Saturday 28 May 2011

The Lovecraft Anthology

This was my main purchase at the recent Bristol Comic Expo:



I am a massive Lovecraft fan and really enjoyed the Self Made Hero adaption of Mountains of Madness, so expectations were high. In a spirit of extreme modernity I tweeted my thoughts on each story. In a spirit of recycling those tweets into a review, here they are again...

1 Call of Cthulu. Slightly disappointing. Reads like an illustrated abridged short story not a comic strip. Guess this was hard to adapt. I feel I should add that I am a massive fan of Edginton and D'Israeli, The Great Game in particular was a masterpiece. I think, though, they tried to do Call a bit too literally, and it doesn't really work.

2 Haunter of the Dark. Pretty good. Feels like a proper comic. Lovely evocative art by Shane Oakley. Possibly a bit under coloured.

3 The Dunwich Horror. Pure genius. Didn't think Rob Davis liked Lovecraft but his script is near perfect. Ian Culbard art out of this world.

4 Colour Out of Space. Nicely done. Not one of my favourite HPL stories but I enjoyed this version of it.

5 Shadow Over Innsmouth. Decent adaption by Moore & Reppion with stand out art by Leigh Gallagher, channeling John Ridgeway I feel.

6 The Rats in the Walls. Enjoyable if slight. Not sure it quite captures the spirit of the original. Shocking ending though.

7 Dagon. Nice vignette to end on. Story harks back to the Call of Cthulu but totally different art style gives it distinctiveness.

Conclusion: Has its ups and downs like any anthology, but overall it's a great collection. Recommended.

Thursday 19 May 2011

Introducing... Walking Wounded: Eastern Front

So, we're back in action on the Back In Action front.

This is the first page of Pagan Blood, the debut story for Walking Wounded: Eastern Front with script by myself and art, colours and (unseen here) letters by David Frankum:



Looks great doesn't it? Well, as Bachman-Turner Overdrive so rightly teach us, you aint seen nothing yet!