Aug 26, 2022
SPOILERS
I was put onto this book by a Bleeding Cool article. This should have been my first sign that what I was about to read would be twisted. To be even more specific, the article was about the prequel/sequel to this book, Providence. This book was just a means to get to "The Watchmen of Horror". Avatar Press did a recent reprinting of the trade paperback for Neonomicon (which by the way, has a terrible cover compared to literally any of the covers or gallery art inside), and I snatched it up with Providence as well. I went into this mostly blind, with the general idea that Moore was going to deconstruct and examine HP Lovecraft. As someone who enjoys Lovecraft, I was interested in this. And on the other side of this initial volume,
I can say Moore did exactly that. I have a lot of genuine love for this book and the concepts therein, but I think that Moore intended to do something that I find a bit problematic. I don't think he made a mistake or stumbled here. I think it was deliberate. Moore is a great writer, who puts so much thought into every single thing he does that I can't reasonably say he failed to notice the larger implication of some of what he does in this book.
Packaged with Neonomicon is something called The Courtyard. It is a comic book adaptation of a prose story that Alan Moore had written in the 90s. I'll get it out of the way now: The Courtyard is the best part of Neonomicon. The prose is so good, what we get of it. The story has just the right amount of intrigue in such a slim, succinct package. Moore had a fun story to tell with Lovecraftian elements, and it's executed near flawlessly. I'd be remiss if I didn't give credit to Antony Johnston, who no doubt did a fabulous job with the adaptation. Aldo Sax is an Nazi asshole, and the immediate comparisons and inspirations from Lovecraft himself are apparent. His brash, no nonsense (while obsessed with nonsense) narration works so well. I am telling you, Moore doesn't miss with this. The breach into insanity that comes with Aklo is an explosive affair followed by a spiral descent that takes the reader with it, and the consequences of it hit hard. It has Pulp in its veins. It just works. If this is all we ever got from this world Moore created, I'd be wholly satisfied. It's yet another example of Moore's incredible ability.
However, Moore had some taxes to pay off, so he decided to continue the story with Neonomicon. This isn't to say that this book was a rush job, or that it's bad, or that it's corrupted by the motives behind its inception. I just think it's worth noting. This story takes place in the aftermath of the last, and focuses on two FBI agents picking up the pieces where our previous protagonist left off. Gordon Lamper and Merril Brears. Lamper is the lesser of the two characters. His role is meaty, sure, but he's there more to play off of Merril than to have his own arc. Merril is a sex addict who is finally back on the job to investigate a sex cult. Neonomicon is definitely more involved than Courtyard was. The deconstruction begins in earnest here.
It really helps to understand Lovecraft as a person for this one. There are moments where characters will talk about him and his work, and Sax as a stand-in, at the end, basically spells it out. I just really think it helps to stomach the explicit nature of this story. Lovecraft was a fearful man. Not just of blacks and browns, or other minorities, but of sex and the unknown. And those last two frequently overlapped because Lovecraft was fairly asexual. So, the broader point of this story is that the Lovecraft mythos is not only real, and Lovecraft just wrote about it, but that it manifests through a sort of biblical way. Merril's womb is R'lyeh and she's going to birth Cthulhu into the world, to destroy everything. That's what this story sums up to be. How it gets to that point is the more frustrating element.
Merril and Gordon are investigating Johnny Carcosa, who was introduced in The Courtyard, as the person selling Aklo. Of course, he's not actually a person, but an avatar for Nyarlathotep. An Outer God who sows chaos and madness, in an attempt to enact the will of the other Outer Gods. Which is exactly what he does here, as the investigation into him leads these FBI agents towards a sex cult in Innsmouth. They attempt to go undercover as patrons of Lovecraft and sex, only to be outted in the midst of an orgy they have no interest in taking part of. This leads to Gordon being shot dead, and Merril being raped by cultists. Eventually, this raises the orgone levels enough to summon one of the Deep Ones, a race of creatures that frequently develop relationships with human communities, in order to trade treasures for subservience. In this instance, the Deep One has sex with the cultists for pleasure. However, it takes a unique interest in their new captive, Merril. So, the cultists keep her locked away with it, where it then rapes her for several days. Eventually, she pisses in front of it, and it tastes the pee. This leads to it breaking her out of captivity and saving her from the cultists. She immediately sends in the FBI, who kill the monster and the cultists. At least the ones still left after the monster turned on them. So, if it's not clear what happened here, here's a summary: The sex addicted woman is raped by sex cultists and then by a fish monster, who impregnates her with Cthulhu. The piss tasting was like a pregnancy test. After this, Merril becomes a confident woman, no longer struggling, and she wants to take out the world.
This is problematic to me. Again, for the third time, Merril is a sex addict. The story has a weird hangup about it too. Like, she's constantly reminded of it by others. It comes up a lot. And then she goes through this severely traumatic experience involving sex, only to come out stronger for it? Very odd. And yeah, Moore adds some dialogue in there that basically makes it sound like Merril is being controlled by the Cthulhu growing in her womb. But that's said at the end of the story, so for at least an issue and a half, she's slowly warming up to this creature and exudes a new confidence, inexplicably, through her rape and trauma. Big ol' yikes for that one.
Now, there is something to counterbalance that. Moore isn't a hack, as much as he loves to use rape as a device in storytelling. Why is everything so explicit? Why is there a sex cult, whose orgy is so incredibly lascivious, to the point where they just burst with excitement at the size of a fish monster's penis, and how giant his load is? Well, there's a moment in the story while Merril is being raped where she has a vision, meeting with Johnny Carcosa. He basically tells her she's to be the bearer of Cthulhu, and that the Outer Gods respect her a ton. He also says that the sex cult is not with them, and that they are sorry for that whole ordeal. Lovecraft was asexual and afraid of an inherently feminine form of sexuality. That's why Merril's womb is R'lyeh. That's why later she has a dream, where Lovecraft is screaming as a tentacle begins to come out from inside her. The imagery is apparent. This is also why everything is so goddamn explicit. The story is taking cues from Lovecraft by inverting his style of leaving things ambiguous and undescribed. The cultists, self proclaimed super fans of Lovecraft, embody what he fears and hates. The rape, as hard as it is to see and read, is part of the larger deconstruction of Lovecraft.
Make no mistake, Moore (and Burrows) knew exactly what they were doing, and put a lot of thought into what went onto the page. As easy as it'd be to disregard this story as smut or cruel nonsense, it really isn't. It's smart! It's just incredibly uncomfortable. I'm stuck with a book that I really enjoy. The ideas are so interesting. I want to see more. I'm going to read Providence as soon as I can. But... I cannot recommend this to anyone, really. It's just so gross, and the intentional nature of it doesn't change anything about that. I really think this is a great comic and I hope that enough people were able to see that when they read it.
It's better than Watchmen. more
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