Lessons in Bad-Assery

The above picture by Fred Bastide suits to the t what I am looking after.

Yes, I am working on one editing a Scifi comic anthology and writing few superhero comicbooks of not my origianl creation. And the King Kong vs Bin Laden. And a few others.

But my wrenched interest in Mythos revealed to us by H.P.Lovecraft still lurks in my arteries, corrupting my heart with it's venomous siren song.

And not just that either. The picture holds raw unabided redneck power in itself.

You see sometime ago I got in a deep conversation about comics and creating them. This happened as my calf was getting tattoo of picture of Hulk and Daredevil by David Finch.

In my life not that uncommon.

Anyways, the discussion went to conclusion that both dig hardboiled fiction, comics, great art and apocalyptic themes. And when it comes to apocalypse there isn't much better source of impending doom than the Old Ones.

You see Cthulhu mythos is fertile ground for any tale, from cosmic to personal, and while it (for very, very reasonably) has been used mainly in horror, there have been adaptations to other genres of storytelling.

But in the original stories of H.P.Lovecraft there was something else. As scary and disturbing as ancient gods beyond good and evil who do not care one bit.

No matter whether in Arkham city or seaport village of Innsmouth there was hints of decadence, a downseeped wrongness.

Lovecraft has been often accused of being racist, but majority of backwatery folks in his tales are wrong because of inbredness and madness almost unheard in comics.

If you disregard Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.

Many consider it to be just a vulgar piece set only to reach and break new taboos in OTTness in comics. That's their belief and opinion and they are entitled to it.

It's a free world. Everyone has right to be wrong if they really want to, why should I stop them?

In Preacher Jesse Custer's family and most of Salvation and of course the holy bloodline are stircrazy in same vein as the great book and excellent film adaptation, the Delivarence.

As I write these very words it's nighttime and I am deep in similar ground.

As a kid I saw the next door neighbour of our cottage. Some six months after his failed suicide attempt. Done with shotgun in mouth.

There are far too many pieces of sibling "love" products that have successive birthdefects from inbreeding.

Well, that and moonshine.

And there were relatives chained up in attics and every now and then they escaped and were hunted down and shackled back away from public view.

So Innsmouth sounded very likely to me and Preacher might have as well been a documentary.

but that is only one part of the equation.

the other is tough guy action/crime story.

And with tough guy I mean real tough guys, Clint Eastwood or Chow Yun-Fat

I like the old school violence as action goes. And these actors I mentioned portray it. because they are actors. They have brains as well as brawn. They are heroes with tarnished reputation. Human-sized.

That is a hard act to follow or to do well, but if you don't set to do it well it's better not to do it at all. The mixture needs only frankness, willingness to tell things truthfully, without any sugarcoating.

I have thought of several Cthulhu-related stories, some scripts are under work and as such -off my hands. But here the thing is there is ample opportunity to engulf oneself into almost everything my dark heart craves for:

a detective story of hard knocks with faint air of apocalypse arising. The violently rough edges of noir passing ever so slightly into deep dark waters of occult paranoia. If I go and add a single femme fatale... well...I would read that.

I just hope the artist feels the same.