I'm Reading Comeeks

Two Lovecraftian re-interpretations and a few deviating paths to familiar comics.

Blood Feud is the first of the Lovecraft inspired comics I read, and I was disappointed in that interpretation.  H.P. Lovecraft has been called the father of Horror, his stories influence the genre as a whole and some of it's most well known authors, such as Stephen King.  However, I've found that the closer one draws to Lovecraft's themes of cosmic horror the more most writers fall away, not realizing what really makes Lovecraft's world so horrifying.

Why is it that some horror writers want to switch out the uncaring universe of powerful alien entities for the staid and dull devils of human creation?  One of the most frightening things is that the horrors are cosmic not earth bound.  There is no way for humanity to control what happens, or hope to even comprehend it, we exist as a by-product, and our actions make little difference to our place in the greater scheme of things, we are small and insignificant.

In Blood Feud two clans, the Stubbs and the Whatelys have been at each others throats for generations.  No one can quite remember why or what started it, but the fight between the two families is well known throughout the Ozark town of Spider Creek. And now the mutated Whatelys are about to take it up a notch.

Our main character is just a regular guy, with his regular guy friends, and then there is the token girl, a grad student studying the ty-ran-tu-lah migration that happens in Spider Creek.  The action kicks off pretty quick in the story.  The boys are sitting around playing poker when suddenly token girl bursts onto the scene to report a wounded man in the woods. 

It's one of the Stubbs family and he's in a bad way, muttering about 'blood feuds' and everyone being dead.  So our MC and Jack (another guy who kinda shows up at poker night, and looks much more like a Football player than MC, but all we know about him is that he likes science fiction) head out to the Stubbs place to check on the family.

The entire family have become vampires, even the baby.  It turns out that the Whatelys summoned a 'master vampire' who went out and turned this entire family.  Even the baby.  What a monster.  Also, the vampires themselves have the comical look of killer naked mole rats, with their ridiculously exaggerated pointy teeth, gorilla arms and cankles.  There's a bit where they hide in the church and token girl sees that MC is desired by another female and becomes more interested in MC.  Of course the other woman is sweet, simple and chubby and wearing androgynous clothing, unlike token girl who wears skin tight pants and tank top on her improbably proportioned body.  Our MC is such a MAN.  All the token girls want him.  

Anyhoo, the MC takes care of it all and saves token girl.  The end.  Yeah, this comic is casually sexist, spat in the eye of Lovecraft and didn't make the most sense.

Our MC is the dude with the evil smile on the right.  Despite the fact that there are many poisonous snakes and some churches that still practice snake rituals in the Appalachians and the fact that some of the dudes do have a snake-like jaw and teeth, snakes are not mentioned in this story.