“Shades of slithering, shapeless suppurating, pustular-eyed sloggoths!”  Captain Haddock would definitely have an expanded lexicon of oaths in this universe.  Certainly H.P. Lovecraft has never received this sort of visual treatment before, nor has Herge’s plucky hero ever faced such demonic adversaries as conjured up by artist Murray Groat in a series of four fanciful cover mash-ups that put Tintin in the midst of the unspeakable horrors created by Lovecraft.

 

Alas, given the highly protective nature of the guardians of Herge’s legacy, it is utterly improbable that Groat’s ingenious designs will even see the light of day as posters, and any hope of “clear line” graphic novel adaptations of the Lovecraftian canon is as fanciful as a deluxe mainstream edition of the exploits of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in Tijuana Bibles.

 

Still one can dream—and this is the stuff that dreams (and nightmares) are made of—there is a hard edge to much of the best surrealist art (Dali, de Chirico), which at least partially explains why Groat’s designs are so successful and so intriguing.