The nicest email I got this Halloween was from SOTA Toys letting me know that my samples of Nightmares of Lovecraft were on the way. Lovecraft you say? Skip down if you know, read on if you don’t. H.P. Lovecraft was a writer during the earliest days of pulp magazines like Weird Tales. Think 1920s and 30s. He wrote horror stories although some of his work fits loosely in the adventure and science fiction genre. Purists quibble about such matters but noone disputes that Lovecraft is one of the most influential creative personalities in the history of the horror story form.
A voracious reader and enthusiastic correspondent (Lovecrafts published volumes of letters actually exceed his fiction output in number of volumes). though he never traveled far outside his native New England he maintained a wide circle of friends and colleagues who were so enthusiastic regarding his work that when he died an early death at the age of 46 they saw to it that his work continued to be published. Such early collections are among the most valuable of rare books.
His most famous work involved a series of stories and one novel that later came to be called The Cthulhu Mythos. Put simply, the Cthulhu mythos postulated a universe indifferent even hostile to humankind, that had once been ruled over by The Old Ones. Banished aeons ago to an outer dimension, the Godlike beings sleep, until the moment of their return, which would signal the end of the dream that was man. Drenched in Gothic atmosphere and dread Lovecraft imbued his shadowy creation with an otherness that has haunted generations. Later writers picked up the Mythos (as contemporary writer and Lovecraft friend August Derleth had termed it), and began to add to it. Such additions have never really stopped nor has anyone truly equaled Lovecraft’s own grasp of the world he created. There is virtually no storytelling medium that has not seen extensive use of Lovecraftian imagery. References to his inventions of Cthulhu, Dagon, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, the Necronomicon and other characters and story elements pervade the very fabric of horror culture. Anne Rice, Stephen King, Ramsey Cambell and Robert Bloch (who was one of Lovecrafts correspondants) all point to him as primary source material and a highly popular gaming culture has also been built up around the Mythos. Film and television, graphic novel adaptations and additions, fine art, music, all have formed the basis for extending the image of Cthulhus tentacles through the popular culture consciousness but perhaps most importantly Lovecrafts nightmare of cosmic dread has continued to trouble the sleep of those interested in the larger questions of life. He is as relevant today as when he first laid pen to paper.
Given all this it’s surprising that quality Lovecraftian/Cthulhuian mass produced collectibles are so scarce. There have been some attempts over the years, including a series of Plushies but if you wanted a figure you we’re going to shell out some big bucks. Into the cosmic cloud steps SOTA. Well packaged very affordable you can get a complete set of the Nightmares of Lovecraft with variant for under $100- if you do it now. I won’t be surprised if these become pretty highly sought after.
Cthulhu is offered in black and green although the black is only available through Elm Street and, overseas through Diamond Elm Street. The design here incorporating shredded wings and heavily detailed wrinkled skin complete with bony projections and octapodal tentacles complete with pinkish suckers is reminiscent of Wrightsons work on Swamp Thing and Man Thing without seeming merely derivative. It’s not quite elegant enough but as an collectible figure I think it’s an outstanding addition to my Lovecraft shelf. If I had to pick at the design it would be the arms that bother me most. They seem a tiny bit out of step visually, a little cartoony. But then again if I saw this Cthulhu coming at me I’d probably still run blind from madness white-eyed and screaming into the night before it devoured me.
The Ghoul from Pickman’s Model is incredibly detailed standing on a base of human victims. The figure is smaller as well but given the impressive size and weight of the other two pieces it’s a fair trade off. And as one of Lovecraft’s most familiar figures The Ghoul is gruesome enough here that even the most dedicated Lovecraft fan might not want it any bigger.
My favorite character is from Dagon. It truly does look like something out of a Nightmare, very detailed, and posed in such a way that if compared with the description in the story the viewer becomes very disquieted. This thing is supposedly worshipping at the feet of some hellacious idol!! There’s a fluid sense of motion to the design that makes one swear it moved since the last time you looked at it.
The figures all have some limited range of movement and poseability but I think the poses they come in are more or less ideal. A major plus for me was being able to remove the figures without damaging the packaging. Perhaps this is more or less, standard these days but these are absolutely figures I want to take out and display as will any Lovecraft fan. Of course the irony here is that Lovecraft gives descriptions of his creatures that are deliberately sketchy. Unnamable, indescribable….to see any of Lovecrafts hellish breed is to teeter on the brink of madness. I can’t promise you that but I can say this is as close as you’ll get in this dimension.