H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, The First Volume adaption and artwork by Gou Tanabe, translated by Zack Davisson

Dark Horse, 2019

ISBN13: 978-1506710228

Available: Paperback, Kindle, comiXology

In this Cthulhu mythos tale, an expedition team from Miskatonic University headed by Professor William Dyer travels to Antarctica early in 1931. Lake, a member of the team, becomes increasingly obsessed with discovering the secrets of a rock sample they excavate early in their exploration. He leads a separate team to push forward to find more. They find looming black mountains, seemingly unnaturally formed caverns, and a complete zoological sample of a large creature that resembles a creature described in the famed Necronomicon housed at Miskatonic University. As scientists are wont to do, Lake dissects the specimen. The two camps had been communicating regularly via radio contact, but when Lake stops responding, Dyer and the rest of the team make the trek to Lake’s camp. When they arrive, however, they come across a grisly scene: the crew and sled dogs assigned to the camp are dead, and the bodies are mangled or dissected. The team also finds a star shaped mound of snow near the scene which turns out to contain an inhuman discovery. After recovering the remains of eleven bodies, they find that one of the members of Lake’s camp, Gedney, is missing.

Volume 1 of Gou Tanabe’s manga adaptation of H.P Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness is a beautiful and haunting version of this story. Tanabe’s artwork is an interesting and effective balance between the darkness of the caves and confined spaces to vast and breathtaking landscapes. A major difference, which I found to enhance the story, was that it was told from the point of view of both camps. The original was told from the perspective of only the main camp. This, combined with the added dialogue between the camps and artwork depicting the emotional reactions of the characters involved, created more of a sense of fear and foreboding than Lovecraft’s work. I can’t wait to see what Tanabe does with the continuation of this story in Volume 2. I would recommend this title for those who enjoy cosmic horror, manga from the horror genre, or different interpretations of Lovecraft (even those that he clearly based off of other works—in this case, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket). If you are a purist, this probably isn’t for you. Highly recommended.

Contains: corpses, dissected human body

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker