Michael Alan Nelson

I wanted to like this more than I did. The art was difficult to like at first, but grew on me. The lettering was sterile, and added nothing to the book. The writing itself at times captured some of the horror that Lovecraft was so good at evoking, but too often lapsed into wooden dialogue spoken by two-dimensional characters.

From the point of view of a Lovecraft fan who has actually read Lovecraft (I get the impression that this is increasingly not the case), I found this incarnation of the mythos to be uninspired and at times naive. The idea that Abdul al-Hazred and Nyarlathotep are hanging out 24/7 at an inn in Arkham is unintentionally comic. The one thing the book does really well is the Dreamlands, which is wonderfully weird and surreal, thanks in no small part to the art.

In the end, I found Fall of Cthulhu Vol. 1 a sometimes engaging horror story that entirely misses the point of Lovecraftian horror. Instead of gently nudging us toward an understanding of the cosmic nature of mythos horror, Nelson clubs us over the head with it.… (mere)

Collection of stories about Dark Pharaoh weaving his intricate network of madness and corruption in order to call back the devastator Chtulhu.

Considering the medium this collection is more straight-forward horror in line with Alien, Omen or The Thing. It is very hard to visually present monsters as seen by Lovecraft's mind's eye. Lovecraft basically avoids visualization of any kind and aims at base feeling of fear and despair of his characters to insinuate the horrors seen through their eyes.

But with this said collection is not bad and story is pretty consistent across what seems to be like 20 issues collected in this omnibus. It was interesting to see some other deities of Lovercraft's universe and their internal conflicts and back-stabbing.

Then why 3 stars? One word - ART! Parts are drawn pretty good but almost half of it has such art style that it did not click with me. I like cartoon-ish drawings but parts in question push this cartoon-ishness to whole new, stocky and blocky level. Considering the story itself and attended audiences I would have expected more (this is comic after all, visual expression is everything).

But all in all, very interesting story. If you are fan of Lovecraft and horror comics and are not easily put off by highly-oscillating art quality give this book a try.… (mere)