The Best and Worst of Alan Moore’s Providence (So Far)

Providence is the latest series by Alan Moore, the mad genius of comics. It’s about a journalist named Robert Black who encounters people and places from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Providence is dark, literary and disturbing, and it demonstrates the best and worst of Moore’s talents.

 

The Worst (Issue No. 6)

The series has plenty of freaky moments, but the first Moore-moment, the type of moment that makes you wonder if you should stop reading before it’s too late, comes when Black visits a college town and runs into a student named Elspeth. She invites him in from the rain and then proceeds to strip naked. Black then finds that his consciousness has been transferred into Elspeth’s body and somebody else’s consciousness has taken control of his own body. Under a stranger’s control, Black’s body then rapes Elspeth’s body, which has his own consciousness inside. Afterward, Black feels guilty, confused and violated--which is how I imagine many readers feel after having read that scene.

Thanks to the website Facts in the Case of Alan Moore’s Providence, I learned this scene channels Lovecraft’s story “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1937). I’ve since read the story, and it’s full of the madness that was Lovecraft’s specialty. It tells the story of Edward Derby, whose wife Asenath Waite projects her consciousness into him, taking control of his body and trapping him in hers. There are creepy in-laws, dangerous tomes, gateways to other worlds, fishy smells and . . . shoggoths. Even worse, Asenath isn’t entirely human, because she’s one of the Innsmouth Waites, which are known to have had congress with strange beings.

“The Thing on the Doorstep” shows that Alan Moore isn’t pulling everything out of his own imagination. H.P. Lovecraft has been there first.

 

Asenath Waite, from the cover of Innsmouth Magazine

Of course, when I say the rape scene in Providence is the worst of Alan Moore, I mean the subject matter is extremely disturbing. It reminds me of the freakiest scenes in Moore’s other titles, like Jack the Ripper’s grisly work on Mary Kelly in From Hell and the interdimensional subterranean orgy in Neonomicon. The latter graphic novel found its way into libraries and then back out again over complaints. Some would say Moore goes too far, but considering this is horror, the sheer awfulness of his work shows he is getting something right.

 

The Best (Issue No. 8)

Unstuck consciousnesses also feature in Providence’s best. When Black meets an author named Carver to discuss dreams, the panels alternate between showing the two seated at a table and showing the personal experiences, historical anecdotes, dreams and paranormal encounters they are discussing. In the latter scenes, the speech balloons for Black and Carver continue in the mouths of people in their subject matter:

 

 

The issue continues to play around with this, until by the end, a font change suggests people in the real world are speaking lines from fiction. These are people in the real world of the comic, so who could be putting words in their mouths? According to Facts in the Case of Alan Moore’s Providence, the lines are from Lovecraft’s story “Beyond of Wall of Sleep” (1919), so the words are Lovecraft’s. By this point, however, the reader can’t help but be aware of the spirit of Alan Moore himself haunting, and manipulating, the series.

And it only gets more convoluted.  Providence is itself a work of fiction based on fiction by H.P. Lovecraft, and Lovecraft himself shows up in the issue. Thus, the real author of fiction called the Cthulhu Mythos shows up as a fictional character in a work of the Cthulhu Mythos, a work in which his own fictional creations are real. Does this fictional Lovecraft write fiction or does he pass off as fiction descriptions of the horrifying reality Black has been encountering? Once Moore sinks his claws in your brain, it almost feels plausible that the real Lovecraft--like the painter in “Pickman’s Model” (1927) and his analog the photographer Pitman in Providence--may have done the same!

There be metafiction here . . . and it’s kaleidoscopic, with traffic headed in all directions among multiple levels of reality and fiction. Its twists and turns turn back on themselves, like ouroboros, the serpent that bites its own tail, or a Möbius strip, or M.C. Escher’s Relativity, or Escher’s Drawing Hands--because Moore isn’t simply building on Lovecraft, Lovecraft is speaking through him. To seek order in such a labyrinth, you just might catch yourself coming and going--and indeed at one point in Providence, Black does just that:

 

Providence, Issue No. 8

 

Moore’s work isn’t always pleasant--certainly it can be daunting for even the most intrepid of cultural omnivores--but only Moore can be so masterful at bending the reader’s mind. And when he is, he’s either at his best or worst.

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