The Kalem Society

The Kalem Society is a serial webcomic inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, about a secret society of paranormal agents defending the world from cosmic threats.

This comic is about stories of secret history, paranormal conspiracy, urban fantasy, weird science, strange adventure, and cosmic horror.

My slightly pretentious elevator pitch:

It's like everyone's favorite urban fantasy series, but with an ensemble cast. Almost everything in the genre has a single central protagonist (such as the Dresden Files). Even if they have friends, there's only one hero (like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), or at most a duo (like Supernatural) or a trio (like Harry Potter). Imagine if one of those series had a whole cast of badasses with strong personalities and opposing world views (more like Firefly, Guardians of the Galaxy, or the Avengers). Now imagine that cast is more diverse in terms of ethnicity, cultural background, religion/philosophy, gender, and orientation.

The comic is also both a reconstruction of the urban fantasy genre and a deconstruction of the Cthulhu Mythos. It celebrates and justifies urban fantasy tropes that usually go un-examined by other works in the genre, or which are taken for granted as silly. At the same time, it examines and critiques the Mythos in ways that prove Lovecraft wrong. It answers his nihilism with existentialism, giving equal consideration to despair and hope, maintaining the horror, but balancing it with action and comedy. And, it proves his xenophobia and racism wrong by demonstrating how diversity and inclusion make society stronger and help it survive.

A little more background:

The comic is based on a Role Playing Game that I played with a group of friends from college, but you shouldn’t need to know anything about gaming to read this comic. We used the HERO System (perhaps better known to some of you as Champions), but the setting is of our own design.

The setting appears to be the modern Earth as we know it. However, a hidden world exists right under the noses of the vast majority of humanity – a world full of things that people were never meant to find. Magic, super-technology, vast conspiracies, supernatural beings, and just flat-out weirdness. The protagonists are an ensemble cast comprised of the elite agents of the Kalem Society, an organization dedicated to protecting the rest of the world from the dangerous effects of the hidden world.

This hidden world resembles a warped version of our modern earth. The setting integrates elements from a number of different sources and genres, including cosmic horror, ancient epics, science fiction, spy movies, superhero stories, weird conspiracy stories, anime and manga, western comic books, and urban fantasy – but only select elements of each that fit together into a coherent (albeit impossible) whole. It’s a world full of psychic spies, vampire ninjas, giant corporations that built their power on recovered alien technology, secret societies created to guard forbidden magic, and other fantastic elements.

The cosmic horror and creeping dread of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos would seem at first to be incompatible with the high-powered action and intrigue of a superhero comic, until the story considers what the world looks like from the side of the Mythos that most investigators never see. Consider Randolph Carter's unflappable adventurous spirit and the strange denizens of the dream lands in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Consider the sense of possibility and wonder their dark world must hold for the antagonists of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Furthermore, although this story's heroes are more powerful than Lovecraft's average protagonist, their world is no less terrifying. How do superheroes keep our dust mote of a planet safe? They don't. If they can make any difference at all, it is only because no one is safe in an indifferent and chaotic universe – not even the monsters.

The comic and the titular Society are named after the Kalem Club, Lovecraft's coterie of writers. This group was founded by H. P. Lovecraft, George Kirk, Rheinhart Kleiner, Arthur Leeds, Frank Belknap Long, Samuel Loveman, Henry Everett McNeil, and James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.. Lovecraft also regularly collaborated or corresponded with Robert Bloch, August Derlith, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith, C. M. Eddy, Jr., and Donald Wandrei.

This comic is dedicated to these and other great Mythos contributors and weird fiction writers (who inspired us), to my family (who always supported me), to all my friends, especially the gamers who played in one or more of the original Kalem Society RPG campaigns (Daniel Cochran, Andrew Durfor, Josh Flora, Liz Hobbs, Andy Jefferson, Chris Larkin, Ashton Morse, Jessica Sitnik, and our brilliant GM, Bram Isgur) and other gaming buddies who have given me support and advice about this project (in particular, Eli Courtwright, Mark Hrisho, Bayard Johnson, and Dan Kelly), to Skiffy (the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Club of The College of William & Mary), to all the teachers who encouraged me to write, and to science fiction & fantasy fans and gamers everywhere.