So we should…
…
dare to see Stoopid.

The Tick is a tulpa, a thought form created by Arthur's obsessions.

Yeah, Lovecraft definitely plays a role in Mignola's work - the Frogs are clearly inspired by the Deep Ones, there are dark ageless powers locked out of this reality, etc - the same way that pulp adventure stories (contemporary to HPL) play a role.

What I said to Tulse above (sorry, Disquss newb) applies here as well. The idea that the lesser peoples, be they non-Anglo Saxons or the poor or the mad, really knew what was going on and could deal with it practically does put a bit of a crack in the pedestal he placed WASPs on.

We had a running injoke in college that involved waving a finger where a pineal stalk would be and whispering So.. Beautiful..

I think that raises a good point. There's a lot of self-revulsion baked in to Lovecraft's work - I'm descended from WHO!!? (The Festival, Shadows Over Innsmouth, etc) that mirrors how HPL saw himself. His letters paint a picture of a blustery dude keen on being seen as a patrician type, but in actuality is a poor pulp…

Lovecraft's characters tend to know "what's really going on" and that appeals to a certain mindset - in my case, the teenage mindset where I thought I knew better than those around me. It helped that HPL's diction that superfluous and show-offy, just like mine at the time. I can see the same threads of "okay, here's…

Yeah, something like that.
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