How IDW Updated a Classic HP Lovecraft Tale With Sickening Results

How IDW Updated a Classic H.P. Lovecraft Tale With Sickening Results

H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” received a comic book adaptation from IDW that retains the terrifying appeal of the original classic tale.

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How IDW Updated a Classic HP Lovecraft Tale With Sickening Results

H.P. Lovecraft is one of the most prolific writers in science fiction horror in all of world literature. His tales forsook the common tropes of goblins and rankled spirits in favor of terrors from beyond the stars. Having written more than 60 stories, Lovecraft created the genre known as cosmic horror through his extensive catalog of short stories and novellas. Many have been adapted and updated throughout the past century within nearly every medium possible. In 2011, IDW Publishing released an updated take on “The Dunwich Horror,” a tale set within Lovecraft’s core set of stories, the Cthulu Mythos.

Written in 1928 and published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1929, “The Dunwich Horror” rests within the last quarter of all of Lovecraft’s works. While the first three-fourths of Lovecraft’s work consists primarily of short stories detailing a variety of fantastic supernatural stories, it was with The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath written in 1927 (though not published until 1943) that Lovecraft transitioned into writing novella’s. His later works combined elements of his previous short stories into a shared universal narrative, shifting from abstract dreamscapes to contemporary locales set primarily within New England.

How IDW Updated a Classic HP Lovecraft Tale With Sickening Results

“The Dunwich Horror” is set within the fictional town of Dunwich, Massachusetts. Isolated and mostly decrepit, Dunwich is the ideal location for the Whately family to commit a series of horrific, otherworldly rites. Through the course of the story it is revealed that Wilbur Whately, a tremendously deformed young man, and his grandfather have been summoning an extraplanetary entity into the world. Wilbur attempts to steal a copy of the Necronomicon from the Miskatonic University’s library. He is killed by a guard dog and the few men that witness the event swear to stop what the Whately’s began. The beast escapes from the Whately estate and goes on a rampage, killing many innocent people. The men from the Miskatonic University are successful in defeating the monster, that screams for its father Yog-Sothoth with its dying breath.

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H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror (by Joe R. Lansdale, Peter Bergting, Robert Weinberg, and Menton3) tells a similar, yet altered tale. A group of young adults reunite over the funeral of a friend. Coinciding with the death of their friend are a rash of grisly and violent attacks on local wildlife; cattle are found strewn about the countryside, many without heads, others twisted beyond recognition. After the funeral, the group sits down and reflects on their history together, a history replete with dark magic and forbidden rituals. Many years ago, after finding the notes of a local man named Wilbur Whately, the friends had performed the rites in the notes and accidentally summoned the beast Yog-Sothoth. Now, years later, they deem it their responsibility to banish the creature that killed their friend. All but one of the group is slaughtered in their climactic battle against the eldritch beast, but in the end Earth is saved as Yog-Sothoth is banished back from whence it came.

The modern take on “The Dunwich Horror” works well: it parallels the original narrative closely while introducing enough new elements to give it a unique feel. Timothy Henry Armitage, for example, is the name of the leader of the friends in the 2011 version, but was one of the doctors from the original story that defeated the beast. Our modern world may contain more powerful automobiles, guns, and even cellphones, but not even those wondrous human inventions are enough to stop the creatures from beyond the veil.

Lovecraft’s stories are timeless and universal as they focus on the mental fortitude of the average person in their fight against powers that are infinitely powerful. Regardless of who a person may be or where they are from, they are still only human, and it is with our frail composition that we must stand against forces from far across the stars. While our innate human limitations may be terrifying in many ways, it is the heights to which human perseverance and bravery can grow that brings light to Lovecraft’s tales of celestial darkness.

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Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/lovecraft-dunwich-horror-comic-idw-publishing/

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