Necropolis #0 & 3: Kiss Me, Succubus & At the Mountains of Slumberland

In Kiss Me, Succubus, a group of indolent, rich, decadent (yet bored) 1960s jet-setters encounter a group of what they believe to be porn movie actors at a party and invite them home, thinking they will provide at least an evening’s amusement. Instead, their guests prove to have a far more horrible, supernatural intent in mind, and the hosts are soon trapped and fighting for their lives in a strange, hallucinatory world of sex, violence, sexual violence, and word games. Based on the arty 1960s sex-and-horror exploitation films of Jesus Franco, Radley Metzger, Jean Rollin and many others, Kiss Me, Succubus is a tribute to both the over-the-top melodrama and unintentional comedy of those movies, while also attempting to capture the strangeness, visual beauty, and ultimately moving qualities the best of them possess.

At the Mountains of Slumberland features the classic Winsor McCay comic strip character, Little Nemo, who here falls asleep (as usual in the comics) but here finds himself stuck in the universe of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories rather than in his usual charming Slumberland. Nemo must make his way through a more nightmarish landscape than usual, with the help of his guide, Randolph Carter, fighting Lovecraft’s dark, squamous gods, The Old Ones, and, ultimately, a surprising human enemy. Performed as a series of comic strip panels, At the Mountains of Slumberland is a study in how dreams affect art, and how art affects dreams.