Zombos Says: Fair
To be accurate, this is not H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, it’s an adaptation of it by Joe R. Lansdale and Pete Bergting. To be querulous, this first issue doesn’t do a good job of making me want to read more.
In 15 pages, past the opening brief other-worldly encounter, Lansdale gives us a lot of dialog from a small group of young people worrying about the future, some half-hearted denials that anything’s wrong, and a final conclusion that there’s no denying It is testing It’s boundaries, and will find a way in–completely–before too long. They’re part of a paranormal club doing it all for a lark, and somehow the lark’s gotten bigger than they expected; more deadly, too.
This is the de rigueur impetus for nearly every Lovecraftian pastiche, cosmic apocalypse-cooking recipe, botched adapation, and mythos melodrama.
And yes, it’s getting long in the tooth.
What keeps it still compelling is a suspenseful narrative delivered through a gothically-charged atmosphere. This first issue has neither. Bergting can’t generate a visual sense of brooding and dooming in his minimal strokes, and Lansdale bores with unnecessary exposition, freezing the story with pretty talking heads and no movement. Sure, if this were a graphic novel I might be more lenient, but it’s not. Dare to use H.P. Lovecraft’s name to sell the comic and I’ll double-dare you to justify using it.
It’s not much of an entertaining comic book, either. The title story is supplanted by a second one, the first part of The Hound, comprised of a few full-page illustrations by Menton3 and scripted by Robert Weinberg. The narrative appears as handwritten, in flourishy white script, and the illustrations are similar to the cover’s charcoal-like hazy obscurity and ominous moroseness. The static nature of the presentation–it’s like reading a children’s picture book in format–is not what I expect or want to read here. This is my personal preference because it amounts to a cop-out from the more demanding panel and narrative structure a comic book demands.
The remaining pages are filled by IDW’s promotions, including an 11 page preview of Memorial by Chris Roberson, and the first part of Weinberg’s essay, Who Was H.P. Lovecaft? My answer would be, Why Not Google It?
So all of this is underwhelming.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Zombos. This is a lukewarm effort from the usually more competent pen of Mr. Lansdale. Lovecraft “The Unfilmable” seems to have become Lovecraft “The Unadaptable” of late.