I’m very grateful for this opportunity to practice editing (originally I planned a storyline of 28 installments, but now I was forced to squeeze in a satisfying conclusion in 10 pages – much better and much more convincing! At least if you’re a Lovecraft fan…). Hopefully people who haven’t read Goldenbird before will appreciate this short story and come here for more.

“Nyarlathotep” has everything – 1920′s pseudoscience, Lovecraft, puppies, fashion, egyptomania, tentacles, sexy men with big mustaches and/or big noses. Love it or lose your mind.

One might ask how someone like Falco ends up tutoring someone like Mayann. All will be revealed in time, but at least superficially, the reason is financial (for him) and social (for her; she really wants to learn French since the American expat community in Paris bores her, but it is difficult to find a serious teacher when you’re a pretty girl… Perhaps this guy can pass the test?).

Some useful links:
Tartuffe (I have actually participated in a Molière play – it was in L’Avare, or The Miser, in high school)
History of Printemps, the department store (It was ravaged by a fire in 1921, a year later – should we suspect Volkov?)

Not again!

In every story and every chapter there are some pet scenes that I dream of drawing, that I have figured out in my head long before I came up with the story that they are embedded in. To be honest, I’m more interested in scenes and situations than story lines or single pictures. The challenge is to bring up the patience and skills necessary to get the reader to the right point in the right way. This is one of the scenes I have been waiting for.

Click the category “Nyarlathotep” for the whole story from the beginning.

Now it’s getting interesting. Yes, that’s a trapezohedron – in French, intriguingly called “antidiamant”. To be true to my source of inspiration, it properly ought to consist of bizarre non-Euclidean angles. Geometry – the only field of mathematics that I was ever any good at. (Note the past tense – nowadays I just hate using any kind of ruler.)

In the end it doesn’t matter – this crystal is an illustration of an abstract concept, not a scientific/magical device as such.

The Nyarlathotep storyline archives are here.

I didn’t mean to disappear for a month, but I need to earn my living, you know!

The Nyarlathotep archives are here.

Falco’s little medal looks like this. I usually draw all my religious trivia from the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition. He probably received it as a gift from the Daughters of Charity, working in the slums of Paris.

Even though this strip is focused on the inner life of Reverend Mr. Peregrini, I managed to squeeze in Mochi twice. And there was much rejoicing…

This was a tough one – because of Nyarly’s technobabble. There are other items that I would like to introduce, but the tuning fork did an impromptu entrance. He would of course have more effective oscillators for more sinister purposes.

As usual, the Nyarlathotep archives are here.

Mochi tells the nasty man to “shut up” in Japanese.

The debate here reflects my annoyance with old adventure stories, where ancient African civilizations almost invariably were led by white people, and intelligence was measured by European beauty standards. Of course, such sentiments can be found in Lovecraft’s tales, but he relished in disrupting his own Anglo-Saxon purity ideal – nobody was safe, anybody could degenerate into a Dagon-worshipping fish monster or a cannibalistic ghoul. How much of his virulent racism was added for horrific effect, and how much was based on genuine convictions? HPL was a bit of a troll sometimes.

New to the Nyarlathotep storyline? Go to the Archives.