Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937): purveyor of strange unmentionable horrors; keeper of the dreaded Necronomicon; literary successor to Edgar Allen Poe. Without him, there may not have been a Stephen King or an Evil Dead. His influence spans film and literature. Just as the word Proustian evokes long meandering sentences running between past and present, so Lovecraftian has become synonymous with the very weird; the very strange... often laden with undescribable monsters and useless revolvers firing off into putrid flesh - the learned narrator who explains the horror in a cool rational voice (though himself, probably mad); the character that opens the door, even though he knows there's something lurking behind it... these are familiar tropes of the horror genre, as space battles and alien creatures are the very punctuation of science fiction films.

There have been several weak attempts at adapting Lovecraft's work for the screen: (Necronomicon, Re-Animator, Lurking Fear, The Haunted Palace) none of which have managed to capture the simple power of Lovecraft's haunting tone. Perhaps it may have something to do with the absurdity of his work - the dreamlike quality that has to be read to be believed. Lovecraft made it his business to never fully describe his monsters because it was "too horrifying." A device strangely hypnotic, once entangled from the labyrinthine tapestries of the master's sentences, would yield a universe of possibilities to the reader.

This hypnotic effect is well suited to literature, but would lose its effect if translated to film - not that it can't be done (look at Roger Corman's adaptations of Poe's stories) ...but no one's done it effectively yet - not even John Carpenter. So along comes this graphic novel called Lovecraft, from a screenplay by Hans Rodionoff, adapted by Keith Giffen and illustrated by Enrique Breccia: A metafictional biography of the man himself. Fans of Lovecraft will celebrate the author's attention to the details of Lovecraft's life: from the overbearingness of Lovecraft's mother (young Lovecraft in a dress, proclaiming: "I'm a little girl!"); to the madness of his father; to his doomed romance with Sonia Green (who later becomes Sonia Lovecraft). Lovecraft is a blending of the real and the fictional and asks the question: what if the horrors Lovecraft wrote about were actually real?

(Oh, and there's some sex too, in case you were wondering.)

As I read the book I imagined what this would have looked like on film - I wasn't disappointed.

Enrique Breccia supplies a surrealist's touch to the visuals, and as the book (or movie if you will) progresses to its inevitable end, the drawings almost bleed outside the pages, tendrils reaching out... Lovecraft's monsters - his imaginary Arkham and Arkham Asylum (not to be confused with the one in Batman mythology, but possibly related; possibly an homage) are finally brought to life in a unique graphic collage, full of darks and lights and lurking shadows.

One of the dangers of any translation of literature to a visual medium is that the realized version is never as good as the one you've imagined inside your head. Thankfully, this book does leave a few empty spaces for your mind to fill in -- much like Lovecraft's fiction -- and it's a refreshing work because of it.

Not that this book is without its flaws (the ending felt flat and a bit forced), but it's an attempt to do something different, thereby adding to the Lovecraftian mythos -- such ambition is bound to fail, but this is an admirable fall nonetheless, in that it overreaches the established boundaries of what this material should do. Guts and all... an artist's mind is laid bare; a rusty gate thrown open. We are taken upon a journey through Providence, Rhode Island; the offices of Weird Tales (the magazine that published most of Lovecraft's stories), and the pages of the Necronmicon, the book of the dead: we find out what it likes to eat.

Creepy.

Too bad there's no Miskatonic University.

Oh well... you can't have it all. At least we have Lovecraft: A movie that never was. Admittedly a guilty pleasure, fans and newcomers alike will lose themselves inside these haunted pages.

Just in time for the Halloween season. It doesn't get better than Lovecraft, the father of modern horror.

Lovecraft by Hans Rodionoff, Keith Giffen & Enrique Breccia is now out in hardback, and will soon be released in paperback, published by DC Comics, ISBN numbers: 1401201431 (paperback), 1401201105 (hardback).



Cornelius Fortune is the author of Stories from Arlington, available later this year. His short stories have appeared in Nuvein, Ex-cess Compassion, Black Petals, Dark Fire and others. He writes weekly reviews for Mediasharx.com and is a contributing writer to the Detroit Metro Times. Contact him at arlingtonbooks@yahoo.com.