The Lost Mythos Stories
From rehupa.com, March 2009
A few weeks back, I wrote about C. Hall Thompson and his short career of writing H. P. Lovecraft pastiches. Thompson is somewhat famous within Mythos history. There are a couple of Mythos stories from the same period that are completely unknown. The author- Gardner F. Fox. Comic book fans should know the name as he wrote Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Flash etc. Fox had a decent little career in the pulps with ten stories in Planet Stories, three of which display varying degrees of Robert E. Howard influence; one story in Amazing Stories; one short novel in Marvel Science Fiction; and three stories in Weird Tales. Fox also sold as many or more stories to the sports pulps and western pulps.
His first pulp sale was to Weird Tales with a story entitled “The Weirds of the Woodcarver” (September 1944). The story is a short tale of small figurines carved by a queer little man in a shop in Brooklyn. The Cthulhu Mythos elements are grafted on with the references to the Primal Ones, the Mi-Go etc. Still, a totally forgotten story never reprinted by Rober M. Price and not listed at any of the Cthulhu Mythos sites.
Another story, “Heart of Light” (Amazing Stories, July 1946) has an archaeologist finding a statue in the Australian desert that comes to life. Lead down a tunnel to an underground city, home of “The Glitterer,” a superior being of energy. The Glitterer transforms the living statue into the beautiful Tonal Tu. There is a battle with a horde of shoggoths that ate all of the original inhabitants of the city except Tonal Tu. Fox named checked his inspiration in a sentence: “Men like Lovecraft, Derleth–they came very close to guessing.”
Neither story added anything to the Cthulhu Mythos. “Heart of Light” is one of those silly spectacular quasi-science fiction stories from the pulp years. The Lovecraft element actually works better for background in it than “Weirds of the Woodcarver.” Fox may also have innoculated himself from the wrath of Derleth by mentioning the man from Sauk City next to Lovecraft. Derleth probably knew of this story as “Scar Tissue” by Henry S. Whitehead was in the same issue of Amazing Stories. That story may be some sort of mix of Whitehead, Lovecraft, and Derleth–I don’t think anyone has quite figured that one out. Gardner Fox later used Lovecraftian words and ideas in some of his comic book work. The guy liked his Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft.
