COMIC REVIEW: BEYOND LOVECRAFT - NEARLY LOST IN TIME AND SPACE

Starting as a crowded-funded, Indiegogo project, the graphic novel Beyond Lovecraft was almost never finished. However the perseverance of Rob Moran and Jasper Bark ensured it would still be brought into reality, even after six years of setbacks, tragedy and complications.

The finished product is an interesting read, with some good adaptation of Lovecraftian tropes. The core of the book is three stories: Beyond Lovecraft; Occupy The Mountains Of Madness; and Out In Innsmouth.

Beyond Lovecraft features a post-apocalyptic setting where the last few scientists search for a way to use Yitian time travel to undo the awakening of Cthulhu that has decimated the human race. Half was told in a wonderfully surreal artwork, the second half was plain text, which was a little dissapointing.

Occupy The Mountains Of Madness is a direct sequel to the Lovecraft story “In the Mountains of Madness”, and features a group of activists attempting to stop oil drilling in the Antarctic. One of their members redirects them to the Elder Thing city for his own purposes.

Out In Innsmouth is a coming-of-age tale for a teen boy, living in Innsmouth, and hiding his homosexuality. Believing the town will never accept him as he is, he tries to find a way to escape.

In a style similar to the original Lovecraft story, The Call of Cthulhu, the Beyond Lovecraft story is a framing device to facilitate the telling of the other two. It ends up being the stronger of all three, having a significantly more interesting and inventive story to tell overall.

From Occupy The Mountains Of Madness

However all three of the these stories are overshadowed by the bonus tale, Morton Meets a Mi-go. It was originally expected to be only available to backers on Indiegogo, but due to their various complications, the creators decided to include it in the standard release.

Morton Meets a Mi-go is a Dr. Seuss style parody loosely based of Horton Hears a Who. The writing for this is exceptional, and the style of rhyming that is synonymous of Dr. Seuss books works really well for an atmosphere of creeping dread that permeates the tale of Morton.

As it stands this comic is well worth your time, especially if you didn’t spend the last six years in anticipation like its backers endured. I can’t speak for all the backers, but although I get the sense some of the writing or artwork was rushed, I’m just glad it does exist, because it could have just easily dissappeared like so many other crowd-sourced projects.

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