Stephen Colbert: Cthulhu is "Cthool"

As if to underscore the growing popularity of H.P. Lovecraft's creations in mainstream culture, political comedian Stephen Colbert mentioned several of the author's deities on "The Colbert Report" earlier this week. During a segment about a cataclysmic struggle between gods (also embedded below), Colbert threw in allusions to both Dagon and Cthulhu. This is a significant showing of popular strength for HPL as he continues his march out of literature, buoyed by online popularity, and into other types of mass media. Some Lovecraftians will scoff or even recoil in horror at the form Lovecraft's cultural popularization is taking. Undeniably, Lovecraftian names, places, and themes are extending their tentacles along mostly humorous rather than horror inducing paths. Though the full trend (if indeed there is one) remains unclear right now, it's a strange and unwieldy path for a writer who sought and previously succeed in making his creations feared.



H.P. Lovecraft once musingly said, "The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind." These days, however, outside a relatively small cadre of weird enthusiasts who appreciate the frightening and otherworldly nature of Lovecraft's fiction in literature, the joke may be on HPL himself as his work becomes a snowballing punchline in the eyes of media moguls and the masses.

-Grim Blogger