Graphic Book Review: The Strange Adventures of H. P. Lovecraft

But now, a third alternative reveals itself. A harrowing possibility that I, more than anyone, should have considered! My night's wicked reveries conjure monsters. And if I sleep--Providence dies.

Zombos Says: Very Good

Madness wags the tail of Lovecraft's fiction. No reason it shouldn't since it dogged him every day of his life. But there are many forms of madness, though each one eventually distills into one consummate abyss surrounded only by the boundaries of chaos. Not benign, nor reticent, nor remorseful is the journey to this abyss, and shadows of malevolence dot its rim, poking furtively into consciousness, just enough to chill the bone and heat the blood.

Such is Lovecraft's legacy to fantastic literature: he gives us the briefest of glimpses into that awful abyss, which leaves a taste like salt sucked after  the bitterest glassful of Tequila spirit is downed with a chewy biteful of the thickest worm. But the worm is only in your imagination, of course. Con gusano is a myth perpetuated for the gringos who don't know the difference between Tequila and Mezcal. But myth can be powerful, nonetheless, especially when cosmic in scale, yet kept personal in the telling.

The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft issues 1 through 4 are collected in Image Comics trade paperback. Written by Mac Carter and drawn by Tony Salmons, Howard Philips Lovecraft becomes his own haunter of the darkness, shaded over by his spiritual dissolution, doted over by his two perpetually tipsy aunts, weakened by his mentally-deranged parents, and nearing a void in his life ready to trip him into that abyss. Of course this is the imagined Howard Philips Lovecraft, the fictional one who unwittingly becomes the Gate, the reluctant welcoming committee and tour guide par excellence for those Others, the Ones patiently waiting at the rim of the abyss to return insanity and chaos to its proper place in the cosmos. Their cosmos.

Carter keeps it all very personal for Lovecraft. Howard has writer's block big time, but his volatile dreams betray his inmost desires, the ones he can't seem to man up to during his waking hours. This bottling up becomes his uncorked genii at night, speeding off on more than ethereal wings, and soon the people of Providence--the ones he can't seem to get along with all that well--are madly stroked into Picasso paintings colored in chaos.

Being an underground artist, Salmons doesn't quite capture the flux of unreality, the melting of sanity, or the horrors-beyond-time as morphologically lucid as I'd like, but between Carter's narrative for Howard's plight and the repercussions of his cosmic gate-keeping, there is a symbiosis of intent between Carter and Salmons that realizes the action more than adequately. The frantic elucidation of the Necronomicon's influence on Howard's fragile mind, the subtle murmurings from its long dead compiler goading him on (the opening pages in issue 1 are some of the best in the series), and his psychological instability converge into a fast-paced tale of terror that makes it all very personal for Lovecraft and us.

Comments

[zoc]

Thanks Richard. And your blog is excellent. Your post on The Killing Joke made me go back and reread the trade paperback. You're right: it's one of those comics that hits all the buttons on art and story, and it is horror! Not much that exciting is happening in comics these days :(

[richard]

Every time I read your reviews I am both pleased (because they are good and informative) and annoyed because they make mine seem lame.

Yes, well... I love Lovecraft and am glad image is doing this. Great blog by the way.

[Lazarus Lupin]

Thank you for your insightful review. I love graphic depictions of Lovecraft. Everyone brings something to the fold.