The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft Volume 1

Chilling! Uncanny! Macabre! The wall that separates reality and nightmare comes fast undone in this, the complete, horrific chronicle of young H.P. Lovecraft! Is he a harmless writer of supernatural fiction ― or a secret god of destruction and despair? This is one strange tale, indeed!

From Booklist

Oh, the tortures that modern authors put Howard Lovecraft through. The impulse is understandable—Lovecraft’s utter commitment to his style and mythos certainly felt, well, suspicious. Could he have possibly written the way he did without some inroad into the supernatural? This graphic novel suggests not, and has a ball casting the skinny, down-on-his-luck scribbler as unwilling combatant against the forces of evil. Lovecraft’s editor at Weird Tales thinks he’s a loony; Lovecraft’s erstwhile librarian girlfriend, Sylvia (fabulously outfitted as a flapper), has moved on to a new gent; and Lovecraft himself is deep within the throes of crushing writer’s block. For better or worse (and, believe me, it’s worse) the library’s newest acquisition—the Necronomicon—somehow channels wild, tentacled monsters who slaughter Lovecraft’s enemies while he sleeps. It’s an above-par action-horror comic written in a voice almost flowery enough to be Lovecraft’s own. Salmons’ dynamic and shadowy art, meanwhile, hits its stride when given opportunity to stretch out, as in the lavish spreads of the Old Ones—“‘It is indescribable, except in fragments,’” thinks Lovecraft, and he’s right. --Daniel Kraus

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