'At the Mountains of Madness' by I.N.J Culbard and H.P. Lovecraft

[For the next few posts, we will be reviewing various versions of Lovecraft's works. For October we are each reading a different short story or novella. In order to get a head start on some of his more popular works, I thought that it would be fun to find a few different variations of his works and review each. The following is the first.]

The recent adaptation of H.P Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, by I.N.J. Culbard (Eye Classics, 2010) is distinctly blase’. Although one would think that a graphic novel about any of Lovecraft’s work would be designed to be suitably dark and vaguely unsettling, this work-up is unfortunately rather straightforward and calm.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the work of that Culbard did. It is not an easy task, I’m sure, to draw a story based on any of Lovecraft’s tales, and even less easy to adapt his thick prose style to such a medium.
However, it seems that Culbard missed an opportunity to provide an artistic additive to Lovecraft’s ‘underlying sense of vague horror’ and thereby make it more frightening.
It is apparent, to this reader anyway, that Culbard’s attempt was to create the defining version of Lovecraft’s story. His attempt, while faithful to Lovecraft’s vision is undercut by the style of his art. It almost seems that under other circumstances, Culbard should be drawing for children’s books or cartoons.

In fact, it is this aspect of the graphic novel (or rather, a novella) that makes Culbard’s work so unsatisfyingly pedestrian.
Seeing that Lovecraft’s works were created for pulp magazines and that genre supports itself with tales weird and fantastic, weird and fantastic art would also be welcomed as a booster to the style. It certainly was in the days when those tales were being consumed regularly. And even now, other artistic renditions of Lovecraft’s works have been successfully developed to create a terrifying visual enhancement to the story adaptation.
In general, Culbard’s vision is not poor, it just doesn't hold up well to scrutiny by a Lovecraft fan. The art simply shows the events in a cartoonish style, a style that does not convey scary at all. If anything, it conveys indifference.
Had the art been truly disturbing, it would have added to it. Instead, the artwork actually detracts from the story, making it seem rather silly and quaint.
Wading through Lovecraft’s prose is not an easy task. Readers must be prepared for the long haul, and it takes patience to continue when he meanders in his thoughts. Nevertheless, he doesn’t meander without purpose. He simply tells us what we need to know and as readers, we make him our tour guide for the length of the story.
What Culbard has done well, however, is to pare down the story into a manageable length while not sacrificing any of the important parts of the whole. His abridgment is exceptional.
Culbard’s art isn’t bad at all, it just doesn’t fit. So with his adaptation which keeps all of the points of the story and conveys it well, the art falls short and the whole book fails as a result.
Initially this book might seem to have the potential to be as frightening as something like Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth (1989) by Grant Morrison and art by Dave McKean. McKean’s art enhances the story so well, that it is often difficult to turn the page. Certain scenes are brutal, and so cunningly drawn, that we forget we’re looking at something someone drew and painted.

It never loses its possession of the definition of graphic novel, however varying that definition may be, and it successfully creates a whole new level for other graphic novels to aspire to.
There are other versions of Lovecraft’s works out there rendered beautifully into the graphic novel format. Culbard’s version, is not one of them however.
In conclusion, this version of At the Mountains of Madness is actually a surprisingly good introduction into all things Lovecraftian. If you’re not sure you’re ready for a darker version of this story, this is ideal to get you off and running. And since you can come at Lovecraft from any angle since his stories really aren’t set in any particular chronology, this version would be particularly excellent for becoming more at home with the Cthulhu mythos and the ‘cosmic horror’ which H.P. Lovecraft so excellently imparts to his terrified readers.

The Map of Time, By Felix J. Palma

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma is not an easy book to review. The plot is too thick, there are too many characters to contend with and far too much intertwining of three distinct plots to set it down as a synopsis. 

Suffice it to say, then, that The Map of Time is a book about HG Wells, Jack the Ripper, time travel, Bram Stoker, Joseph Merrick, AKA ‘The Elephant Man’ and poor Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper’s fifth and final (we think) victim, among others, inhabit the stage of this series of events. As the the book opens, we find a young Victorian man, Andrew Harrington about to take his own life, because it turns out that he fell hopelessly in love with Mary Kelly (Marie Kelley), though now that she’s been killed, all hope is gone.
But this forms only one trunk of three major plot trees whose characters are all intertwined root to twig.
Palma’s ultimate question, however; his overarching philosophical query is much more simple than his story. What happens if we alter time? He sets his characters in motion, in a world where time travel is possible and allows us to see the ramifications of time travel, no matter how noble or altruistic the ideal which acts as impetus.
The reality of the universe within which the story takes place is a simple one; time travel is possible. However, imagine our universe, as we look back on Victorian England as the narrator describes it for us, with the realization that the consequences of many of the story’s possibilities being the loss of Dracula by Bram Stoker, or even worse since he’s a major character in the story, Wells's The Time Machine never being written.
Would that we could hope to find something in our own lives as dire, that we would come to the brink of rewriting history in order to restore our loss, with no thought of the ramifications.
However complex the stories within the the three parts, the novel never fails to keep you reading and it rates as one of the best examples of well written Science Fiction of our new century. Palma’ writing, even translated from the original Spanish, is so elegant, so beautiful, that it is easy to find oneself reading a sentence, phrase or paragraph over and over.  More so than is beauty, however, is its inherent intelligence. It crosses so many genres and fields of study, from literature to physics, metaphysics to philosophy,  romance to war and leaves the reader feeling not only smarter but also ready and piping to read The Time Machine, Dracula, more about Jack the Ripper and Joseph Merrick. 

Don’t let the length fool you though, you’ll be through with it in no time, and when you’ve gotten to the end, don’t be surprised at your intense desire to start again.
The Map of Time is available at your local Randolph County Public Library branch, and is our topic of discussion for The Men in Black Sci-Fi Book Club, this Thursday (8/16/12) at noon at the Asheboro Public Library in our Meeting Room.