Press Release
August 19, 2011

For Immediate Release

Lovecraft is Missing Book 5: Far Off Drums
Begins Friday, September 2, 2011
at lovecraftismissing.com!

The mysteries begin to unfold as Nan Mercy, Win Battler and Father Munsford Jackey delve deeper into the disappearance of an obscure pulp fiction writer in 1926. Cosmic horror and pulse-pounding adventure swirl around the multiple factions moving towards an as-yet unknown goal, with the only certainty being that the result is not in the best interests of humanity. Is Lovecraft the key to defeating the evil, or is he merely a pawn in a larger game that somehow centers around his creations? Or is there a more terrible truth waiting to be uncovered?

Lovecraft is Missing is a pulp adventure webcomic inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. In 1926, three people –a librarian, a young pulp writer and a priest- are brought together around the circumstances involving the disappearance of a writer whom none of them have ever met. The more they dig, the more they learn about the cosmic evil threatening the world—and their own personal connections to it.

Lovecraft is Missing first went live on the web in October, 2008; there are now 134 pages up, along with three years worth of blogs, reviews of horror fiction and films, plus enough oddities to entertain even the most jaded reader.

Larry Latham writes and illustrates Lovecraft is Missing, drawing on his life-long love of werid fiction, comic books and animation for his unique style. Lovecraft is Missing is the winner of the 2009 Digital Strips Best New Webcomic award and the 2010 Comic Monsters Best Horror Web Comic award.

You can follow Lovecraft is Missing on Facebook and @Munsford on Twitter.

Ouch! Was that comment really necessary? I broadly agree with much of this review, but I don’t know why you felt the need to stick a jab at D&D-playing nerds in there – especially when you go on to admit you’re pretty nerdy yourself.

In any case, the amount of jokes purely about D&D goes down as OOTS goes on, and becomes more of a plot-based than comedy-based comic. Even at the beginning, it was more about the characters than the in-jokes, so someone like you who’s never played D&D can still get plenty out of it.

I agree the comic’s biggest weak point is its wordiness, though. Its second biggest weak point is its tendency for the plot to drag – which happens to a lot of story-based comics, but OOTS’ slow update schedule makes it particularly noticeable.

Still, that one little quip was buried in a wall of text, and had I just glossed over the page, I probably would have missed it completely. That would leave me with just the typical reasons (she’s stubborn, self-righteous) for disliking her, and I never would have thought of her as anything but a one-dimensional cretin.

On the whole, I think Burlew would do well to scale back just a tad on the dialog. We readers would be less likely to miss out on important snippets of dialog if we didn’t have to wade through swamps of circumlocution, nor would we feel as though we were being beaten over the head with certain plot points. I understand that verbosity is an important and appropriate element for this comic, but it could stand to lose about 30 words a page and still be adequately verbose.

Also, we have Belkar, a main character, who is plainly evil and duels Miko for awhile; many players are conditioned to side with Good characters and oppose Evil characters in D&D, so Miko picked up supporters then by virtue of opposing Belkar. In my opinion, some readers confused the labels “good” and “evil” for “protagonist” and “antagonist” because D&D encourages them to think that way, leading them to defend Miko’s every action.

If you’ve never played tabletop D&D, a lot of the reaction in-character to Miko will make less sense, too. Paladins are often the subject of controversy because the rules require them to keep a painfully strict Lawful Good alignment, which includes keeping all of their allies on the straight and narrow. I think Burlew was actually doing a fair job of reflecting the realistic reactions a bunch of gamers who were accustomed to playing those freewheeling characters would have had to a paladin showing up. However, looking at it from an outsider perspective, he may have “shorthanded” it a little too much, assuming that the bulk of his fanbase would understand why no one likes a paladin in the party without having to spell it out.

As you can see, D&D players have a very love-hate relationship with the paladin class, which is why Miko is the subject of so much discussion. It’s one of those subtexts in the comic that’s probably lost on non-players. OOTS has a lot of mainstream appeal, but I really think Burlew is still writing first and foremost for longtime players of the game, and using Miko to address the 30+ years of baggage the paladin class has is probably the key example of that.

As you might guess, I’m not a long term reader of OotS — I read the entire archives over a 4 week span. It sorta gives my review that new reader flavor.

As for Miko: was Burlew’s portrayal of Miko as a major pain in the ass part of the reason some fans defended her? I didn’t like her at the beginning, but I started to take her side for the simple reason all the characters seemed to hate her. Rooting for the underdog, you might say.

Also, you mention Burlew hitting us over the head with the fact that we should hate Miko. What you probably don’t realize is that many, many of his fans DON’T hate Miko, despite the comic’s consistent portrayal of her as a raging bitch. After every strip, a fleet of apologists would explain why she was still right and perfect and awesome and the main characters deserved to die for opposing her, even after she performed the horrible deeds she did. (This also explains the voluminous detail her Wikipedia article has, incidentally.) I’m pretty sure Burlew felt that he needed to include those additional words to silence extremely stubborn fans of hers. Even now, if you go to the comic’s official message boards and start talking about Miko, a 500-post flame war will begin about how she was in the right and Roy was in the wrong. I guess it’s one of the downsides of the instant interaction between author and audience that webcomics allows; Burlew can see when part of the audience isn’t getting the hint and make it again, at the expense of repeating himself to all the people who figured it out the first time. So, while I agree with you that he hits us way too hard over the head with it by the end, I also understand why he did it. The squeaky wheel got the oil.

I’m not sure if you know, too, that there are two print-only books in existence with additional prequel material. Not saying you’re required to review them, but their existence addresses two things you mentioned: One of them does answer the question of why they are called “The Order of the Stick” (it’s a fairly dumb one-page joke, though, and not worth buying the book just for that), and the other gives a LOT more depth to Xykon and his assistant, Redcloak. Enough that it really dispels the idea that Xykon is just an annoying joke, in my opinion. The first one is skippable, though it does have some of the missing focus on the dwarf cleric, but the second one is a fantastic read. Maybe you can score free review copies?