I mentioned complicated comic book stuff yesterday involving gods and a multiverse, but today I just want to make a briefer note, still horrorish, about Mark Waid (the writer behind another apocalyptic DC Comics series, Kingdom Come; one of Morrison’s co-writers on the year-long weekly series 52; a scheduled guest on L.A. Ink last night; and incidentally a big-wig comics writer who told me he really liked the Justice League stories I wrote and that “the industry needs” me, which was really nice of him).
He’ll be editing a Nyarlathotep comic book, based on the H.P. Lovecraft mythos that includes the so-named ancient, evil god — a dark intruder from dimensions beyond known space. I just like typing the word “Nyarlathotep.” (Perhaps Waid will mostly cut and paste it, though.)
In less scary literary news, you may have seen reports this week, on Paddington Bear’s fiftieth anniversary, noting (as this L.A. Times piece did last year) that he is an illegal Latin American immigrant (from Peru, specifically) — and a very civil, productive illegal immigrant indeed. (Pooh, by contrast, is obviously a paleocon.)
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from darkest peru, specifically, which I’ve always been somewhat dissapointed I could never find. it seems that it might be in the amazon region – but i don’t think there are many bears there (least of all retired ones) – or perhaps the andes (which don’t strike me as very dark). another possibility is that he hailed from the northern part of the country, specifically the area disputed by ecuador – which means he might not be peruvian after all.
my own paddington, though, hails from harrods, arriving in providence (or perhaps brooklyn) in the early 1970s. quite legally, and in a cardboard box.
Wait, you lived in Providence and/or Brooklyn long before college? I didn’t know that.
Wait a second…
Those were also the two homes of H.P. Lovecraft…and in one of those places you received a mysterious, animalistic totem in a cardboard box, ostensibly from England (supposedly from Harrods — but for all you know, from secretive archaeologists affiliated with the British Museum)?
I hate to break this to you, but your “bear” may not be quite what he seems.
And perhaps ultimately we should blame Yeats, who wrote stuff like the ominous and vaguely Egyptian-sounding “Second Coming,” one year before Lovecraft’s “Nyarlathotep” — and in the midst of the pessimism-inducing upheavals of World War I, which also influenced Tolkien (and which, as Jacob Levy recently reminded me, make our current political concerns look not so bad).
P.S. If you were to tell us you also once lived in dreaded Peru, the land from which the fabled bear-beast is said ultimately to hail, and that your body is covered with large, strange markings, I would have no choice but to cry “Witch! She serves the Outer Ones! Enter not her dwelling and hope to emerge intact!’
damn. my secret is out.
And in a further geo-coincidence, this weekend sees the start of my friend Paul Raphaelson’s photo exhibit of his ten years living in DUMBO (in Brooklyn — and he’s also got photo series about Rhode Island) as it transformed from bleak wasteland full of wild dogs (literally) to yuppiefying haven.
I think I’ll visit the pics circa 3pm Saturday with my visiting parents, and you can too if you go to the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Public Library, here:
http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/branch_library_detail.jsp?branchpageid=117
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