Another comics adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, set to be in the comic-book stores as a #1 ‘floppy pamphlet’ comic-book in mid September 2022. By Florentino Florez, Guillermo Sanna, and Jacques Salomon. No mention of how many issues. The usual run on this sort of thing is five or six. But I’d guess about eight (192 pages) might do it more justice. Nice #1 cover-art, which reminds me a bit of late-1970s Dave Gibbons on 2000AD.

A somewhat pose-able HPL, from 52 Toys in Japan and said to be shipping August 2022.

I don’t think much of the body but the head’s not too bad, though a bit wide. Might be useful as a desk reference for someone hand-drawing a comic featuring Lovecraft?

Now booking, A Dream at the End of Time, a Lovecraft musical, based on Lovecraft’s “Iranon”. Los Angeles, 19th-25th June 2022. Be warned that the casting-call suggests it’s opera, not catchy show-tunes.

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities is a “coming later in 2022” anthology TV series “by a team of writers and directors personally chosen by del Toro”. The advance blurb now notes…

There’s also one episode based on an H.P. Lovecraft story.

But it doesn’t say which. “Cool Air” would probably be the most viable cheap-to-film idea. Being short enough and mostly filmed in a one-room set with a cast of two. But with the potential to have a bit of retro dieselpunk-ery injected into it in terms of the apparatus and city, maybe done in a slightly over-the-top Terry Gilliam manner.

Also, a British indie movie of “H.P. Lovecraft’s the Shadow over Innsmouth” is in production in 2023, at least according to the IMdB. Though only “loosely based”, and possibly the same as the already available full-length movie Markham (2020) from the same scriptwriter.

Another “loosely based” forthcoming movie is “H.P. Lovecraft’s Witch House”, said to be very amateur and going straight to steaming in July 2022.

The 2017 graphic novel biography Some Notes on a Nonentity: The Life of H. P. Lovecraft is now out-of-print at PS, and Amazon or other ‘used’ sources can’t offer any used copies. It it time for an ebook version?

An Abe curiosity popped up. A Lovecraftian collection from 1981. All seemingly by a Spanish writer called Ofelia Dracs.

A homage to one of the most prominent figures in the genre, H.P. Lovecraft … a collection of tales with a Lovecraftian stamp, full of disturbing, mysterious moments and terrifying atmospheres.

Published in Catalan by Edicions 62, at 140 pages. I guess the cover relates to the contents, but perhaps it was also meant to play into the high status of Asimov’s Robots books at that time?

A Spanish blog post from 2013 reveals that ‘Ofelia Dracs’ is now known to have been a pseudonym for a Catalan group of writers, who wrote all the book’s tales in 1981. So it’s effectively a group anthology. It was later issued in Spanish in 1984, and both it and the group seem to be well regarded. The story titles translate as…

E.E. and Mr. Baron.
The Terrifying Testament.
Blood of Blood.
The Revealed Letter.
Cats With Pretty Eyes.
R.I.P. Freewave.
Under the Green Island.
The Invasion.
Euthanasia.
The Neverending Tale.

So it’s not the ‘forgotten Spanish female writer, perhaps writing Dreamlands tales’ that I had at first imagined. Some of the writers are said to be parodists but some made an attempt to adopt the Lovecraft style. They used his mythos and places, and also his atheism — since Catalan avante-garde writers tended to be strongly anti-Catholic at that time. The group seems to have gone on to publish several collections of 1980s erotica, if the Amazon listings are anything to go by. Lovecraft, Lovecraft never seems to have been translated into English.

An interesting new stage adaptation, “A Dream at the End of Time” by Thomas Blakeley. It’s Lovecraft’s “The Quest of Iranon”, adapted. A cast of five is currently rehearsing for a June 2022 run at the McCadden Theater in Los Angeles.

In fact, I tracked down the casting call — still online — and this reveals it to be opera. I don’t quite recall there being a “gritty” alto singer called “Queen Oona” in the tale, although the lush city of Oonai does feature prominently and the other cast profiles do seem to fit.

Hopefully there might be a DVD recording of the show after the run is over, with subtitles (since opera just sounds like screeching and wailing after a few minutes, to my philistine ears).

A selection from The Droll Songs of Pantagruel.

“Sunday morning elevated, 1925.”

Based on a 1942 record-picture photo of the New York elevated railway platforms, made for the U.S. Office of War Information. HPL added by me. So far as I’m aware, the source picture’s U.S. government status should put it into the public domain, and thus I’m open to offers to use this version as a book cover. Space could be added above/below for titles etc. The painting can be polished up a bit if needed.

A 1968 postcard painted by one “Pennington”, advertising a Lovecraft rock-band concert in California. Could this be Bruce Pennington, doing ‘Lovecraft the writer’ (Dreamlands sunsets etc) via ‘Lovecraft the band’?

Update: No, sadly not Bruce.