So, umm, apparently there's Lovecraft manga

[Edmond Dantes]

As far as I knew, H.P. Lovecraft, the famous horror author from the 1920s, was basically unknown in Japan except possibly through movies or video games, and that the closest we ever got to Lovecraft manga was people saying "Cthulhu" or "Necronomicon" in a couple of horror stories that otherwise had nothing to do with Lovecraft.

So imagine my surprise when I'm scouring ebay and I find actual manga of his stories The Dunwich Horror and At the Mountains of Madness. Actual adaptations.

Okay, question:

1) has anyone read these things and

2) are they any good and

3) where can I find scanlations?

Thanks in advance.

[drauch]

Man, Lovecraft is one of the biggest inspirations in horror and sci-fi fiction. I don't understand why this is so surprising... especially from a medium that delves a lot into tentacles.

These don't look to be translated. I could see it sometime in the future, though, especially due to the odd boom the last few years in Lovecraft interest all over the net. There's also an Innsmouth one it looks like from that seller, as well as some OVAs from late 2000. You'll probably be very disappointed. This just screams bad adaptation; the sort of stuff they put out like crazy any more: super heroes, Starcraft, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc...

[Mortificator]

There's a Lovecraft everything.

[Xyga]

Loli Nyarlathotep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyaruko:_C ... _with_Love

Despair.

[Lord Satori]

Loli Nyarlathotep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyaruko:_C ... _with_Love

Despair.

I saw the anime adaptation. I actually thought it was kinda funny. Though it kinda annoyed me that they turned them into aliens instead.

[CMoon]

The cover for that mountains of madness looks nice, but I continue to maintain that lovecraft is best seen inside your head.

[Edmond Dantes]

I don't understand why this is so surprising... especially from a medium that delves a lot into tentacles.

See, that there is exactly why. I figured that if I saw any Lovecraft references coming from anime or manga, they would be just an excuse for tentacle hentai (which Lovecraft would not have approved of, prude that he was). Actual adaptations of Lovecraft's actual stories actually seemed unlikely, actually.

Even in America, more people know Lovecraft through derivative media than through his actual works. One proof of this is how the Mythos monsters are often interpreted as simply having some magical ability to make people insane, which isn't how it worked in Lovecraft's stories at all.

[drauch]

Not going to argue there; I hate this shit. Lovecraft has become a frickin' joke in the past few years.

[Edmond Dantes]

All great literature has become a joke. Dune is remembered as a mess of bizarre gibberish and Lord of the Rings has become a campy action film. That latter pisses me off more than anything. No wonder Christopher Tolkien tried to stop production of The Hobbit.

Incidentally, do you happen to know a site that sells reprints of old book covers (or at least where I can download full scans to print them off myself, or have a copy shop do it)? I used to own the Arkham House collections, which had cool Raymond Bayless covers, like so:



I lost those and want to buy new editions because they're cheaper, but... the new covers suck:



Sigh. From here on out, whenever a book has a cover I admire, I make scans of it.

[Imhotep]

I've greatly enjoyed Neonomicon, a recent comic written by Alan Moore.

Nemo: Heart of Ice is also great fun.

[CMoon]

All great literature has become a joke. Dune is remembered as a mess of bizarre gibberish and Lord of the Rings has become a campy action film. That latter pisses me off more than anything. No wonder Christopher Tolkien tried to stop production of The Hobbit.

It is interesting that Lovecraft's best interpretation remains Carpenter's Thing, which is no interpretation at all.

Incidentally, do you happen to know a site that sells reprints of old book covers (or at least where I can download full scans to print them off myself, or have a copy shop do it)? I used to own the Arkham House collections, which had cool Raymond Bayless covers

Oh man, that is probably the worst cover for a lovecraft collection I've ever seen. I still have (and prize) the Arkham House collection, but in general publishers have always managed to slap on some pretty amazing artwork.

Here are the one's I grew up with (which certainly aren't bad):


But wouldn't it have been so much nicer to have grown up with these:

[Skykid]

All good.

I grew up with two parts of the Omnibus collection on the shelf. Used to look at the cover as a kid and think how cool.

[rapoon]

those covers kick ass.

[CMoon]

Skykid> I think those covers actually look pretty awful. Do you have fond memories of them? I'll admit to liking the Raymond Bayless covers the most, but by the time you buy those, you're pretty much saying your an adult and have the $60 or more to drop on your hardbound collection of lovecraft books that will sit forever in your library until your bewildered grandchildren try to figure out how to auction them off as part of your estate. For paperback, I really do like some of the older volumes I linked that were already musty and forgotten when I first discovered lovecraft in my local used stores. For me, a good lovecraft cover really needs to imply horror rather than directly spill it all over the cover.

Maybe I have such fond memories of this edition because it was my first dose of Lovecraft's earlier work where he writes very short, almost poetic stories. In fact, 'Memory' is a wonderful prose poem only a few paragraphs long.

[Mischief Maker]

Lemme play devil's advocate here.

I'm fascinated by the relationship between H.P. Lovecraft and Conan the Barbarian creator Robert Howard because the two writers are the inverse of each other. Lovecraft was a visionary ideas man but his prose is for shit. I was way more horrified reading the Call of Cthulhu RPG book's matter-of-fact synopses of Lovecraft's stories than the actual writing. As Edmund Wilson put it:

One of Lovecraft's worst faults is his incessant effort to work up the expectations of the reader by sprinkling his stories with such adjectives as “horrible,” “terrible,” “frightful,” “awesome,” “eerie,” “weird,” “forbidden,” “unhallowed,” “unholy,” “blasphemous,” “hellish” and “infernal.” Surely one of the primary rules for writing an effective tale of horror is never to use any of these words—especially if you are, at the end, to produce an invisible whistling octopus.

Howard, on the other hand, had fantastic crackling prose. Writing an exciting fight scene is a serious challenge, and Howard did it expertly. But unlike Lovecraft, every single goddamn Conan story basically had the same plot, same themes, the question was just whether at the end Conan would fight a giant ape or a giant snake. But boy was that fight a fun read!

[CMoon]

Lemme play devil's advocate here.

Just tossing it out there and am curious to hear what others have to say, but I very much prefer Lovecraft's writing to Howard, although the faults you mention are legitimate. That said, drawing parallels is completely appropriate since I'm certain they corresponded with each other and seem to recall a Conan story or two with some heavy lovecraft influence. Surprised though that you don't care for Lovecraft's writing which is at times poetic and almost always captivating.

[drauch]

I mean, it is pulp fiction...

Clark Ashton-Smith and the two were also good friends, and one could argue he was possibly a better writer than both of them, but you never hear about shit from him. I think Wilson kind of misses the point in weird fiction, because it's obviously a very derivative bit of fiction, often full of references and tributes to others work. You look at a lot of the writers during the time and they all wrote to each other, borrowing ideas and lands and creatures. I don't think anyone was trying to be some literary giant when writing serializations in magazines, which is why you still get a lot of criticism towards the entire sword & sorcery genre in general. This seems especially magnified after Lovecraft's death (that article was written 8 years after) when these people achieved a bit of fame, and of course today since they've become even more popular.

[Mischief Maker]

I mean, it is pulp fiction...

Clark Ashton-Smith and the two were also good friends, and one could argue he was possibly a better writer than both of them, but you never hear about shit from him. I think Wilson kind of misses the point in weird fiction, because it's obviously a very derivative bit of fiction, often full of references and tributes to others work. You look at a lot of the writers during the time and they all wrote to each other, borrowing ideas and lands and creatures. I don't think anyone was trying to be some literary giant when writing serializations in magazines, which is why you still get a lot of criticism towards the entire sword & sorcery genre in general. This seems especially magnified after Lovecraft's death (that article was written 8 years after) when these people achieved a bit of fame, and of course today since they've become even more popular.

No, what Wilson is talking about is the prose equivalent of "show, don't tell." If the narrator just describes something as "horrible," instead of actually crafting a scene the reader will interpret as horrible, the writer has failed.

[drauch]

Sigh... yes, I understand what you mean, but that's not what I was talking about.

Lovecraft isn't scary, agreed, but that's not why he was good. "Failed" and "shit" is a bit harsh, but whatever. Not getting into another shmups forum debate, goddammit. Wish a giant ape would burst through my wall and punch me in the stomach.

[Skykid]

Skykid> I think those covers actually look pretty awful. Do you have fond memories of them?

I do! I can't help it, they're relics of my childhood bookshelves. I always thought they were very comic booky, and since I was into comic books I found them fascinatingly gory.

As for how they represent Lovecraft, I completely agree with you: they're all assumption and no mystery. But when you're seven years old, they really want to make you read the book.

[Edmond Dantes]

I'll admit to liking the Raymond Bayless covers the most, but by the time you buy those, you're pretty much saying your an adult and have the $60 or more to drop on your hardbound collection of lovecraft books

If you're shopping on eBay maybe, but I've actually found them all for significantly less. Mountains of Madness and Other Stories can be had for the single-digits sometimes.

The trick is to not trust stock photos. An Abebook listing showing the modern cover might still be a listing for the 1980s prints, which will have the Bayless covers.

Wish a giant ape would burst through my wall and punch me in the stomach.

Giant apes are more likely to stick you up a chimney and leave it to some detective to figure out how it happened.

What the hell is Baron Harkonnen doing on the cover of a Lovecraft book?

[Lord Satori]

Yeah I don't have much experience in his actual works, but I'm a huge fan of the characters his series represents. Coming up with extra-dimensional creatures in an era where modern astronomy was in its infancy (or maybe hadn't started, idk) is no easy feat. The man had an incredible imagination. All of his frightening monstrosities are lurking in the depths while we humans make the same "human gets possessed by demon" movies over and over again. When will we learn?