Forthcoming "The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft"

A new graphic novel, "The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft," is due to be released sometime this year, according to their website. This comic re-launched its website last November in anticipation of completing the roughly 160 color pages that will comprise this oversize work. It's a collaborative work by newer artists: Mac Carter, Tony Salmons, and Adam Byrne are writers, drawers, and publishers. The promotional site prominently features a few sample slides of upcoming artwork, which showcases a darker style. As the sampling of images reveals, blatantly weird horror themes from the writer's hand won't be buried in the comic format: we see a malevolent eye (presumably on HPL's own forehead), dreams, and a great deal of cultists.

This correlates closely with the graphic novel's storyline, which is an interesting blend of Lovecraftian fiction and Lovecraft's own pseudo-biographical details. As in Hans Rodionoff's graphic novel "Lovecraft" from several years back, this latest project will seemingly utilize HPL himself as a hero struggling against the outre forces represented in his stories. Neither the author as a character in Mythos work, nor the fictional existence of cosmic horrors in both fiction and reality is new to the world of Yog-Sothery. Yet, both of these elements tend to work especially well in comics that have always been a better stage for heroes and horrors than more traditional written outlets for the Cthulhu Mythos. More on the plot from the horse's mouth:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is a young writer of penny-a-word pulps in Providence, Rhode Island who suddenly finds himself on the brink of madness. His psychotic father died in an asylum, his catatonic mother is a current patient, and young Howard fears he’s next. When a strangely ominous book goes on display at the Brown University library bizarre murders begin to plague the city and Howard comes to believe he’s somehow responsible.

Now, Lovecraft is the only one who can stop the nightmares given terrible life by his inner demons and a curse that unleashes them upon the hapless world each night.

Hopefully, "The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft" will live up to its resonating promise. It's almost certain to outdo Rodionoff's "Lovecraft," at least in some respects, so long as a better handling of Lovecraft's real life details is undertaken. And that means not torturing the reader and Lovecraft himself as a character with hyper-emphasized sexual phobias, which spilled over heavily into the horrors to a ridiculous degree in "Lovecraft." Yeah, the comics are far from perfect when it comes to sensationalizing Lovecraft's life, but we will soon see if they're getting better.

-Grim Blogger