I picked this up alongside At the Mountains of Madness parts 1 and 2 at Comic Con recently. I hadn’t looked twice at this adaptation but ran into the translator and got to pick these up, signed. Totally worth it. While Michael Beringer’s adaptation is probably my favorite visual Lovecraft adaptation due to the style, the art in these manga is detailed, imaginative, and horrifying.
The Shadow over Innsmouth details a young man out on his travels after coming of age (because apparently in spite of Millennials being blamed for inventing gap years, this is another thing people just did back when society was structured to support it) who wants to see architecture and peoples before starting his studies. This gives us a little insight into Lovecraft’s strained relationship with sexuality, given that this is what he imagines an 18-20 something kid is doing on his gap year. Either way, the young man hears tales of Innsmouth, a town not marked on any map where the people are strange and isolationist, and where people occasionally go missing. You can see where this is going.
Sure enough, he arrives in Innsmouth and finds people cursed with the “Innsmouth look,” basically “what if a person was a little froggy and a little fishy,” and is immediately warned by someone who works but doesn’t live in the town of place to avoid. On top of that, just about every building is abandoned, the people are xenophobic, and the local church has been usurped by the “Esoteric Order of Dagon.” Again, if you’ve read any Lovecraft, you can see where this is going.
Also if you’ve read any Lovecraft you will understand why I go out of my way to point out this is probably the least racist Lovecraft work, as terrible a metric as that is. There are no references to archaic euphemisms for black skin like “Moorishness” or whatever, no blaming voodoo shores of Africa for the Cthulhu cult, and thank god he didn’t name any cats. It’s not all roses however, as he does initially blame the change in Innsmouth for someone nebulously “coupling with a foreigner,” and the overall xenophobic tones of the story come through for sure.
What sets this book apart is of course the art. Visual adaptations of Lovecraft are the best way to experience his work, for first time readers or otherwise. It introduces brevity, the exhaustive description gets adapted into something more accessible, and while you don’t get the full experience of the unknowable, squamous (great word) nastiness, you always get an excellent interpretation of the work. In this adaptation in particular the dialogue is turned into excellent exchanges and the action of the scenes comes through in a more traditional, less ponderous version than the original.
Other than that, there’s not a lot I can or should do to describe something that excels in a visual medium. Excellent, and definitely recommend if you like Lovecraft and are looking for a story of his where the reading doesn’t require a compromise of stances against racism.