Providence is a twelve-issue comic book limited series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Jacen Burrows,[1] published by American company Avatar Press from 2015 to 2017.

[4] Robert Black, a reporter for the New York Herald and aspiring novelist, is sent by his editor, Mr. Posey, to "scare up" a story about an infamous book called Sous Le Monde, which is rumoured to drive its readers insane.

Feeling inspired and intrigued by this story, Robert returns to his office, where he learns that his jilted gay lover, Jonathan, has committed suicide in one of New York's Lethal Chambers.

Suddenly, Johnny Carcosa (an avatar of Nyarlathotep) appears in the room and confirms that Robert has helped to fulfill a prophecy in which Lovecraft's stories will bring about the apocalypse.

At the FBI, Carl Perlman concludes that all Lovecraft's fiction, its criticism and Robert's testament have acted as the conduit through which an outside force has taken purchase on humanity's collective unconscious to a point where it can change reality.

Continuing on foot to Arkham, he finds a delegation waiting which includes Brears, Sax, some Mi-Go, a woman 'housing' a member of the Great Race of Yith and Lovecraftian scholar S. T. Joshi.

Its sequel Neonomicon was published in 2010 as a four-issue miniseries, in which the cosmic entity Cthulhu, prophesied by Lovecraft through his stories, would be born on modern-day Earth through the rape and pregnancy of the main female character.

[7] He is also critical of the Mythos incorporated in mainstream popular culture as parodies and merchandise, and insisted that it is necessary to "refocus the readership’s attention upon the things that are genuinely frightening or disturbing about Lovecraft’s writing.

Unlike Lovecraft's many followers who attempted to systemize the Mythos,[15] Moore aimed to place the original works within the context of biographical fact and the unstable post-World War I American society.

[16] The story of Providence was set in 1919, just before the completion of Lovecraft's persona popularized among later generations, and prior to the creation of Cthulhu and his friendships with people like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith.

[17] Far from outlandish eccentricities, the fears that generated Lovecraft’s stories and opinions were precisely those of the white, middle-class, heterosexual, Protestant-descended males who were most threatened by the shifting power relationships and values of the modern world.

[20] Lovecraft lived in the United States during a time when xenophobia was on the rise due to growing immigration, scientific racism was prevalent, and discrimination against people of color and homosexuals was legal.

[27] Moore believed this was a deliberate technique for an alienating effect,[14] arguing that depicting the mystical entity Cthulhu as "a monster with tentacles" contradicts Lovecraft's original intent.

According to English scholar Craig Fischer, this format limits the full depiction of figures within a single panel, with details of architectures and natural objects occupying the peripheries.

[37] Maciej Sulmicki notes that the realistic art in the book closely reflect historical facts, emphasizing the contrast between the "objective" visual representation and the subjective text.

Moore, a longstanding advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, had previously expressed his support through his 1988 poem The Mirror of Love, which protested anti-homosexual legislation in England, recounting how Christian society had occultized ancient cultures where homosexuality was accepted.

Whittaker contends that Moore effectively merges this historical perspective on homosexuality with contemporary notions of diversity, while also intertwining it with Lovecraft's works, which reflected conservative values in the early 20th-century.

[37] Matthew Green argues that the comic’s characters and narrative are deeply intertwined with real-world issues as well as Lovecraft’s universe, reflecting Moore’s belief that "culture – generated through a combination of desire and imagination – is fundamentally bound together with the world of material relations.

"[43] The Stella Sapiente society, which overthrows the human world in the story, is composed predominantly of elderly white men who discard those they consider genetically or intellectually inferior,[44][45] while exploiting women, children, and people of color.

[44] Moore’s adaptation of "Pickman's Model", which originally focuses on art and its interpretation, introduces a political dimension absent from Lovecraft's story, specifically referencing the 1919 Boston police strike.

"[47] Ayers argues that Moore critiques the ideological legacy inherited from pulp novels to contemporary American comics by exploring Lovecraft’s covert racism, misogyny, and dysfunctional sexuality.

[50] In reviewing the series, Matthew Kirschenblatt quotes Moore as saying that the increased flow of information at the turn of the century marked a critical point in human society.

According to Kirschenblatt, the series portrays the fear that the advent of popular media has facilitated the dissemination of a type of culture that was originally oral in nature, resulted in trivial information becoming so pervasive that critical thinking is being diminished.

[17] Matthew Green writes that Moore expands on this idea, highlighting the roles of the humanities, literary criticism, philology, and archives, alongside the arts, in the working of "magic.

[57] Although Moore dismisses the notion of Lovecraft's work being genuinely occult[55] — labeling it "astral cosplay" and "certainly not important magic"[15] — he does acknowledge the subversive power of fiction.

[8] While the "end of the world" brought by Cthulhu in Providence seems to offer liberation from a corrupt and oppressive reality, it ultimately leads to a realm where all meaning is utterly lost.

[64] In 2023, literary scholar Steve Corbeille noted the increasing efforts in the Mythos genre in America to critically address the racism, misogyny, and homophobia of its originators, citing this series as a notable example.

"[68][69] Bleeding Cool described the comic as "true horror" highlighting its portrayal of "acceptance of failure, of impotence, of helplessness, of submission to doom," in contrast to Hollywood's formula of "jump scares and gaining control to defeat the monster".

[33] Gerard Gibson, writing in Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, praised the series' "a more abject apocalypse" for accurately representing Lovecraft's worldview, where human existence is deemed worthless.

[30] Craig Fischer, writing in The Comics Journal, noted that Burrows's calm, realistic style is effective for the story that starts quietly and then suddenly turns horrifyingly bizarre.