From Gou Tanabe, the mangaka behind adaptations of At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth comes his latest adaptation of a seminal cosmic horror classic with H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time. With his latest work, Tanabe continues to give a lesson in both adapting classics to comic form, as well as showing what makes cosmic horror tick. With a thoughtful reimagining of Lovecraft’s original writing and absolutely stellar visual work, this is yet another must read in Tanabe’s library of Lovecraft adaptations.
“Professor Peaslee of Miskatonic University has been acting very strange—could he be out of his mind? No…his mind is out of him!”
Writing & Plot
Cosmic horror is no stranger to the comics universe, but notable adaptations of Lovecraft’s work are few and far between. Gou Tanabe’s skill in adapting The Shadow Out of Time lies not just in his artistic skill, but in how he selects what parts of Lovecraft’s prose to write and which parts only to show in pencil. Despite this adaptation being a one-to-one comics recreation of a prose story, there are plenty of wordless sequences where we only see ancient precipices and moments of wonder or terror across characters’ faces. Tanabe manages to make Lovecraft’s own words fit perfectly within the pages, creating an experience that feels just as much like a timeless piece of horror literature as it does a modern day comic book. For those unfamiliar, The Shadow Out of Time is story of a University professor passing out one day in class and waking up with no memory or care for his current life, and instead focuses entirely on learning new subjects and exploring the world. After five years, the professor’s old personality returns with no recollection of the last five years, and then goes on a journey to find out hat happened to him – and what the source of his nightmarish visions may be. Lovecraft’s protagonists are rarely directly in the sights of the cosmic entities they encounter. More often, they’re just hapless bystanders in the wake of events and creatures vastly beyond human imagination or existence. Tanabe’s Shadow Out of Time maintains this concept by keeping Professor Peaslee focused on the mystery he is a victim of and mostly out of harms way, with the big reveals coming off more as twisted visions of wonder rather than being the prey of monsters. Shadow Out of Time is one of Lovecraft’s best stories that doesn’t usually get as much love as some of his other, more popular works. Tanabe does an incredible job of pacing out this almost 100 year old horror story into a visual format.
Art Direction
Tanabe’s great feat in adapting The Shadow Out of Time of course lies in his visual style and his sense of sequential direction. His imaginative, heavily detailed pencils manage to craft stories that bring the unimaginable cosmic horrors of Lovecraft’s mind to life in ways that still feel in line with the story’s original intent. Tanabe draws the ancient ruins and extradimensional entities of Lovecraft’s mind using the original author’s own words as a blueprint, while still maintaining a singular and unmistakable visual style. The sense of terror and foreboding Tanabe builds with his careful direction makes for a comic experience that stands not only as a great adaptation, but as a genuinely fantastic horror read. There are sequences in Shadow Out of Time where Tanabe uses long passages of Lovecraft’s original prose, but splits them up along the panels. He hides paragraphs of description in the environment so they both stay thematic and become a part of the visual experience itself. Tanabe will layer Lovecraft’s prose over trees or on top of shadows, making for a singular experience of reading this horror story in a visual format. Normally a huge detractor for cosmic horror, and one of the reasons why this genre is difficult to pull off outside of prose writing, is because it’s s genre entirely about the unknowable or unimaginable. Once you can *see* the objects or beings of terror, it takes the tension away. Tanabe manages to keep this feeling at bay not just by modeling his visions after Lovecraft’s exact wording, but by maintaining the mystery of the story throughout the entire manga. Tanabe’s focus on Peaslee’s investigations and the stunningly detailed drawings of ancient texts and ruins keeps this story feeling like a supernatural mystery rather than outright horror. His interpretations of Lovecraft’s entities are just as strange and monstrous as you could guess, with a sense of classical sci-fi mixed with modern artistic approaches making up their design. Overall, Tanabe’s vision of this Lovecraft story is right on par with the rest of his adaptations, with this being one of the best visualizations of the cosmic horror icon’s work ever put to page.
Verdict
Gou Tanabe’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time is a stunning work of cosmic horror in the comics medium. Tanabe succeeds in crafting this story – and other pieces in Lovecraft’s library – as a comic due to his understanding of how cosmic horror should tick and applying all of the mystery and foreboding these stories require on the page. His choices in where to apply Lovecraft’s words and where to turn them purely into images, and the overall quality of his visual work, makes this adaptation and all of his others some of the best horror stories in the comics medium. Be sure to grab this volume when it hits shelves on December 23rd!
