Rick And Morty Verses Cthulhu #1 - Oni Press

RICK AND MORTY VERSES CTHULHU No. 1, December 2022

“Re-uniting the Eisner-nominated creative team from Rick and Morty Verses Dungeons And Dragons”, this opening instalment of a four-part mini-series should easily please fans of both Cartoon Network's animated sitcom and the Lovecraft-inspired universe - the Cthulhu Mythos. Indeed, Jim Zub’s twenty-two-page plot makes repeated nods to all the numerous storytelling elements which have made the “sociopathic mad scientist” and Great Old One so indelibly etched into modern-day nerd culture, such as frantic battles with exotic-looking extra-terrestrials, and superstitious American hillbillies fending off a mass of eldritch horrors which have pooled together at the bottom of their farmstead’s well.

Foremost of this comic’s many accomplishments though, has to be how quickly the Canadian author simply plonks the entire Smith family down into late Nineteenth Century Massachusetts and pens the initially well-armed quartet participating in some of H. P. Lovecraft’s most memorable written works. Sure, the fact that Sanchez simply takes them through one of his infamous portals following the discovery that “the air here is already polluted with mythos molecules” is arguably a little clunky and contrived. But such a no-nonsense approach immediately reaps dividends by smacking the central antagonists straight into the middle of “The Colour Out Of Space” and depicting Morty’s grandfather having an absolute blast defeating a certain “monstrous constellation of unnatural light”.

Similarly as successful is how Jerry is rapidly overcome by the terror of what he is witnessing, and has to retire home before his sanity is completely eradicated. This sub-thread taps directly into the “stay-at-home” father’s vulnerable psyche and cowardice, as well as one of the central themes repeatedly depicted in Lovecraft’s tales – where peoples' mental stability is repeatedly called into question as a result of the psychological trauma they’ve incurred; “Humanity is less than a mole on the splayed skin of the Universe…”

Also adding an element of tongue-in-cheek humour into this publication’s proceedings is Troy Little, whose opening scene showing Morty inadvertently ruining an intergalactic sugar deal between Rick and the insectoid gangster, Globier, will surely cause many a bibliophile to laugh out loud at the utter contempt for his grandson pencilled upon Sanchez’s face. Furthermore, the Prince Edward Island-born cartoonist, alongside colorist Leonardo Ito, does a stand-out job of illustrating just how markedly different the Cthulhu Mythos universe is from Dimension C-137, by noticeably altering this book’s art-style with much darker overtones and less clean-looking line work.

The regular cover art of "RICK AND MORTY VERSES CTHULHU" #1 by Troy Little