Rat God

Rat God is a five-issues comic book series written and illustrated by Richard Corben. It was published by Dark Horse Comics in 2015.
The story is set in the vicinity of Arkham, Massachusetts, and concerns a strange community who worships a giant preternatural rat god.
==Synopsis==
===Issue #1===
In a prehistoric taiga, Achak and his sister Mak-Kitoto are fleeing from an enemy tribe who wants to kill or enslave them. As their pursuers approach, Achak is wounded by an arrow. He urges Mak-Kitoto to keep running, promising to meet her in three days by the river. As per her brother's instructions, she runs and hides in the forest. But when the three days pass and she hopes to meet her brother again, she instead sees something entirely alien to her time period: an automobile.
The driver also sees Mak-Kitoto, but when he comes out of the car, she is gone. The only person nearby is a man named Chuk, who looks like Achak and asks for a ride. Chuk recognizes the driver as Clark Elwood from Arkham, a friend of his sister Kito. However, Elwood refuses to believe that a native American like Chuk could be the brother of a white woman like Kito. Soon, Elwood's racist remarks and aggressiveness escalate into a fistfight, which he loses. Chuk steals the car and drives away, but Elwood is intent on heading north even on foot, to arrive at the small town of Lame Dog. On the way, he reminisces about how he first met Kito at Miskatonic University and fell in love with her.
Elwood loses his way in the woods and comes across mummified bodies covered in snow. A black panther attacks and almost kills him, but the beast is shot by two men traveling by dog sled. A wounded Elwood tries to signal to them, but they move on without him.
===Issue #2===
Elwood staggers on through the snow, and continues to remember his dates with Kito in Arkham. She told him that her home town of Lame Dog prospered between 1860 and 1890, when Russian prospectors moved in and found gold. However, when the gold became scarce, most settlers left. A man named Zedon Peck allied himself with the Cthanhluk tribe, learned their religious rites, and eventually became their leader. With his Cthanhluk allies, Peck orchestrated the burning of Lame Dog's church, and converted the town's population to a new faith. Elwood also remembers the day he found out about Kito's job of posing nude for an anatomy class, and cut ties with her even as she confessed her love for him, which is the reason why he's going to Lame Dog now, to find her and apologise.
Weakened by the cold and exhaustion, Elwood falls unconscious, but wakes up inside a cabin. His saviour turns out to be Chuk, who tells him to take his car and leave. Elwood does so, and finally arrives in Lame Dog, a decrepit town inhabited by strange people with rat-like facial features. He lodges in a boarding house, where a local young woman named Gharlena rents him a room, evades his questions about Kito, and advises him to leave at evening and stay away from the graveyard.
After lunch, Elwood tries to find Kito, but the locals won't cooperate with him. He meets a man named Damon Peck, who treats him more politely than the rest, but only gives him the same advice that Gharlena did. Surprisingly, Elwood also comes across three men who he had met earlier in Arkham in Kito's neighbourhood, and who once beat him up and stole his hat. Seeing that they still have it, Elwood confronts the trio and takes his hat back. A group of kids watch the ensuing fight, and one knocks out Elwood from behind with a bat. As the three thugs take the opportunity to beat Elwood again, Damon Peck interferes, telling them that Elwood might be useful later. Meanwhile, the black panther has survived and is heading towards Lame Dog.
===Issue #3===
Elwood wakes up in the boarding house, healing from his wounds, with Gharlena asking him if he's alright. She tells him again not to go to the graveyard and locks the room when she leaves. Elwood escapes by the window and decides to follow her. In the graveyard, he finds another mummified body, and a procession of cloaked cultists led by a priest wearing a giant rat mask. They stand before an altar, and Elwood watches as a trap door is opened and two young locals are offered as sacrifices to something that lives under the ground. When the third sacrifice is revealed to be Kito, Elwood interrupts the ritual and saves her, fighting off cultists and unmasking the priest, who he recognises as the professor of anatomy from Arkham. The fight ends as Elwood and some of the cultists fall into the trap door to the chamber below.
Under the cemetery, Elwood witnesses a monstrous creature with a bare rat's skull for a head devouring the flesh of the sacrifices and cultists. Shocked and exhausted, he feels his forces being drained and has a dream-like encounter with an old woman who warns him not to sleep, otherwise he will never wake up. She shows him a vision of a rat eating a blue fungus and climbing on a human skeleton. The rat regurgitates the fungus into the mouth of the skull, and the fluid grows like flesh, reviving the skeleton and turning it into a living woman: a perfect copy of Kito. Elwood confesses his love for her, but when she kisses him, she also regurgitates the fungus in his mouth. When the vision ends, the old woman allows Elwood to sleep.
Two weeks pass by and the owner of the boarding house tells Gharlena to clear out Elwood's room, but she remains hopeful that he'll come back. Indeed, Elwood manages to dig his way out and emerges from the ground under a tree in the graveyard, wondering if the whole experience was a dream. Some locals are shocked to see him, running off to tell their leader. Gharlena, on the other hand, is delighted, as she finds Elwood "cute" and is attracted to him, going as far as to try to seduce him. At this moment, she reveals that someone told her to befriend him and "make fun". After Gharlena leaves, the three men who stole Elwood's hat break into his room, only to find that he's ready for them and eager for a third confrontation.
===Issue #4===
Elwood finally gets his revenge on the three men who battered him twice, first managing to kill one with a crowbar, then throwing the second one out of the window. The third thug runs to the roof, but Elwood follows him, demanding to have his hat back. The thief tries to attack Elwood and falls to his death as well. As Elwood returns to his room, he meets Damon Peck, who offers him friendship. Damon reveals that he is the renegade son of Zachariah Peck, the anatomy professor and priest of the rat god who controls the city. When a rat shows up inside the room, Damon reacts in terror until Elwood squashes it. Satisfied, Damon reveals that he wants Elwood to kill Zachariah, and implies that he sent the trio of hat thieves as a sort of test.
Elwood is disgusted by the proposal and ready to leave, until Damon shows him a naked and mesmerised Kito who obeys all of his commands. Damon promices Elwood that he'll give her to him if he kills Zachariah. On the other hand, if Elwood refuses or fails, Damon will shoot Kito.
On the next day, Gharlena offers to elope with Elwood, but he tells her that he loves another. She believes that Kito is already dead, and runs away in tears thinking that Elwood will also get killed. Damon instructs Elwood to attend Lame Dog's annual costume party at seven, and provides him with a costume. At the party, Zachariah shows that he's aware of the assassination plot against him, and unleashes his followers on Damon and Elwood.
===Issue #5===
Zachariah orders his men to tie down Damon and Elwood and offer them as food to the Rat God. Elwood turns his head away in terror and disgust as the monster devours Damon. While the creature is busy, Chuk sneaks into the cell and sets Elwood free, showing him a passage and telling him to save Kito. Chuk seems wounded, and is captured by the Rat God before Elwood can help him. The passage leads Elwood back to the costume party, where he finds Kito. The two manage to escape and reach the car, pursued by the enraged cultists, when the Rat God itself emerges from under the ground in front of the car and attacks them. At this point, the black panther arrives and engages in combat with the Rat God.
Zachariah shoots the panther and Elwood and tries to shoot Kito, but she jumps out of the car just as the bullet hits the gasoline tank, resulting in a huge explosion that destroys both the Rat God and Zachariah. Gharlena helps Kito treat Elwood's wound, and they place him on a pickup truck. Before they head off, they meet an ancient woman, who tells them that in her youth she had many children with the white settlers, and gives Elwood a ring. After that, Elwood, Kito and Gharlena drive the truck all the way to Arkham, where Elwood meets a librarian friend of his called Prof. Upsley.
Upsley finds that the mark on the ring is an older version of the Elwood family monogram, and his research uncovers the fact that the ancient woman was most likely Elwood's own ancestor. With that in mind, Elwood agrees to go back to Lame Dog with Kito and Gharlena. Since polygamy is common in Lame Dog, Elwood marries and has children with both women, and eventually becomes the town's mayor.
==Behind the Mythos==
Set in Lovecraft Country, Rat God functions as a stand-alone work, but also contains some references to the classic Cthulhu Mythos. Specifically, Clark Elwood is prone to blurting out exclamations such as "by the loathsome Elder Gods" and variations thereof, at some points going as far as to mention Yog Sothoth or C'thulhu.
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Richard Corben works
Category:Comic Books