THE LOVECRAFT CONUNDRUM

The works of H.P. Lovecraft present a challenge to the newly born science of crossover-ology. Though there were assorted crossover stories in prose fiction prior to HPL, the Providence author, along with Cross Plains scribe Robert E. Howard, was among the first to tie together several fictional narratives with a common mythology.

But are all of those references true crossovers? I've formulated the theory that such crossovers require "agency" between at least two distinct icons or icon-groupings. A simple reference to the activity of a given icon in one narrative within a second icon's narrative is not sufficient, as per my reading of Dennis Wheatley's 1953 novel TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER.

Many Lovecraft stories don't directly show the horrific beings invoked in the narrative. THE DUNWICH HORROR is about the half-human spawn of a human woman and the extradimensional demon Yog-Sothoth, so the spawn is an icon, but Yog-Sothoth is never seen, and so has no agency in the story. "The Whisperer in Darkness" references most of the Great Old Ones of the so-called "Cthulhu mythos," but they're not actually in the story, and so that too may not be any sort of true crossover, but only a "null-crossover."

I've fantasized about doing a massive re-read of HPL, but that doesn't seem likely at present, However, a tome called THE NEW ANNOTATED H.P. LOVECRAFT has gathered together all the stories that editor Leslie Klinger thought most relevant to the Mythos, which, as Klinger helpfully notes, HPL only called "the Arkham Cycle" in his correspondence. Klinger does not include every story with a "Cycle" reference, for he omits the short novel DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. But the 22 stories selected probably comprise the better part of the Cycle, and so may be useful for my purposes here.

Just to bring up a minor comics-context, the annotated collection sports an introduction by Alan Moore, but IMO he doesn't say anything of importance about Lovecraft, much less crossovers (though Moore did work various HPL references into his LOEG works, including a "true crossover" appearance for Nyarlathotep in BLACK DOSSIER.