Who, or What, is Cthulhu?

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

In our graphic novel Calla Cthulhu we find that Calla is the descendant of the Great Old Ones, most likely Cthulhu himself. But who is Cthulhu? And what?

In 1928 H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu was first published in the magazine Weird Tales. The story introduced us to an overwhelming horrific view of the universe that was unprecedented detailing the race of god-like beings who once ruled the Earth. Beings who now sleep.

Lovecraft describe Cthulhu as “A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.” Yet this is a human interpretation, to look upon any of the Great Old Ones causes instant madness.

Cthulhu was the High Priest of the Great Old Ones, also known as The Great Dreamer or The Sleeper of R’lyeh. He slept in the city R’lyeh “nightmare corpse-city” on an uncharted island in the vastness of the southern Pacific ocean. He is unwittingly awakened by first mate, Gustaf Johansen, and crew of the Alert, to dire consequences.

Our graphic novel Calla Cthulhu is set in Lovecraft’s mythos. Read it today on the Stela app.

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