“Beyond the Past” from Charlton’s The Thingg #11 (November-December 1953) is the first Mythos piece I have found since Dr. Styx. That comic appeared eight years earlier. This time it is just a short four-page miniature drawn by Lou Morales. The author, who obviously had discovered Lovecraft, is not known.
The unnamed professor is lucky enough to get a copy of The Necronomicon to study. He copies a passage to take home and translate. When he gets home, his daughter, Linda, pleads with him not to be all night translating his old books. She declares she has a bad feeling about this. The professor reminds her this is all old superstition.
He gets busy on that Necronomicon page. The passage has a warning: that Xnapantha will not rest if awakened until he eats your life and flesh.
Of course, the professor has to read the incantation: “Xnapantha..Xnapantha..Chrthlu..Xmondii…”
The daughter rushes downstairs in her sexy nightwear to find her father a pile of goo-covered bones.
This story is short, but features many Cthulhu Mythos cliches. Sadly, stripped bare in this fashion, the whole thing is pretty silly. This won’t be the last Lovecraftian miniature of this sort. Comic writer and artists will be attracted to the power of HPL’s work but rarely translate it well. Four pages is not a lot of room for more than a taste of what is possible.
On the plus side, Xnapantha looks sufficiently Lovecraftian, unlike the ghosts in Dr. Styx. The last shot could be out of Frank Belknap Long’s “The Hounds of Tindalos”. We have to assume that first panel with the prof getting the book is in the Miskatonic University. Who knew they had such cute librarians?
This comic can be downloaded for free at https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/. The Thing comics contain other fun surprises. I highly recommend them.
