As part of the countdown to the festival I’ve asked our esteemed guests and contributors three quick questions: 1. What was your first encounter with H.P. Lovecraft? 2. Which one of his stories do you like the best? 3. What will you be doing at SHPLFV? You will probably find a lot of common ground reading their answers in the days to come. Our ninth contributor to be interviewed is cartoonist/illustrator Rickard Fornstedt. 1. It came pretty late in life. A teacher I had in college a couple of years ago used to mix some Lovecraft references into our tasks, but I didn’t actually read anything by H.P. Lovecraft until last year. Me and the gang used to play Cthulhu By Gaslight, and one of my friends in the group lent me a copy of At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (with a wonderful cover illustration by Michael Whelan). 2. ”The Statement of Randolph Carter”. That last line gives me chills. 3. Me and Mohammed Omar will showcase our comic Professor Frans och Necronomicon i Upsala.
As part of the countdown to the festival I’ve asked our esteemed guests and contributors three quick questions: 1. What was your first encounter with H.P. Lovecraft? 2. Which one of his stories do you like the best? 3. What will you be doing at SHPLFV? You will probably find a lot of common ground reading their answers in the days to come. Our contributor number eight to be interviewed is writer Mohammed Omar. 1. During the 80’s I played the roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu with a couple of class mates. The 3:rd edition from 1986. I remember liking the idea of Sanity Points, that you could go insane. Later in the 90’s I had goth friends who listened to Fields of the Nephilim. That band had some Lovecraftian influences in their songs. 2. My favourite short story is ”The Call of Cthulhu”. Not because of Cthulhu himself. I’ve never been that interested in the monsters. Tentacles are just not my thing. What I do like is the idea of the sunken city, R’lyeh somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific, like a frightening version of Atlantis. Also the concept of artists painting dreams that are not their own. I have used that idea in my poems. 3. I will be talking about a comic book that I’ve done in collaboration with the artist Rickard Fornstedt. It’s called ”Necronomicon in Upsala”. The protagonist is Frans Stenberg, an excentric egyptologist. At his side is Star Wars fanboy Henning. It turns out […]