Why the Great Old Ones Aren’t Enough Anymore
Cosmic Horror Is More Than the Overused Lovecraftian Creations which spawned it
Let me start with a cosmic horror confession: I never really found Cthulhu all that scary.
Sure, in the short story “The Call of Cthulhu”, we bear witness to the giant city of R’lyeh beneath the furthest reaches of the South Pacific. Built of unfathomable angles on a mind-twisting cyclopean scale, it is horrific geometry, black, jagged stone, and the awful hint of its foul denizens lurking in the dripping shadows. That’s damn cool.
Yet once Lovecraft looses Cthulhu on us, I never really got the horror I was supposed to feel.
“A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings” — Call of Cthulhu
The lack of horror was even further reduced when I saw Lovecraft’s own drawing of Cthulhu. Iä ftagn indeed! Cthulhu looks like he’s on the potty.
While I was not unaware of the idea that its mountainous scope, its hideous stench, the mind-ruining…
