A new review by Arciapod of the graphic novel The Monstrous Dreams of Mr. Providence (2022), albeit reviewed from one of those annoying highly-compressed…
free preliminary, and likely unedited copy of this book
…of the sort that gets sent out for a graphic-novel review.
But his review usefully reveals that…
One’s enjoyment of this book is directly proportional to how much somebody likes or knows about H.P. Lovecraft. … people familiar with his works will get a far better appreciation for this story than others, and honestly without knowing a bit about him, the finer points of this may fly right over their heads.
Sounds good. Warning: the review has some big spoilers. The Arciapod review has only just been published, but it turns out the book has actually been out since June 2022. I had noticed it in passing, but until now had not heard about the direct Lovecraft connection.
Now… a while back Tentaclii noted the similar-looking ‘A Bestiary of the Twilight’ (Le Bestiaire du Crepuscule, June 2022), a French ‘BD’ (i.e. oversized graphic novel, often in hardcover) also featuring Lovecraft as a character. The French Lovecraftians had mentioned it, and I assumed it had not yet been translated.
Yet I now see that this ‘BD’ has the same 120 page-count as Mr. Providence, and has the same Parisian artist/writer in Daria Schmitt. A little digging finds European comics sources noting the name change. Yes, Le Bestiaire du Crepuscule has been re-titled as The Monstrous Dreams of Mr. Providence for the English edition, and since summer 2022 can now be enjoyed by English readers.
Only as an ebook, admittedly, but at a very reasonable price (probably around $5, for U.S. readers). If you want the dead-tree version it seems you’d have to get the French ‘BD’ and a phrasebook.
The news of this prompted me to see if there was an ebook of the graphic novel biography Some Notes on a Nonentity: The Life of H.P. Lovecraft. No, still just an out-of-print 2017 hardback.