Alan Moore’s H.P. Lovecraft
How the writer (and wizard) brought Lovecraft to his darkest conclusions in Providence
What happens when an unstoppable force strikes an immovable object?
I don’t know. I’m just some guy. But I’d to think it looks something like Alan Moore’s Providence.
Let’s start with the immovable object—H.P. Lovecraft, a titan of horror fiction. Lovecraft was, and is, genre-defining. Over the course of about 60 short stories and novellas written in the early 20th century, he crafted a cosmos, one populated by idiot gods and twisted beings that lurked beneath the sea. His fictional world is an unknowable and cruel one, in which human beings who chance a glimpse behind the veil of the everyday are driven mad by what they see. The stories run cold with a foreboding atmosphere—New England fog, isolated farmhouses, ancient buried cities—and inspire lingering dread. His influence remains powerful, infecting horror fiction of all stripes.
And now the unstoppable force—Alan Moore, a titan of comics. Moore made his bones in the superhero trenches, writing for Swamp Thing, Captain Britain and others before 1985, when he published the work he’s likely best known for, Watchmen. His masterful superhero saga was named one of Time’s 100 Best Novels published since 1923, the only graphic novel to appear on the list. Since that masterpiece, he’s written many more of the greatest stories in the industry, such as V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell, along with the monumental novel Jerusalem.
When I learned that Moore was writing a Lovecraft-inspired comic series, it was mind-boggling. Two of the great literary forces that had produced some of my favorite fiction ever were colliding.
The result is Providence, a comic published from 2015 to 2017. The series is a wholly unique, strange, disturbing, grotesque and a fascinating meeting of titans across mediums, one I’d heartily recommend.
But first, a brief diversion. To fully appreciate Providence, you should read two shorter series Moore wrote in 2003 and 2010, The Courtyard and its sequel Neonomicon. Before Providence, these two comics were Moore’s first take on Lovecraft, and Providence makes reference to them. Set in contemporary New York, they follow an investigation into ritual murders that appear to have some strange connection to Lovecraft’s work.
(At this point, I think it’s worth noting that The Courtyard, Neonomicon and Providence were all illustrated by Jacen Burrows, the artist behind, among many other things, Crossed, one of the most violent mainstream comics ever written. I bring this up to credit Burrows, but also to note that, like Crossed, these comics can be incredibly graphic at times, both in violence and sex, particularly Neonomicon. Fair warning.)
Providence is set in 1919, the year before Lovecraft entered his most productive period, writing the stories that would become classics. It follows Robert Black, a New York reporter who ventures to New England with hopes of writing a novel about the experience.
But Moore quickly makes it clear that Providence’s 1919 is not quite the 1919 of history books. Black’s New York has “Lethal Chambers,” compartments where people commit state-sanctioned suicide, and the city is plagued by rumors of a book that drives those who read it insane, Sous Le Monde. These are both elements from the fiction of Robert W. Chambers, whose short stories, most notably The King in Yellow, were influential on Lovecraft.
As Black makes his way to New England, he encounters other strange phenomena: grotesque totems, fishy-looking men, rumors of strange ghouls. The country Black explores is Lovecraft’s—one in which not only his stories, but the stories of his predecessors and his influences are reality.
Chambers and Lovecraft and the other writers in their orbit are all real as well in Providence, their fiction being published as Black’s story unfolds, which introduces another layer to the story. It is a literary idea made real—a world in which their words are more than just fiction.
Moore is a master mimic. You can see it in Watchmen, when he apes adventure comics with Tales of the Black Freighter, and in Jerusalem, as he writes each chapter in a unique literary style. In Providence, he wears Lovecraft’s cloak, using his style and imagery with exactitude. The issues read like a tour through Lovecraft’s world, written by someone who has explored it deeply and thought about it with insight, context and depth—and who also happens to be a great horror storyteller.
But Providence is far from a simple re-telling of Lovecraft stories through a new lens. What makes it so fascinating and worthwhile is that, from the first issue, it hints at a darker central point. While he explores Lovecraft’s world, Moore is simultaneously trying to conclude Lovecraft’s entire literary project. He envisions a finale for the vast mythos Lovecraft made. It’s the kind of bold undertaking only someone like Moore would dare.
Moore’s speculative and metafictional approach proposes an end point for the world of old gods, deep-sea beasts, and the hapless humans at their mercy—one that involves Lovecraft himself as a character in this vast, nihilistic horror.
How does it all connect and conclude, this mad world of H.P.’s? Well, Robert Black’s exploration of New England draws him through Lovecraft’s stories and closer to Lovecraft himself, to the secret behind his weird writing … a secret I won’t spoil here.
You’ll have to read it yourself. But I will say that it's a vast and bleak ending, one that does justice to the literary legacy of Lovecraft and shows us, in its bold and disturbing beauty, what happens when and unstoppable force strikes an immovable object.