A curiosity from Spain, newly popped up on Archive.org. Necronomicon Ilustrado is a 66-page booklet of unknown date, filled with rather pleasing pen-worked pages and forming a complete visual guide to Mythos monsters (inc. Derleth and Smith etc).

I regret I can’t credit the artist, as the booklet appears to be anonymous.

A new Liberty Room review of 1899, which it turns out was a short-lived and not much watched U.S. TV show in 2022.

The show only increases its adoption of Lovecraftian elements from there, featuring mad cults, rooms which defy all rules of geometry and space, and strange structures hidden in the remote arctic, all set in the same era in which many of Lovecraft’s own weird tales take place. Yet the show’s use of these elements is wholly its own, putting far more focus on the human mind and the mysteries that lie within each person than on those which lie in other dimensions.

I see it was a Netflix show, and that the (reportedly costly) first season ended on a monumental chiffhanger. Not that many viewers made it that far, though, with tracking showing only 50% of buyers made it through to watch the final episode. It will now never be completed, unless perhaps in audio / novel / graphic-novel form.

Chaosium has an Event Spotlight: H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society Events page, for the 13th-16th April 2023 U.S. Chaosium Con event.

Dark Horse has finally dated Gou Tanabe’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” comics adaptation in its English translation. Though we’ll still have to wait a while, and even then its release will manage to miss the pre-Halloween market. 24th November 2023 is the current date for the $30 single volume. The original from manga master Tanabe was first published in Japanese, concluding there in November 2020.

Italy recently saw it released as a two-volume translation totalling 480 pages…

Also noted in comics, Slings & Arrows has a new review of Jim Steranko’s Marvel Visionaries collection (2002) and the reviewer, as well as some classic Captain America issues, notes the following…

The Lovecraft-inspired ‘At the Stroke of Midnight’ [is] beautifully drawn, with characters navigating panoramic gothic backdrops, through rows of micro-panels (pictured, right) capturing moment-to-moment reactions. Steranko’s use of extreme tonal contrasts prefigures V for Vendetta and Sin City. It’s a visual delight, and not reprinted elsewhere.

The tale was originally a seven-pager in the spinner-rack comic Tower of Shadows #1 (September 1969), and it appears that Steranko also had standalone strips in later editions of the same title. Having tracked this particular strip down at a blog as scans, I’d say it’s rather more ‘haunted house’ than Lovecraftian (possibly the reviewer was thinking of Derleth’s ‘collaborations’), but with some effective twists and moments.

The well-reviewed 1930s Lovecraftian videogame Call of the Sea (2020), is free from the Epic Games Store from 9th-16th March 2023. The locks have not yet popped on this $20 narrative / mystery / puzzle game, but should any hour now. Account required. Runs back to Windows 7 and low-spec graphic cards.

Dark Worlds Quarterly has a fine new survey, with a few predictably gory examples, of vintage Lovecraft in Black & White. This being a survey of b&w comics that have, over the decades, adapted various Lovecraft tales.

I especially liked the look of the opening splash page for “The Music of Erich Zann” adapted by Roy Thomas, in the short-lived Masters of Terror #2 (September 1975). Masters of Terror was a b&w magazine-format comics anthology published under Marvel’s Curtis cover-imprint, offering reprints.

I tracked it down online and found the same (final) issue also had “Pickman’s Model”, again adapted by Roy Thomas…

A rather good “Zann” reprint then, but from where? A little digging finds it was originally in colour under the title “The Music From Beyond” in Marvel’s regular-sized Chamber Of Darkness (issue #5, June 1970). This issue had nice Kirby pencilled cover-art, and a Kirby tale inside, so is collectable and thus pricey today.

“Ahah”, I thought, “this new metal album’s cover artwork is a superb emulation of ‘Ian Miller channelling Lovecraft'”.

Turns out, it’s actually by Ian Miller himself. His blog has the full cosmic vista…

Encyclopaedia Metallum reviews the album Anthronomicon, by the band Ulthar, and immediately finds…

“We’re off to battle right away against the Lovecraftian hordes!”

After that, it’s apparently much of the same old-school metal pace right through to the end. Delivered with all of the skill of a leading Californian metal band on their third album.

Turns out this is not the first cover Miller’s done for them. A little more digging discovers their two earlier albums with Miller covers…

The orange one reminding me instantly of the art for one of Miller’s classic 1970s paperback covers for Panther. Is this the picture that was lost and had to be recreated? Anyway, if you don’t fancy framing the album cover(s) then this one can be had as a fine art print direct from Miller.

In the Bookshops of Arkham, an eight-hour YouTube series of Call of Cthulhu ‘actual play’. Just in case you were curious about such RPG things.

And, as for props for such things, I found a nice 1904 card which might serve to aid in visualisation of settings. The shop on the right of the row being a possible book shop.

It’s a pity that city bookshops and galleries don’t (didn’t) get photographed, as 80 or so years later they’re of great interest due to their connections with famous writers and artists.