Michael Nelson (5)

I wanted to like this more than I did. The art was difficult to like at first, but grew on me. The lettering was sterile, and added nothing to the book. The writing itself at times captured some of the horror that Lovecraft was so good at evoking, but too often lapsed into wooden dialogue spoken by two-dimensional characters.

From the point of view of a Lovecraft fan who has actually read Lovecraft (I get the impression that this is increasingly not the case), I found this incarnation of the mythos to be uninspired and at times naive. The idea that Abdul al-Hazred and Nyarlathotep are hanging out 24/7 at an inn in Arkham is unintentionally comic. The one thing the book does really well is the Dreamlands, which is wonderfully weird and surreal, thanks in no small part to the art.

In the end, I found Fall of Cthulhu Vol. 1 a sometimes engaging horror story that entirely misses the point of Lovecraftian horror. Instead of gently nudging us toward an understanding of the cosmic nature of mythos horror, Nelson clubs us over the head with it.… (más)