Alan Moore's The Courtyard

"Alan Moore's The Courtyard" is a 2003 comic book adaptation of a 1994 prose story written by Alan Moore. It was adapted for comics by Antony Johnston, with artwork by Jacen Burrows, and Alan Moore as "consulting editor". Originally planned to appear in "Alan Moore's Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths", it was published as a standalone release by Avatar.

Plot

Originally it began as a short story by Moore, as part of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The plot centres around an FBI agent who specialises in "anomaly theory", being assigned to investigate three seemingly-unrelated murder cases in Red Hook. When the investigation leads to a night club, and onto the apparent use of a drug named Aklo, the agent soon finds things are not at all as they seem.

Publication

Adapted for comics in 2003, a second version (the Companion) was released in 2004, which contained annotations and reprinted Moore's original short story:

* "Alan Moore's The Courtyard" (Avatar Press, 56 pages, 2003, ISBN 1-59291-015-7)
* "Alan Moore's The Courtyard Companion" (Avatar Press, 72 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-59291-016-5)

The original 1994 prose story had first appeared in an anthology:

* "The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft" (Creation Books, 1995, ISBN 1-871592-32-1)

H. P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos Connections

The tale is filled with references to the works of H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos including:

* The setting is Red Hook. This area is the scene (one of Lovecraft's few exclusively urban settings) for most of the action in "The Horror at Red Hook". The Club Zothique, itself named for the creation of Lovecraft correspondent and original Cthulhu Mythos author Clark Ashton Smith, is in the same former church mentioned as a centre of cult activity in Lovecraft's story.

* "Aklo" is mentioned several times in Lovecraft's work (for example, "The Dunwich Horror") as a language, although it is actually a borrowing from the earlier works of Arthur Machen.

* The bands that play at Club Zothique are the Yellow Sign and the Ulthar Cats, fronted by the female singer Randolph Carter. Lovecraft wrote an early fairytale style story, "The Cats of Ulthar," a place visited by his recurring self-projecting character Randolph Carter. In a Lovecraftian in-joke, the Ulthar Cats' support band The Yellow Sign (whose name is derived from earlier works by Robert Chambers) are derided as "pussies" for not using Aklo. The Yellow Sign was created by Robert E. Howard, and it wasn't used often by Lovecraft's work (the major exception being "The Whisperer in Darkness"), but is commonly found in the work of other members of the Cthulhu Mthos.

* The Yellow Sign's encore song is called "Leng", a place frequently referenced by Lovecraft, most notably in "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" and "At the Mountains of Madness".

* One of the Ulthar Cats' songs is "Zann's Variations", a reference to "The Music of Erich Zann"," and the lyrics specifically mention his address, the Rue d’Auseil.

* The Aklo dealer offers to sell the protagonist a cock ring from Innsmouth and some of Pickman's Necroticia. The seaport of Innsmouth recurs frequently in Lovecraft's work and the artist Pickman appears in both "Pickman's Model" and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath."

* The blacked-out information faxed to the protagonist from the FBI corresponds to the events of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

* The blatant racism of the protagonist mimics the inherent racism of Lovecraft's original "Red Hook" tale. [Lin Carter, "Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos", p. 46.
H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters vol. 2, p. 27; quoted in Peter Cannon, "Introduction", More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 5.]

References

External links

* [http://www.avatarpress.com/thecourtyard/ "The Courtyard" page] at Avatar Press: summary, artwork samples