiction to great effect, creating an eerie mood throughout the story.
In his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” Lovecraft distinguishes his preferred subgenre of “weird fiction” from other horror fiction, stressing the importance of mood, or “atmosphere,” as a key component:
“The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain — a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”
To create this atmosphere of dread in his stories, Lovecraft often incorporated the discovery of arcane, eerie knowledge that undermines his protagonists’ comfortable understanding of the universe. While Lovecraft’s stories are more notable for utilizing arcane languages and words, as well as ancient texts like the Necronomicon, to achieve this effect, Lovecraft also used mathematic terms in his fiction to unnerve the reader.
In “The Call of Cthulhu,” the lost city of R’lyeh is described as featuring abnormal angles and non-Euclidean geometry. In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” a mathematics student rents a room that once sheltered a 17th Century witch; the room has odd geometric angles, and in his dreams the student visits strange worlds containing bizarre geometric shapes. In the story, Lovecraft references mathematicians like Bernard Riemann (the originator of the currently unproven “Riemann Hypothesis”) and Willem de Sitter (a Dutch mathematician and colleague of Albert Einstein), as well as imposing mathematic terms like “non-Euclidean calculus.”
Lovecraft found mathematics repellent. As a youth, Lovecraft was fascinated by astronomy, and even considered becoming an astronomer; at the age of 12, he published his own amateur journal of astronomy, and by the age of 16, he wrote a monthly astronomy column for the Providence Tribune. But Lovecraft realized his poor math skills precluded an astronomy career:
“In studies I was not bad — except for mathematics, which repelled and exhausted me. I passed in these subjects — but just about that. Or rather it was algebra which formed the bugbear. Geometry was not so bad. But the whole thing disappointed me bitterly, for I was then intending to pursue astronomy as a career, and of course advance astronomy is simply a mass of mathematics.”
Readers that share Lovecraft’s lack of mathematic aptitude are nevertheless able to appreciate the eerie idea of “strange angles” and the mystique of “non-Euclidean calculus.” Likewise, in Plunge, the creative team uses strange math to unsettle readers.
Not only do the covers of Plunge feature mysterious numbers, but every chapter has an elaborate equation, apparently written in blood on the bulkhead of a ship, in order to deliver a numeric result that corresponds to the number of each chapter. The letters in the names of the creator credits are replaced by numbers, such that “Joe Hill” is presented as “Joe H111” and “Stuart Immonen” becomes “S7uart 1mm0nen.” Readers know immediately that math will be an important feature of the comic.
In issue three, Lacome reveals to Carpenter that in 1983, the body of the Derleth’s captain was found floating in a raft; she was discovered holding a formula that proved the “Stronger Milin Conjecture,” solving “a problem that had baffled mathematicians for years.” The juxtaposition of a captain’s rotting corpse holding a formula that solves a puzzling mathematics problem pairs the miraculous with the frightening and unnatural.
(Readers should note that the creative team depicts a formula that indeed does prove the Stronger Milin Conjecture. However, the creators cannot claim credit for it, as it was proposed by mathematician Louis de Branges in 1985, two years after the Derleth formula is discovered in the story.)
The leader of the Derleth crew, Julian Foyle, reveals that they have also solved Pi to the end. When Lacome points out that Pi doesn’t end, Foyle’s response is chilling: “But it does. And to… see the complete number… is to see the… universe… as the god… of Christ… and Judas Iscariot… might see it… were he not… long dead.”
Foyle goes on to say that his shipmates have also proven the Riemann Hypothesis and confirmed Crouzeix’s Conjecture (a currently unsolved mathematical problem of matrix theory), but he dismisses such wondrous achievements as “… little more… than the games… of children… They… depend on… Euclidean mathematics… with their… flawed attachment… to a rational universe…”
Foyle believes that society’s mathematic understanding is based on a flawed attachment to a rational universe, and his crew’s achievements support his frightening idea that the universe is not structured or rational. And that subtle, creepy, and very Lovecraftian idea is more disturbing than any corpse or giant monster that might also appear in the comic.
NOTES AND FURTHER READING — The following sources were used by the author in preparing the above article:
Plunge issues 1 through 3 (the series is still ongoing) by writer Joe Hill, artist Stuart Immonen, colorist Dave Stewart, and letterer Deron Bennett. These issues can be purchased online or at your local comic shop.
Lovecraft: A Look Behind the “Cthulhu Mythos” by Lin Carter (Ballantine Books, 1972) — the information regarding Lovecraft’s interest in astronomy came from this book.
The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft edited by Leslie S. Klinger (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014) — specifically Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928) and “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1933). The book’s annotations were helpful in identifying the history behind Lovecraft’s mathematic references in these stories.
“Lovecraft and Mathematics: Non-Euclidean Geometry” at lovecraftianscience.wordpress.com — the quote from Lovecraft regarding his dislike of mathematics is taken from this article, which cites S.T. Joshi’s I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft (Hippocampus Press, 2013)
“Supernatural Horror in Literature” by H. P. Lovecraft (1927); an online version can be found online at www.hplovecraft.com.
“A Friendly Introduction to the Riemann Hypothesis” by Thomas Wright (2010) which can be found online at Johns Hopkins University.
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