Alan Moore's The Courtyard

Alan Moore's The Courtyard
Cover of Alan Moore's The Courtyard  (2004), trade paperback collected edition. Art by Jacen Burrows.
Publication information
Publisher	Avatar Press
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Limited series
Genre	Horror
Publication date	January – February 2003
Number of issues	2
Creative team
Writer(s)	Alan Moore (original story) Antony Johnston (adaptation)
Artist(s)	Jacen Burrows
Creator(s)	Alan Moore Jacen Burrows
Editor(s)	William A. Christensen Alan Moore
Collected editions
Deluxe Hardcover Set	ISBN 1-59291-017-3

Alan Moore's The Courtyard is a 2-issue comic book mini-series adaptation of a 1994 prose story written by Alan Moore, published in 2003 by Avatar Press. It was adapted for comics by Antony Johnston, with artwork by Jacen Burrows, and Alan Moore as "consulting editor".

Publication history

The original 1994 prose story had first appeared in an anthology The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft (Creation Books, 1995, ISBN 1-871592-32-1).

The comic book adaptation was planned to appear in Alan Moore's Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths, but it was published as a limited series by Avatar in January and February 2003.

Plot summary

Originally it began as a short story by Moore, as part of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The plot centres on an FBI agent who specialises in "anomaly theory," being assigned to investigate three seemingly unrelated murder cases in Red Hook. When the investigation leads to a night club, and onto the apparent use of a drug named Aklo, the agent soon finds things are not at all as they seem.

Collected editions

The series was collected in a trade paperback in 2003, a second version (the Companion) was released in 2004, which contained annotations by Lovecraft scholar N. G. Christakos and reprinted Moore's original short story. A limited edition hardcover set of the two volumes was also released in 2004. In 2009 a full color version was released.

• Alan Moore's The Courtyard (Avatar Press, sofcover, 56 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-59291-015-7)
• Alan Moore's The Courtyard Companion (Avatar Press, softcover, 72 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-59291-016-5)
• Alan Moore's The Courtyard Deluxe Hardcover Set (Avatar Press, hardcover, 128 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-59291-017-3)
• Alan Moore's The Courtyard (Color Edition) (Avatar Press, 56 pages, Mar 11 2009, ISBN 1-59291-060-2)

H. P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos connections

The tale is filled with references to the works of H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos including:

• The setting is Red Hook. This area is the scene (one of Lovecraft's few exclusively urban settings) for most of the action in "The Horror at Red Hook". The Club Zothique, itself named for the creation of Lovecraft correspondent and original Cthulhu Mythos author Clark Ashton Smith, is in the same former church mentioned as a centre of cult activity in Lovecraft's story.

• Aklo is mentioned several times in Lovecraft's work (for example, "The Dunwich Horror") as a language, although it is actually a borrowing from the earlier works of Arthur Machen.

• The bands that play at Club Zothique are the Yellow Sign and the Ulthar Cats, fronted by the female singer Randolph Carter. Lovecraft wrote an early fairytale style story, "The Cats of Ulthar," a place visited by his recurring self-projecting character Randolph Carter. The Yellow Sign was created by Robert W. Chambers. It was used once by Lovecraft in The Whisperer in Darkness and more commonly by other members of the Cthulhu Mythos. In a Lovecraftian in-joke, the Ulthar Cats' support band The Yellow Sign are derided as "pussies" for not using Aklo.

• The Yellow Sign's encore song is called "Leng", a place frequently referenced by Lovecraft, most notably in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and At the Mountains of Madness.

• One of the Ulthar Cats' songs is "Zann's Variations", a reference to "The Music of Erich Zann," and the lyrics specifically mention his address, the Rue d’Auseil.

• The Aklo dealer offers to sell the protagonist a cock ring from Innsmouth and some of Pickman's Necroticia. The seaport of Innsmouth recurs frequently in Lovecraft's work and the artist Pickman appears in both "Pickman's Model" and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath."

• The blacked-out information faxed to the protagonist from the FBI corresponds to the events of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

• The blatant racism of the protagonist mimics the inherent racism of Lovecraft's original "Red Hook" tale.

• The fax booth that Sax uses has graffiti sprayed on it that says "In Madness You Dwell," a lyric from Metallica's song "The Thing That Should Not Be," which is based on Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.

Sequel

Alan Moore has written a 4-part sequel to The Courtyard called Neonomicon, the final issue of which was released by Avatar on March 23, 2011.

References

• Alan Moore's The Courtyard at the Grand Comics Database
• Alan Moore's The Courtyard at the Comic Book DB

External links

• The Courtyard page at Avatar Press