Matt Lowder Reviews HAUNT OF HORROR

Guest review by Matt Lowder . . . . .

HAUNT OF HORROR: H. P. LOVECRAFT by writer/artist Richard Corben (Marvel MAX Comics, originally released 2008, January 2022 digital re-release) Issues #1 - #3, 112 pages. Matt's Rating: 3.5 STARS out of a possible 5 STARS.

In a follow-up to his 2006 miniseries, HAUNT OF HORROR: EDGAR ALLAN POE, Richard Corben has turned his focus on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Each issue contains two or three adaptations of Lovecraft’s famous work in roughly 32 pages, immaculately styled in illustrative black and gray pencil, with chapter breaks that are full or partial reprints of the original source material.

Lovecraft’s stories are almost a century old. Most of them are written in archaic, old-fashioned styles. He’s most important as a writer who influenced other writers. He's also problematic, massively racist, and inaccessible to modern readers. For new horror readers, it’s probably better if they read contemporary horror books, poems, and comics, instead of the old-timers. I'm not gatekeeping Lovecraft either. Far from it. There's a time for him. It's just later. And that’s not just my opinion — literature experts say younger readers are more likely to stick with a genre if they have new, contemporary books with a readable vernacular/vocabulary, rather than decades-old works that have an off-putting style. Do we really want to make could-be horror-fan newbs to feel like they're too dumb to jump the hurdles of cryptic, verbose run-on sentences?

The comic adaptation here does a great job of making his work more accessible. 100% -- don't get me wrong. The art is detailed and phenomenal. The source material is as weird, miserable, and tortured as ever. I'm talking bigger picture. So, rather than treating Lovecraft as some diety whom every horror fan should read, my unsolicited librarian opinion is this: we should be classifying Lovecraft as someone for intermediate-plus horror readers. Like I said earlier, there's a time for him. But we have... SO. MANY. OPTIONS. NOW. Once a person dabbles in enough horror to know they enjoy it, and once they start expressing interest in reading older writers or writers who influenced current writers, BAM, start introducing Lovecraft to them — along with careful explanations and historical perspective of the man's personal views, afflictions, anger, and the times in which he lived.

Beyond the incredible art and technical genius of this pencil work, there's just too much good horror today in comics, and novels, for me to recommend or rate this much higher. 3.5/5