Alan Moore - Providence

[andydecker]

Providence – written by Alan Moore, artwork by Jacen Burrows (Avatar Press, 2015, 12 issue series)

This story from British comic writer Alan Moore is another interpretation of the world of H. P. Lovecraft, also it continues his earlier stories The Courtyard and Neonomicon. What is it about? The words of some protagonist in the last issue sums it up pretty well: "If half of this is true, then Lovecraft and his stories were engineered to cause what’s happening now." Cthulhu's rebirth and a new reality.

In many regards Providence takes the idea of metafiction, so beloved by the now elder generation of comic writers starting in the 80s to a new height. It puts the stories of Lovecraft in a new context, but this is only the start. Changing Lovecraft into a character of a Mythos story is nothing new, but here the literary reception of everything HPL in the last decades also becomes part of the story which mixes reality and fiction.

The plot: 1919. America. The protagonist, clueless Jewish homosexual reporter Robert Blake is working in New York. After the suicide of his lover which haunts him he travels New England researching a novel. (This is not our world but the parallel world established in Moore's The Courtyard.) The interview of the reclusive Dr. Alvarez who is living in an air-conditioned apartment in the cold because of a supposed illness gives Blake the idea for a novel about the "secret" occult America. Alvarez – who is none other than the doomed protagonist Doctor Muñoz from Lovecraft's story "Cool Air" – mentions an "early Arab alchemical text" named Kitab Al-Hikmah Al-Najmiyya ("The Book of Starry Wisdom") which is about the prolonging of life. In Mythos fiction this is the Necronomicon.

The second issue has Blake visiting an occult scholar named Suydam – the villain of the Lovecraft story "The Horror of Red Hook" – in Flatbush, in whose basement he stumbles upon a sea cave and a female monster. Blake dismisses it as a hallucination und moves on.

In the course of the series he travels to the actual cities which were the inspirations for Lovecraft's fictional cities and meets the later villains of said stories like the Deep Ones, the Whateley brothers or young Asenath Waite. Blake just ignores the deeply disturbing encounters at each visit and doesn't understand that all those people use him to fulfil a prophecy in which H. P. Lovecraft's later stories will help to bring about the apocalypse. In issue 9 + 10 Blake finally meets Lovecraft in Providence and inspires him through his experiences to create all those stories in the first place.

Willard Wheatley, Providence’s analog for Wilbur Whateley    Elspeth Wade who is Providence‘s analogue for Asenath Waite

At the end of each issue the story is again repeated in Blake's diary from his point of view. Which is of course the exact opposite from the things read in the comic, but also moves the story forward for the reader.

TBC

[helrunar]

It started out very promisingly and for a time, I found it fascinating. Then as it wound on the fascination began to wear off and irritation began to set in. I never purchased the final issue.

H.

[andydecker]

Some last thoughts:

In the series Moore basically tries to transform the Mythos and the Dreamland stories into one coherent narrative while also incorporating the literary criticism and reception of Mythos fiction. Issue 11 tells the end of the featured Mythos stories and the rise of Mythos fiction and criticism, the "the Necronomicon is real" craze, features real people from August Derleth and Robert H. Barlow to L. S. de Camp and Borges. In the last issue you have S. T. Joshi suddenly in the cast.

Readers unfamiliar with Lovecraft will have a difficult time getting into this. While some of Moore's interpretations of the Mythos background are terrific, some knowledge of the background is needed to understand what this is about. You can't fault anybody for not "getting it"; in this regard it is even more complicated than a Kim Newman novel.

A "dream sequence"                                                            H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Black

For Moore this is nothing new, he did this already in things like Prometha or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But here it is more densely done. Every other panel has some allusion, reference or wink to the Mythos world or to reality. The annotations blog which accompanied the publication is nearly overwhelming.

The clean and realistic artwork of Jacen Burrows often shows landscapes, streets and scenes from 1919, while also repeating set-pieces from the former Lovecraft themed series, say a view from a window or certain characters. This is done without any fanfare though, again one needs the annotations to recognize them all. A few will be recognized by those familiar with the original stories, but a lot not. Burrows never fails in his work, the last issue looks as sharp as the first, and the effort displayed on the page is astonishing.

That aside, this is supposed to be also a horror comic. Every issue at least tries to deliver some horror content. There is not much gore. Here Moore is more interested into the sexual violence only hinted at – or later interpreted by reviewers as Lovecraft sometimes seems really clueless of what he wrote - in Mythos fiction. So you get old and possessed by Yog-Sototh Wheatley – Whateley in the original story The Dunwich Horror – molesting his daughter on the page and the body-switching of long dead sorcerer Ephraim Waite – from The Thing on the Doorstep - who resides in the body of his daughter Asenath. Here he switches into protagonist Blakes body to rape the body of Asenath while Blake is imprisoned in Asenath's body for the time. Very well done is also the time-distortion story of the witch Mason and her familiar – from Dreams in the Witch House - and how it messes with the protagonist Blake's head.

From a technical viewpoint Providence is a masterpiece of writing and artwork. How seemingly effortless the pieces come together and make sense in this new, decades spanning narrative is fascinating. The tons of details are overwhelming and inventive.

For advanced Lovecraft fans this can be a treasure trove where one panel can open the way to countless possibilities. Some of the character designs and all those alternate covers capture the Mythos perfectly. Burrows did outstanding work. But for the casual horror comic reader this may be limp on the horror and an exercise in self-indulgence and art for art's sake. Or downright impregnable.

The end is a mixed bag like often with Moore. It's the end of the world as we know it, but nobody cares (which is explained by the story and makes sense. Still.) It is a riff on the nativity of Jesus, complete with the Mythos version of the three wise men and other guests. There is no action, no fight, just a seemingly inevitable transformation of reality. As an ending it was polarizing, a lot of readers thought it dull and awkward, especially as Providence became a sequel to Neonomicon and its characters. That the protagonist Blake was removed in issue 11 which basically illustrated the next 100 years at a breakneck speed also didn't sit well.

Personally I didn't mind. As an end I thought it very logical and absolutely anti-Hollywood. Every other option would have ruined the idea, a fight against the squid would have been laughable. But there is no denying that it came across as a bit meh.

[helrunar]

Interesting observations, Andreas. I'm glad you got more out of it than I did. I did read all the issues up till the final one where I simply couldn't be bothered.

According to my now rather vague memory, I had a similar experience with Moore's longer-running Promethea serial. The early and middle issues were really great, and for me as someone with an interest in occultism, the narrative of the heroine's journey through the Pathworkings of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life was the most superb thing I've ever seen in any comic book (but I read very few comic books). But the aftermath of the Tree of Life setpiece became increasingly desultory, to me, as if Moore had lost interest in telling a coherent story and was simply grasping at any excuse for further pop-cultural incursions in the style of Philip Jose Farmer (but Moore's, for me, were much less fun). I had to struggle to get through the final issues of Promethea.

So it goes.

Cheers! Hel

[andydecker]

I still haven't read Prometha. Just another comic I hoarded.

Funny, I never considered Farmer in this kind of project but of course you are absolutely right. This kind of writing has become so mind-numbing banal today. This Queen victoria's gardener and Fu Manchu team up to fight against the thugs of India thing.

[helrunar]

Yeah. There's just so much of it and it's become tiresome, in part because it never seems to be done with any remote sense of flair or distinctiveness.

H.

[andydecker]

Jun 16, 2022 21:23:31 GMT helrunar said:

Yeah. There's just so much of it and it's become tiresome, in part because it never seems to be done with any remote sense of flair or distinctiveness.

H.

I see your point. It is indeed all done so detached and downright clinical. The only time where the reader really gets some emotions are the diary entries, and they are so hard to read, even if you can make them bigger in digital, that I guess a lot didn't even bother.

Maybe this coldness is also due to Burrows' art.