Thursday, March 5, 2015

Crossover Cover: Witch Hill

This novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley is part of a series about occult investigator Colin MacLaran, though in this particular entry he takes a backseat to the main character, Sara Latimer, who inherits her great-aunt and namesake’s house on Witch Hill Road in Arkham, Massachusetts, and discovers that she is the reincarnation of her relative, and that the Azathoth-worshipping Church of the Antique Rite to which the elder Sara belonged has plans for her. Innsmouth, Miskatonic University, Cthulhu, the Whateleys, the Marshes, Robert Blake and the Elder Gods are mentioned. The ties to the Cthulhu Mythos bring Colin MacLaran into the CU. The MacLaran series is connected to another series by Bradley featuring occult investigator Truth Jourdemayne. The MacLaran novel Heartlight reveals that he is the reincarnation of a character from Bradley's novel The Fall of Atlantis, while several of the characters from Bradley's Avalon series are implied to be reincarnations of characters from that book.

5 comments:

  1. Are Cthulhu Mythos ties enough to bring something into the CU (absent any specific story points that conflict with CU stories)? Didn't Win say he wasn't going to include any more stories based solely on Cthulhu Mythos references since there are so many such stories? I think it'd be cool to include as many Mythos stories in the CU as possible, but I'm just wondering if that's the goal.

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    1. In the foreword to Vol. 1, Win said he was using that logic for superhero comics published by DC and Marvel that referenced the Mythos. He didn't say anything about works in other media or genres with references of that kind being off-limits.

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    2. Ah, I must have misremembered Win's comment about this. That makes sense.

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  2. I'm also more likely to include a work that has crossover connections to the Mythos (and none to non-Mythos works) in the books if they're part of a series that otherwise isn't focused on the Mythos itself.

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  3. I believe, Win was trying to limit the number of superheroes in the CU.

    Sean, I think that's a wise policy. If you included every Mythos story, you'd never finish.

    This sparked my memory that Gene Wolfe's story Lord of the Land was Mythos crossover story. The main character Sam Cooper appeared in four or five short stories most notably The Nebraskan and the Neried. I thought of this because I've been planning to post something on Gene Wolfe and the stories of his that have links to the CU at the old yahoo groups.

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