H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call Of Cthulhu: an Intermedial Analysis of its Graphic Adaptation

Abstract

My research involves the most renowned tale by the master of modern horror
H.P. Lovecraft, The call of Cthulhu, and its adaptations into contemporary comics and graphic
novels, in particular the one by Swiss writer/artist Michael Zigerlig.
The first part of this analysis focuses on Lovecraft’s style and the main characteristics
of this tale, including some defining traits of this modern style of horror.
From the methodological point of view, the paper uses Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny
(1919) as well as Tzvetan Todorov’s The fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary
Genre in order to explore the relationship between the characters’ psychological motivations
and those unheimlich or uncanny (unfamiliar) elements that they may discover withinthemselves or others (a strange grim, sound, etc.). I shall explore if these abject feelings
arise from the outside (i.e. the sudden realization that things are different from what they
expected), or if it has to do with internal factors (i.e. old forgotten and unconscious
memories, that in Freud “ought to have remained hidden and secret, and yet comes to
light.”(Freud 1919: 5)
The approach summarized above will allow me to unveil an essential point in
lovecraftian horror, namely that absolute Truth is unattainable and that the illogical, the
unnatural and the uncanny are all part of life and represent ancient chaotic forces within the
universe, beyond the world that we perceive every day. Extraordinary and poltergeist
elements are, for Lovecraft, a reaction against the ‘true’ laws of the universe. His characters
attempt to find knowledge and scientific explanations in a sort of Faustian spirit that
eventually drives them to damnation and insanity. This collapse of the mind will be analyzed
in the terms of terror and horror caused by the confrontation of a sublime version of reality,
in the terms used by Burke in his book A philosophical enquiry on the ideas of the beautiful
and the sublime (1757).
The essay will place Todorov’s work The Fantastic (1975) in relation to Freud’s idea
of the uncanny. I will show how these works explain the duality present in Lovecraftian
characters, who struggle for scientifically logical explanations and at the same time face
traumatic events at the climax of the story when they realize that there is no possible
explanation.
Finally, in what concerns Michael Zigerlig’s adaptation of Lovecraft’s work, I will first
focus on language, “key to Lovecraft’s horror” according to Zigerlig, as well as on the
intermedial aspects resulting from the semiotic negotiation between text and images. I shall
analyze how language and image interact in order to upset the perceptual experience of the
reader and create suspense and fear in the story. In particular, many vignettes use explicit
references to vision (see below), traditionally a symbol of the Enlightenment and the rational
acquisition of knowledge. The notion of ambiguity in relation to intermedial aspects is of
particular interest. (see López-Varela 2008, 2011).