Review: H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror #4

“The Dunwich Horror” and “The Hound”

Lately, horror books are polarized.  They can be great like TheTheater or abysmal like Severed. H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror #4 contains two stories that parallel the currentstate of horror comics: one’s a blast and the other’s a turd.

“The Dunwich Horror” follows four spell casters who ventureout to contain the elder-god Yog-Sothoth. Yog’s a protean creature of darkness doing terrible things like munchingthe heads off bunnies.  JoeLansdale, the writer of this story and other great tales of the macabre,launches us right into the fight to get out the spell of containment.

The art effectively uses dark tones.  The light and shadowing works toperfection in this tale, especially when we have the candlelights mixed withflashlight beams out in the countryside under a starry night. 

There’s ample gore to please, and thedepiction of Yog-Sothoth works as well as the South Park depiction of Cthulhu. 

The spell casting doesn’t go well for the four. I won’t say anymore because I don’t want to spoil the story. If you are a fan of Ash from The Evil Dead series, you will get a kick out of this story.

Lovecraft would be proud of this one.

“The Hound” pissed me off.  The art is great—dark and moody.  Motion blur and watercolor type textures make for a grippingvisual style.

The type, though, is illegible against the background.  I gave up trying to read because of thethin white cursive on the black background makes the words indistinguishable.  A shame.

Score: “The Dunwich Horror” 5/5; “The Hound” 2/5

“The Dunwich Horror”

Writer: Joe R. Lansdale

Artist: Peter Bergting

Letterer: Chris Mowry

“The Hound”

Script: Robert Weinberg

Artist: menton3

Letterer: menton3

IDW Comics

$3.99

Release Date: 1/11/12

Comments

[Dustin Cabeal]

Hmm, half of this book sounds interesting. I suggest people buy it and cut it in half.