Fall of Cthulhu Vol. 1: The Fugue

Collecting the opening arc of the new smash-hit series that is taking fandom by storm! Cy is an ordinary guy with a beautiful fiancee -- until his uncle's suicide changes his life forever. Consumed with discovering the motive behind his relative's sudden and painful death, he finds notes and scribblings about a nonsense word he doesn't recognize... Cthulhu. Obsessed, he seeks out answers to questions he should have never asked. A horrifying glimpse into a modern day Lovecraftian world filled with nightmares and excursions into Lovecraft's Dreamlands!

Grade 9 Up–Combining the first five issues of the comic-book series, this book tells of how an ordinary guy descends into madness. The story opens with Cy's beloved Uncle Walt committing suicide in an open-air café, in front of Cy; his girlfriend, Jordan; and a wealth of other people. Cy, who was raised by Walt, decides he must find out the motivation behind his uncle's desperate act and what he meant when he told Cy to stop him. So, despite Jordan's pleadings to the contrary, Cy searches through his uncle's belongings left behind in a single room in a Norman Bates-esque boardinghouse. He uncovers strange rituals, a peculiar language with not enough vowels, and an alternate world known as the Dreamlands. There, Cy encounters a creature known as the whore, who promises to unveil the secrets of Walt's obsession with the cult of Cthulhu, if Cy will give his eternity to her. The tale continues in a swirl of blood, frightening creatures, and unsettling rituals. Both the story and the style of the color artwork will remind readers of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series (Vertigo), but teens used to mainstream comics and manga series will be disappointed by the rough edges of the art. Fall will appeal most to those who enjoy dark comics.–Sarah Krygier, Solano County Library, Fairfield, CA
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*Starred Review* H. P. Lovecraft opened a gold mine with his tales of evil space aliens who came to Earth eons before humanity evolved, somehow got buried by all the tectonic shifting, but are ready to come back big time, which won’t be pretty. Plenty of sf and horror scribes have added to the Cthulhu Mythos, as Lovecraft’s confection and its extensions by others are collectively called, though not with much distinction in the comics medium. Until now. Nelson’s story concerns the beginnings of an Elder Gods comeback on the campus of Miskatonic University (which Lovecraft created), in which grad student Cy Morgan becomes involved after his anthropologist uncle’s very public suicide—and silent reappearance late that day to lead Cy into a hellish, surrealistic parallel world, the Dreamlands. Dzialowski’s ingeniously varied art clearly distinguishes this world, rendered with plenty of painterly effects, and the Dreamlands, drawn and colored in more conventional, outline-and-fill-in comics style. Dzialowski imagines plenty of ghastly nonhuman characters, and he sustains an enormously menacing aura by never fixing the looks of the human characters, especially Cy; they’re the specters, it seems, while the monsters are substantial. Nelson leaves Cy about as down as a continuing story’s apparent hero could be, which mercilessly ratchets up curiosity about where Fall of Cthulhu’s second story arc will go. --Ray Olson