Meet the Not-Quite-As-Great Old One

If you lived a middle class suburban childhood like the one I had growing up in Sherwood Park (just outside of Edmonton), then there’s a good chance you were no stranger to things that weren’t quite brand name. Perhaps it was the supermarket’s own “Fruity O’s” instead of Fruit Loops, “Action Soldier” G.I. Joe knock-offs or Zeller’s house brand “Zeds” runners instead of the oh-so popular Zips. Don’t get me wrong, when the time came, I was certainly happy to have money to to go to university because my parents saved instead of buying me a Kuwahara BMX bike (I had the respectable and rugged Consumer’s Distributing brand “Skyhawk”). In fact, it makes me a little nostalgic just thinking about it, which is why I’d like to introduce you to the gigantic tentacled monster from the deep named… “Kulu.”

Kulu is the monster on the cover of this 1981 issue of the Charlton Comic Group title Baron Weirwulf’s Haunted Library, which I picked up at a used book store in my neighbourhood. Charlton was a second-tier comic book publisher that lasted from 1946 to 1986 (assuming its Wikipedia entry is correct). This particular collection of horror stories took the classic Tales From the Crypt morality tale (some of them introduced by a ghostly host or the Baron himself) and brought them to life with some passable art on very cheap newsprint.

More specifically, the cover story, “Out of the Deep” - written by Tom Sutton - has a dude washing up on a rocky island, where he’s saved by a robed geezer, named, ahem, “The Old One.” The old guy has a bunch of very Lovecraftian art in his castle and likes to ring a bell in his tower, which really pisses off the castaway, who we learn is actually a total dick who killed his crew. Now ghost-skeletons, the drowned sailors visit him in a nightmare; shortly after this, the murderous prick pushes the old guy out of the bell tower. Now haunted by the old guy’s ghost too, the castaway attempts to escape the island in a rowboat.

I scanned in the last panel so you can see how it turns out. Click on the pic and beware the almost Lovecraftian Kall of Kulu!