"When they had thinned out enough to be glimpsed as separate organisms, I saw that they were dwarfed, deformed hairy devils or apes - monstrous and diabolic caricatures of the monkey tribe."
"The object was nauseous; a filthy whitish gorilla thing with sharp yellow fangs and matted fur. It was the ultimate product of mammalian degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the snarling and chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life. It had looked at me as it died, and its eyes had the same odd quality that marked those other eyes which had stared at me underground and excited cloudy recollections. One eye was blue, the other brown."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Lurking Fear
The Martense's are one of the overlooked of HPLs monsters. But they fall into a category of creature he revisits over and over; the devolved human. We see examples of this in The Beast In The Cave (these two creatures are extremely similar and I suggest reading my full write up of that guy as well), The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, Rats In the Walls, The Mound etc. Humans that, through breeding or inbreeding, become more and more monstrous as generations pass. It's hard to imagine this isn't connected to HPLs reprehensible views on race and purity of bloodlines. The Lurking Fear is the best case scenario with HPLs 'devolved' storylines. It has more of a Habsburg inbreeding vibe than a racial purity vibe.
This was published in the June 1928 edition of Weird Tales with art by....ah fuck....Hugh Rankin. I've mentioned him before on this blog. His lazy illustrations accompanied The Last Test & Out Of the Aeons. I was kinder to Rankin in my last two mentions but this one is fucking awful. I really don't even know what I'm looking at?!
Later we get versions of the Martenses on a few book covers and even a Full Moon movie! There's the Panther edition with art by Michael McInnerney where they look like whack-a-moles, I think that's supposed to be them on the back cover of the other Panther edition with art by Karel Thole (though they look like hobgoblins) and the Arkham House edition with art by Raymond Bayless.
For my design I leaned more into the ape meets mole idea. While mine does have hair, it's not the matted fur of HPL's description. It didn't ring true for a subterranean humanoid. The new vs old comparison shows I tighten up the linework and fixed the eyes (so you can see the blue/brown more clearly) and fixed some anatomy issues. The changes on this one are way more obvious than some of the previous redrawn creatures. It's a sallow gray rather than white, the facial anatomy is better, the back his more humped (from digging tunnels!) and I got rid of the random sores.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention my friend Alan Brown (medsusawolf)'s amazing rendition of the Martenses!
Tomorrow is another classic where the source material was also made into a film!
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