Reviews

The Haunter of the Dark and Other Grotesque Visions by Alan Moore, H.P. Lovecraft, John Coulthart

crowyhead's review against another edition

2.0

This is a graphic novel by John Coulthart.

This just really didn't do much for me. Coulthart, whose style owes much to H. R. Giger, has a talent for drawing the grotesque, but his renditions of The Haunter of the Dark and Call of Cthulu (particularly the former) would be extremely difficult to understand if the reader wasn't already familiar with the stories, especially since the lettering is annoyingly difficult to decifer. The illustrations for The Dunwich Horror show much more promise, but this may be because the work is incomplete and had not been lettered. While his monsters flow and squirm nicely, his human figures are wooden and tend toward all looking very similar. The included "kabbalah of Lovecraft’s gods with accompanying evocations by Alan Moore" is a bunch of pretty cool illustrations accompanied by complete drivel.

nwhyte's review against another edition

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1180401...[return][return]In H.P. Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark, and other Grotesque Visions, John Coulthart provides us with lavishly and horribly illustrated retellings of both 'The Haunter of the Dark' and 'The Call of Cthulhu', along with pictorial meditations on the Kabbalah envisioned as aspects of the Great Old Ones, with invocations by Alan Moore, who also provides a quite bizarre introduction. Tremendous stuff, and would be a good if not very gentle introduction to Lovecraft for those who don't know his writing.[return][return]Purists may complain that Coulthart's depiction of Providence does not look like the real thing at all. This is true, but misses the point: Lovecraft's stories are only weakly rooted in the real details of geography, mainly for local colour, and Coulthart was probably right to create a Providence of his own mind rather than worry too much about what buildings Lovecraft might have known.[return][return]Coulthart asks, 'Sixty years from now, when Stephen King and James Herbert have gone the way of Dennis Wheatley and Seabury Quinn, will their books still be read as Lovecraft's are today?' He thinks not, and I agree with him.