I came across the new-ish Classics Mutilated: Dread Island by writer Joe R. Lansdale, among 15 others. It was released about six months ago, and was heavy promoted to the comics crowd. The used paperback can now be picked up dirt cheap on Amazon. Although the cover might lead one to think it’s a long graphic novel, it seems the book is actually a story anthology.

Nor is it actually an all-Lovecraftian book, according to the Fangoria review by Jorge Solis who praises the title-tale thus…

The best is saved for last with Lansdale’s “Dread Island.” The weird combination between Mark Twain and H.P. Lovecraft is quite surprising. Huckleberry Finn and his close friend, Jim, are on the search for the missing Tom Sawyer. The clues lead them to Dread Island, where sinister creatures lurk in the shadows. This single story is worth buying the whole anthology [for].

So it’s not like one of those silly quickie “search and replace to make it a zombie version” mash-ups that have been inflicted on Jane Austen and others recently. Joe R. Lansdale wrote elsewhere…

I wrote ‘Dread Island’ based on my love for Mark Twain,” reveals Lansdale, “which collided with my interest in Lovecraft, and the fact that the Uncle Remus tales may have been the first stories I ever read. And then there were comics. I always saw ‘Dread Island’ as a kind of comic book in prose, the old Classics Illustrated look. That’s how it played out in my head.

Those buying for reading, rather than collecting, might note that the Kindle edition includes two extra stories.