The Shadow Out of Time TPPublisher: SelfMadeHero (Abrams)
Release Date: November 2013
Price: $19.95
Creators: Original story by H. P. Lovecraft, adapted and illustrated by I. N. J. Culbard
Format: 120 pgs., Full-Color, 9.5" x 6.5", Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-9068-3868-3
Age Rating: N/A
ICv2 Rating: 4 Stars out of 5
Culbard is making a career out of doing period-piece mystery and horror, and it's because he's so good at it. Having illustrated The New Deadwardians and various Sherlock Holmes stories, he has now produced his third Lovecraft piece.
What he handles well in this story is the horror of the imagined. Lovecraft didn't write stories of gory vampires or serial killers. He wrote tales of the things that lurk in the corners of your nightmares, waiting to pounce while you're distracted by more obvious horrors. Culbard captures that mood well in this piece, which is about unknown civilizations, minds traveling through time and a host of other things that would be difficult for the average artist to portray.
If Culbard has a weakness, it is people and their faces. In this book it felt like I had seen the same faces in one or more of his other works. Oddly, his alien architecture and beings were more distinctive. His designs are so powerful that even the absence of an object from one panel to the next conveys meaning.
This would be a good graphic novel to show to readers of subtle literary horror, to show them how a graphic novel can convey the same type of tale. The book's appeal will be primarily for adults, although some older teens will enjoy it.
--Nick Smith: Library Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.