With the sad news of the passing of the legend who was Stan Lee, it seems apposite to post something which speaks to the intersections between the worlds of Lovecraft and those of comic book superheroes. Indeed, the fact that so much of Lovecaft’s work appeared in the pulps perhaps places him in the same cultural tradition of superhero comics; like superhero comics, it has only been in the last decade or so that there has been mainstream recognition of the wider cultural influence of Lovecraft’s work. Literary agent Julius Schwartz, who represented Lovecraft, also became an editor at DC Comics, overseeing he revival of Batman in the 1960s. (And, of course, we cannot forgo mention here of the infamous Arkham Asylum, which has become a central facet of Batman mythology).
In any case, one interesting point of intersection between Lovecraftian, superhero, and gaming fan cultures is Kenneth Hite’s Adventures into Darkness: a supplement for the Mutants and Masterminds rpg, which starts from the conceit that Lovecaft survived beyond 1937, eventually securing a career as a comic book writer for Adventures into Darkness (an actual title which was published during the early 1950s), incorporating his Cthulhu mythos into the pulp realm of two-fisted suprherodom. I actually refereed a short-lived Mutants and Masterminds campaign using Adventures into Darkness sometime around 2009. I titled this ‘Arkham Knights’, setting the campaign in a noirish 1940s Arkham, which had grown to the size of a vast metropolis encompassing Dunwich and Innsmouth (a similar idea informed Pelgrane Press’ recent Cthulhu City - great minds and all that); therein, the player characters had gained extraordinary powers through their contact with the forces of the Cthulhu mythos, which they subsequently battled under the tutelage of ‘Nightgaunt’ (the ‘Arkham Knights’ analogue of Batman). But I digress...
I’m also reminded that the opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 - my favourite entry into the Marvel cinematic universe to date - involves a giant, betentacled interdimensional entity.
Safe journeying, Stan Lee, throughout those wild worlds of cosmic wonder to which you introduced so many of us. Excelsior!
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