Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom

Comic artist Bruce Brown has posted a few nice pages from his comic-in-progress entitled Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom. It's not entirely clear where the Frozen Kingdom enters into the narrative, but the bits in pieces I've been able to turn up about this work describe it as the following:

After visiting his father in Butler Sanitarium, young Howard Lovecraft ignores his father's warning and uses the legendary Necronomicon to open a portal to a strange frozen world filled with horrifying creatures and grave danger!

This much is confirmed by the sample pages the artist posted to a comic forum here. So far, so good. Brown shows off a mixed style that convincingly reflects the boyhood innocence of young HPL and the madness and mystery of his insane father. It's interesting to observe the proliferation of these "Lovecraft as hero" themes in comics and elsewhere. Several curiosities are evident in the mythic, heroic Lovecraft that deserve mention. One is that H.P. Lovecraft seems so well suited to this fictional occupation not just because of his life as a horror writer, but because the life he lived is so unusual and well preserved through mountainous letters to colleagues. Paradoxically, many creators of the heroic Lovecraft tend to focus on periods of his life that are shrouded in mystery. The paternal madness, fragmentary childhood, and his time of self-imposed isolation as a young man are frequent launching points for the alternative and courageous lifestyles of the comic Lovecraft.

Odd though it is, these qualities have certainly spurred some marvelous adventure tales that incorporate various elements of the Cthulhu Mythos. Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom is one of the latest, and will likely be available from Arcana Comics in the near future.

-Grim Blogger