MYTHCOMICS: RAT GOD (2015)

Richard Corben’s meditation on both the era and the art of H.P. Lovecraft is a rara avis indeed: a critique of turn-of-the-century American racism that eschews ego-boosting righteousness in favor of a plain-spoken realism about the ways human beings treat one another. And despite being a dramatic work at its core, RAT GOD is also brilliantly funny in many places.

The main setting is New England in the 1920s (taking place partly in Lovecraft’s fictional city Arkham), and the main character is a physical doppelganger for HPL, here given the staidly respectable Anglo-Saxon name of “Clark Elwood.” Though none of the Lovecraftian gods appear in the story, Corben has Clark swear by Cthuilhu and Yog-Sothoth, and use fancy words like “gibbous”  and “eldritch.” However, before the reader encounters Clark, RAT GOD’s first eleven pages deal with two Native Americans, a brother and sister, fleeing from tribal enemies in the wilderness, apparently back in the days before the advent of Columbus. A totem with the image of a “rat god” appears once, but Corben does not explicitly align either tribe with this repulsive deity.

Though the title of Corben’s work begs associations with HPL’s  “The Rats in the Walls,” the greatest similarity is that of protagonists are, at the outset, initially sure of being at the top of the ethnicity-totem pole. After page 11,  the physical struggles of the aboriginals give way, via a time-shift, to the struggles of Chuk and Kito, a brother and sister who are implicitly descendants of the first siblings—though by the 20^th century, their struggles  have more to do with defining themselves in a world now owned by white people.

In point of fact, Kito, sister to Chuk, does not appear on page 12, but she’s the subject of a conversation between Chuk and Clark. Chuk informs Clark that though they’ve never met, Chuk is aware that Clark is dating his sister. Clark, having been unaware that Kito is at least partly Indian, is not pleased with Chuk’s revelation. Clark picks a fight with Chuk and gets quickly beat down. (Clark is far more pugnacious than any HPL protagonist: he’s something like a Robert E. Howard character who can’t really fight but sometimes wins by sheer doggedness.) As Clark licks his wounds he remembers his encounters with Kito in Arkham, with whom he falls in love even though “she’s kind of funny looking.” In the course of their dates, Kito reluctantly relates her escape from a “rat hole” called Lame Dog. 

This town was originally an ancient settlement of the Cthanhluk tribe, but it was taken over in the 1800s by white gold-hunters. The gold-seekers soon left, leaving Lame Dog to be dominated by what Kito herself calls a “mongrel hybrid” made up of white and red people. However, even with most of the white settlers gone, there’s still one rich white guy in charge of things, Zachariah Peck, whose ancestor studied the pagan practices of the Cthanhluks. Kito relates how she and Chuk escaped Lame Dog without Clark ever tipping to the idea that she too may be of mixed race. The two lovers quarrel when Clark finds out how she makes her living, and though Clark intends to forgive her her trespasses, he learns that she’s fled back to Lame Dog. Despite all of his Anglo-Saxon misgivings, Clark pursues the object of his desire.

The town of Lame Dog might be termed an “Innsmouth for rats.” The residents, all of whom encourage Clark to get lost, often have a rodent-like look about them, regardless of their race or social station. One such is Gharlena, a grotesque but earthy young white woman who tries to seduce Clark. Far less earthy is Damon Peck, son of the patriarch Zachariah, who initially tries to get rid of Clark as well, only to change his mind when he gets the idea that Clark may serve as a catspaw with which to slay Zachariah. The patriarch follows in the footsteps of HPL’s evil de la Poer family, having built up a religion based on human sacrifice. However, instead of using regular-sized rodents, Zachariah’s religion worships a giant flesh-and-blood rat-creature. Damon asserts that the giant animal is some sort of mutant. However, given that Corben has suggested the existence of an aboriginal rat-god, Damon may not be privy to all the mysteries of his father’s cult.

Without giving away all aspects of the story’s ending, suffice to say that Clark’s quest for Kito has a more satisfying conclusion than the story-arcs of most HPL characters.  To be sure, Corben doesn’t let Clark keep his delusion of racial superiority. By the end of RAT GOD, he’s a long way from the man who starts out the story claiming that “my family has been the racial backbone of New England for generations.” Rather, he becomes thoroughly implicated in the mixed-race world of Lame Dog. Thankfully, though, Corben resists any impulse to cast even margjnalized races as suffering, sinned-against innocents. Whereas Lovecraft took the position that all humans were doomed to descend into a hell of degeneracy, Corben plays with the images of miscegenation and perhaps some sort of spiritual bestiality in order to emphasize the common visceral heritage shared by every ethnicity. And, for what it’s worth, it’s also a world where women are free to be every bit as visceral and degenerate as any man.