Panel: Herbert West as Cultural Icon
For sixty years Herbert West lingered as a minor character in a minor story overshadowed by Lovecraft's more cosmic creations. That all changed in 1985 with the release of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator. Since then Herbert West has become an icon comparable to Freddy Kruger, Michael Meyers, and Jason Voorhees spawning competing films, comic books, novels, short stories, and even a pitch for a TV series. What are the origins of this iconic character and how has he been fantastically and macabrely transformed over the years.
with Pete Rawlik, Kelly Young, Christine Morgan, Molly Tanzer, Ken Hite.
Peter Rawlik is a prolific author of Lovecraftian Fiction including the novels Reanimators and The Weird Company. His fiction often focuses on characters and events forgotten by Lovecraft and his successors. His latest novel is the Lovecraftian noir Reanimatrix, which tells the story of both Robert Peaslee and Megan Halsey, the second generation of Lovecraftian Heroes.
K.L. Young is an award-winning filmmaker, podcaster, and publisher. He is the author of The Secret Language of Spiders. He lives in a pop-culture museum in Washington State.
Molly Tanzer is the author of the weird western Vermilion (Word Horde, 2015) and the forthcoming historical novel The Pleasure Merchant (Lazy Fascist, 2015). Her debut collection, the Lovecraftian mosaic novel A Pretty Mouth, was nominated Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award. Her other Lovecraftian short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine was well as on the Lovecraft eZine, and in such anthologies as the forthcoming Cthulhu Fthagn!, The Book(s) of Cthulhu, Future Lovecraft, and The Book of the Dead. Her forthcoming Lovecraftian stories include "The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad" (She Walks in Shadows) and "But Only Because I Love You" (Dreams From the Witch House). She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Swords v. Cthulhu, with Jesse Bullington. Molly lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and a very bad cat. She tweets @molly_the_tanz, and blogs — infrequently — at http://mollytanzer.com.
Christine Morgan works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility, which plays havoc with her sleep schedule but allows her a lot of writing time. A lifelong reader, she also reviews, beta-reads, occasionally edits and dabbles in self-publishing. Her other interests include gaming, history, superheroes, crafts, cheesy disaster movies and training to be a crazy cat lady.
Kenneth Hite has designed, written, or co-authored 100+ roleplaying works, including Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, The Dracula Dossier, the Delta Green RPG, Night’s Black Agents, The Fall of Delta Green, and Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition. His other works include the two-volume Tour de Lovecraft, Cthulhu 101, The Cthulhu Wars for Osprey, the “Lost in Lovecraft” column for Weird Tales, an annotated edition of Chambers’ The King in Yellow, and four Lovecraftian children’s books. Half of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast and an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre, he lives in Chicago with two Lovecraftian cats and his non-Lovecraftian wife, Sheila.