Mid
February–October 1931
THE
HUNTERS
Jim
Anthony asks his friend Eddie Phipps if he is coming to the next
meeting of the Baltimore Gun Club. After Phipps is attacked by a
strange man-monster, Jim tells an old man to call Healy in Homicide,
and tell him he said there’s been trouble at the Suydam Building.
Healy refers to “that thing last year with that Yogami fellow—,”
to which Jim replies “Yes. The so-called Werewolf of Red Hook.”
One of Phipps’ murderer’s other victims is named Guster Wooster.
A man who unsuccessfully tries to kill Jim commits suicide by taking
a distillation of Mariphasa Lupinum, the Tibetan Moon Blossom. At the
Gun Club, Jim and his sidekick Tom Gentry meet Count Zaroff, whom a
castaway named Rainsford falsely claimed died on his island a few
years ago. Another Gun Club member, Otto DeLancy, asks Jim if he was
in New York when Bertie Freis left. Jim replies he was in Paris on a
case involving a band of thieves, Les
Vampires. A murderous fiend called Fantômas
was also involved in this case. Jim thinks of a Gun Club member named
Ironcastle. Jim and Tom battle a group of Tcho-Tcho. Zaroff says the
Tcho-Tcho tried to kill him while he was in Tibet, searching for the
elusive Mi-go. The word Leng pops into Jim’s mind. Franklin Pike
reminds Jim of their trip to Maple-White Land, and of someone named
Ki-Gor who was also present. Pike refers to Leng as the Doorway to
the Lost Valley of Carcosa, and tells Jim about a swami in New
Orleans, “Chanda-something.” Jim requests his butler Dawkins have
certain tools from his laboratory delivered to the Freis family
burying ground at New York’s Wildwood Cemetery. A captured
Tcho-Tcho claims to be a member of the royal guard of the King in
Yellow. Jim sees Zaroff speaking to a man called Allardravitch, who,
like Zaroff himself, was once part of the Czar of Russia’s inner
circle. Zaroff invites Jim to hunt with him on an uncharted island,
far west of Sumatra, which is inhabited by prehistoric animals.
Allardravitch sneers at Jim’s use of mercy bullets, which prompts
Jim to tell him not to confuse him for the bronze man. Traveling to
the island, Jim and Zaroff spot a ship in the distance called the
Venture. Zaroff tells
Jim how an old German named Lidenbrock put him up in his lodge during
the Great War, and told him he and his uncle went on an expedition to
the center of the earth many years earlier, where they also
encountered prehistoric animals. Lidenbrock’s uncle told him of a
previous, aborted attempt to enter the earth’s core, through an
opening on the island Jim and Zaroff are visiting. That ingress was
sealed, but not before creatures from the core migrated through it
and settled on the island. Aboard the Venture,
Jim and Zaroff meet filmmaker D. W. Cecil De Cent, his leading lady
Dana Sparrow, the elderly captain of the ship, and Jack the first
mate. Dana grew up in an orphanage, with her father unaware of her
existence. Jim finds a book written by one of the Weta-people, who
sailed to the island from the Gray Havens after the return of the
king, but cannot read it. Zaroff tells Jim there are signs of a giant
anthropoid on the island. Dana refers to “that Doctor Wildman in
the pulps.” The ape’s unveiling in New York draws a lot of
celebrity attention, including that of the Celebrated Feral Child of
Africa, who has a personal interest in apes, giant or otherwise. De
Cent, about to unveil the ape, tells Jim’s Comanche grandfather
Mephito he has filmed the strange monoliths and ruins of the Indians
in Dunwich. The ape escapes thanks to Zaroff’s scheming, and climbs
to the top of the Empire State Building with Dana in his paw, only to
be shot down by airplanes.
Jim
Anthony: Super Detective Volume Two,
Airship 27 Productions, 2010, composed of two novellas, “Death in
Yellow” by Joshua Reynolds and “On the Periphery of Legend” by
Micah S. Harris. Jim Anthony appeared in the pulp Super
Detective.
The Baltimore Gun Club seen here is the New York branch of the club
seen in Jules Verne’s From
the Earth to the Moon.
The Suydam Building is named after Robert Suydam from H. P.
Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook.” The Mi-go are a race of
Yeti from Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Leng is a
plateau in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, first described in “The
Hound.” Dr. Yogami and the Mariphasa Lupinum (or Mariphasa Lupina
Lumina) are from the film Werewolf
of London.
Guster Wooster is presumably an American relative of P. G.
Wodehouse’s most famous character, Bertie Wooster. Count Zaroff,
his island, and Sanger Rainsford are from Richard Connell’s “The
Most Dangerous Game.” Xavier Mauméjean’s story “The Most
Exciting Game,” which is set in 1930, also portrayed Zaroff as a
member of the New York branch of the Gun Club. Les
Vampires are
from Louis Feuillade’s 1915 film serial of the same name. Fantômas
is a French pulp villain created by Marcel Allain and Pierre
Souvestre. Hareton Ironcastle is from J.-H. Rosny aîné’s
L’Étonnant Voyage d’Hareton Ironcastle,
as well as
Philip
José Farmer’s translation and adaptation, Ironcastle,
which revealed Ironcastle was a member of the Baltimore Gun Club. The
Tcho-Tcho race were created by August Derleth as part of the Cthulhu
Mythos. These Tcho-Tcho must have been the result of interbreeding
with humans, as they are noticeably taller than the race is described
to be by Derleth and other authors. Maple White Land is from Arthur
Conan Doyle’s The
Lost World.
John Peter Drummond’s jungle hero Ki-Gor’s first adventure must
have actually taken place years before its 1938 publication in Jungle
Stories Magazine.
Carcosa is originally from Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An
Inhabitant of Carcosa,” but also appears in Robert W. Chambers’
The
King in Yellow,
which Lovecraft incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos. The Swami
Chandraputra is an identity assumed by Randolph Carter, the
protagonist of Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, in the story “Through the
Gates of the Silver Key.” He also appears under that alias in
Lovecraft and Hazel Heald’s story “Out of the Aeons.” Wildwood
Cemetery also hosts the grave of the allegedly deceased Denny Colt,
also known as the Spirit. “Allardravitch” is actually the shadowy
hero who was a spy for the Czar during the Great War.. The uncharted
island is Skull Island from the classic film King
Kong.
The Venture
is
also from King
Kong.
“D. W. Cecil De Cent” and “Dana Sparrow” are aliases for Carl
Denham and Ann Darrow, while the captain and first mate are Captain
Englehorn and Jack Driscoll; all four appear in the film. The giant
ape is Kong himself, of course. The bronze man is a famous pulp hero
of the 1930s and ’40s, of whom Rick Lai notes, “Doc wouldn’t
have been using mercy bullets regularly until 1932 (The
Phantom City).
However, Doc might have experimented with mercy bullets like Anthony
in early 1931. Doc would have abandoned them to avenge the deaths of
his father (The
Man of Bronze)
and favorite tutor (The
Land of Terror)
during May–July 1931.” Axel Lidenbrock and his uncle Otto are
from Jules Verne’s Journey
to the Center of the Earth.
The connection between the subterranean world visited by the
Lidenbrocks and Skull Island was first proposed by Micah S. Harris in
The
Eldritch New Adventures of Becky Sharp.
Although that novel takes place in an alternate universe, apparently
the connection is true in the CU as well. According to The
Eldritch New Adventures of Becky Sharp,
Ann Darrow was the illegitimate daughter of Becky herself (from
William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity
Fair)
and Lord Eugenides, an analogue of the jungle lord. Unlike the jungle
lord, Eugenides grew to adulthood during the Victorian era, with his
own counterparts to Jane and La. The Ann Darrow of the CU is probably
the daughter of Becky Sharp and the time-traveling future version of
the jungle lord (aka John Gribardsun) seen in Farmer’s Time’s
Last Gift.
The Grey Havens (aka Mithlond) are an Elvish port from J. R. R.
Tolkien’s classic fantasy trilogy The
Lord of the Rings.
In Doc
Savage: His Apocalyptic Life,
Philip José Farmer revealed an iconic pulp hero’s real name as
James Clarke Wildman, Jr. However, Dana’s reference to Doc Wildman
as a pulp character should not be taken literally, since his pulp
magazine did not begin publication until 1933, two years after the
events of this story. The Celebrated Feral Child of Africa is the
jungle lord. Although Harris places Kong’s unveiling in April,
shortly after Denham and company return from Skull Island, Kong’s
rampage took place in October in the CU. More likely, Kong spent
months in quarantine before being officially exhibited. Dunwich is
from Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror.”
