Friday Fiction: A Call To Cthulhu

From the delightful Where’s My Shoggoth? to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers, there have been numerous attempts to meld the Cosmic Horror of Lovecraft’s fiction with the children’s author of your choice or in the children’s book format. Some are simple as the Mythos ABC books, whilst others are clever parodies, such as TinTin meets Lovecraft and Ken Hite’s Where the Deep Ones Are published by Atlas Games. At the same time, whilst many can be read by or to children, they often inject a sense of humour into the highly baroque and densely descriptive style of Lovecraft’s writing and this acts as a counter to the cosmic horror and the unknown at the heart of his fiction. Of course, today, Cthulhu and his ilk are known far and wide across multiple media, if not necessarily, the actual details of the story where he appears. A Call To Cthulhu follows this well trod path and not only acknowledges the original story where great Cthulhu first appeared, but many others by H.P. Lovecraft.

A Call To Cthulhu is written and drawn by Norm Konyu and published by Titan Books as part of its Nova imprint for teenage readers. Described as “part comicbook, part artbook, part unsuitable-for-toddlers storybook”, it is a thoroughly modern imagining of Mythos, coming at it via an all too familiar aspect of contemporary life to look back at and reference Lovecraft’s major stories and creations one by one. Cthulhu though, remains the central figure and for reasons that will become clear never strays from the narrative, a lurking, looming figure despite the distances between the narrator and the Great Old One. The conceit of A Call To Cthulhu is that of an unwanted telephone call, one received by Cthulhu himself on his mobile telephone from an unknown caller. Reception it seems, is excellent near the Pacific oceanic pole of inaccessibility, let alone on the ocean floor! It must be something eldritch. The caller—it could be Lovecraft himself or simply the narrator, being shown only in silhouette at the table in the library where he has been reading more than safe for his sanity of the Elder Gods—then begins to berate and castigate Cthulhu for his monstrous nature and inhuman attitudes, complaining how he cannot sleep, that he hears rats in the walls, and hates him, and would give him a wedgie were he a step closer!

The irreverent tone does not just apply to Great Cthulhu, but almost every creation of Lovecraft comes in for a tongue lashing. These, as is most of the book, are presented in richly coloured double spreads contrasting with the text on its stark white pages. The style of the prose is simple, being in the ‘ABCB’ rhyming style, making easy to read—especially aloud. For example:

“Born of the Nameless Mist
Yog-Sothoth is a jerk
Outside of the Galaxy
Where he tends to lurk”

and

“Sharks can be scary
So can a two-headed calf
But penguins, dear Cthulhu
Really?
Are you having a laugh?”

Thus A Call To Cthulhu takes the reader to Dunwich of ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and the Antarctic of ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, but these are not the only stories and places referenced in the book. The narrator in turn takes us to the empty quarter of ‘The Nameless City’, the worst town on the coast of New England in ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, sidesteps into the Dreamlands for an encounter with ‘The Cats of Ulthar’, and beyond in pursuit of Kadath in ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’, before a final confrontation with the eponymous Old One he is awoken and the pirate ship, the Alert, is rammed into his head! All told A Call To Cthulhu encompasses fifteen of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. Of the author’s choices, all but two can be regarded as well known. The lesser known ones here are ‘The White Ship’ and ‘The terrible Old Man’, and whilst there is nothing wrong with their inclusion, they do take the place of more well known stories such as ‘Herbert West, Reanimator’ that on recognition alone would have merited inclusion. Another issue is that ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ has two double spreads devoted to it rather than the one of everything else, but arguably that is the largest of Lovecraft’s stories and so deserves the extra attention.

After having been told where to go by the narrator and Cthulhu has flown off in disgust, A Call To Cthulhu comes to a close two sections of reference material. The first of these asks, ‘Who was H.P. Lovecraft?’ The answer is is given in a short, one page biography which does not stray away from being honest about his social attitudes and racism. It does not dwell on them unnecessarily, but it does make it clear that he had them. The second is a story and illustration key that explains each image and its associated story. This is a useful and pleasing inclusion for the reader wanting to know more and understand the references.

A Call To Cthulhu is a slim volume, but beautifully illustrated veering the comic depictions of Cthulhu as he reacts to the unexpected caller and the more ominous depictions of the peoples, places, and things of the Mythos. Throughout there is a immense sense of scale, of things constantly looming over the reader, whether it is the Colour erupting in the sky in ‘The Colour Out of Space’ or the three-engined Dornier skiplane as it dips between the previously hidden peaks of the mountains and the strange city with its cyclopean architecture in ‘At the Mountains of Madness’.

As much as the narrator yells and screams at Cthulhu, telling the Great Old One how much he hates both him and other aspects of the Mythos, the comedic effect of this is contrasted by an underlying sense that the narrator is also frightened of them both. There is just enough of an edge to A Call To Cthulhu to hint at the horror of the Mythos, to suggest that it is something to be sacred of rather than to laugh at, but without truly scaring the younger reader or the listener who is having this book read to them. This though makes the book more appealing to the older reader as well as the Lovecraft devotee who will appreciate and understand the underlying fear and know its sources.

A little sharper, even spikier than most Lovecraft adaptations for children and younger readers, A Call To Cthulhu is a pleasure to read and a delight to look at. This is a Lovecraftian children’s book that can be read at bedtime and enjoyed by children and non-children alike.