Synopsis
A graphic novel depiction of the life and works of H.P. Lovecraft.
Reviews
Inspired by a Rodionoff screenplay that assumes the "reality" of the alien monsters invented by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), Argentine artist Breccia and DC writer Giffen (Lobo) take a surreal, psychosexual look at the American horror master's life story. The book focuses on the graphics, notably lurid, dialogue-free sequences depicting Cthulhu and his tentacled kin assaulting helpless humans, starting with HPL's father, Winfield, shown in bed with a woman not his wife in a Chicago hotel. Like the actual philandering father, who contracted syphilis, this Winfield dies in an insane asylum in Lovecraft's native Providence, R.I., though not before passing on the family copy of Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon to his young son. The story's remainder concerns Lovecraft's repetitive attempts, in childhood and adulthood, to ward off a series of repellent creatures (perhaps the evil offspring of the dreaded magical tome, or just the product of his sick imagination). Those familiar with the five volumes of Lovecraft's Selected Letters or S.T. Joshi's 1996 biography may be dismayed to find only caricature. In typical Hollywood fashion, the authors make Lovecraft's one-time wife Sonia Greene a generic heroine (prettier and slimmer than the original), whom he meets in a hospital where he's recovering from an assault by an unclothed Wilbur Whateley. The child Lovecraft has the pronounced lantern jaw that he developed only in maturity. Still, Cthulhu Mythos fans who aren't pedantic nitpickers will enjoy the way the book blends bits of biographical detail with Lovecraft's frightening fictional concepts to create a grotesque and disturbing visual experience.
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Why would anyone want the monsters of H. P. Lovecraft's horror stories actually to have harried their creator? For the sake of a good story, of course, but also because having the Old Ones--Cthulhu and the rest, the sight of which can reduce General Patton, John Wayne, and Muhammad Ali into blobs of gibbering terror--bedevil Lovecraft accounts for his hellish early life. His father had a mental breakdown and died in an asylum before H. P. reached school age. His possessive but distant mother, before her own breakdown and asylum death, forbade Lovecraft's wife, Sonia, to enter the family house. In the upshot, Sonia moved to Cleveland and never saw him again. Rodionoff posits that the key to Lovecraft's misery was a book of the Old Ones' lore. Failing to control him through it, they ruined his every happiness. Thanks to Keith Giffen, who recast Rodionoff's screenplay as a graphic novel that Argentine artist Enrique Breccia makes a spectacle of melting colors and sharp-featured figures, Lovecraft's misfortunes are our creepy pleasures. Ray Olson
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