Gou Tanabe's Visions of Lovecraft, Part 1
Gou Tanabe's lavish manga adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft are among the finest in any medium. This four-part piece will explore how Tanabe visualizes some of Lovecraft's most eldritch imagery before examining certain narrative and thematic elements that are lost in translation.
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| Tanabe, H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth |
In a 2019 press conference, Junji Ito—the reigning king of horror manga—was asked if he was interested in reimagining any other classic works after winning an Eisner Award for his adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. His response began as many fans hoped it would before taking an unexpected turn:
I love H.P. Lovecraft and really admire him. It would be great to adapt him as a serialized manga, but I actually saw Gou Tanabe create a great adaption of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. Afterwards, I ended up not doing it because I thought I wouldn't be as good as Gou's version.
Fans had long suspected that Lovecraft was a major influence on Ito, so it seemed inevitable that Ito would eventually adapt his work. However, no one foresaw Ito deferring to another artist, one who had both beaten him to the punch and humbled him in the process.
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This seemed like startlingly high praise for a mangaka whose name had only recently become known in the West, but as it turned out, Tanabe started making waves as soon as his work reached the English speaking world. He made his Dark Horse debut in 2017 with the Lovecraft-focused collection The Hound and Other Stories, a sleeper hit that earned an Eisner Award nomination for "Best Adaptation from Another Medium". Then, two years later (and only a few months before Ito's aforementioned remarks), Tanabe's ambitious adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness was met not only with rave reviews—one reviewer described it as "so spot-on, it makes every other attempt to draw Lovecraft (of which there have been no shortage over the years) seem ill-advised"—but also another nomination for "Best Adaptation". This latest Eisner nod was particularly ironic, as At the Mountains of Madness eventually lost to none other than Junji Ito's Frankenstein.
In this four-part piece, I will be examining several ways in which Gou Tanabe adapts H.P. Lovecraft's stories into the comics medium, some more successful than others. Tanabe's meticulously detailed artwork hews as closely to the original descriptions as is possible in black-and-white manga, giving shape to Lovecraft's most notoriously surreal creations and demonstrating why his name is still synonymous with cosmic horror to this day. The mangaka occasionally takes a more liberal approach with narrative structure and tone, though, resulting in some themes becoming lost in translation. Nonetheless, these Lovecraft adaptations are among the finest ever published, and these minor oversights hardly affect the visceral impact of Tanabe's art.
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Some quick notes as we wrap up this introduction. First, this entry marks the resurrection of my long-dead Works Cited series, which apparently began—and ended—with my analysis of the Player's speech in Hamlet. For those unfamiliar with the series (can I even call it that?) or that Hamlet piece (it honestly was a bit too long for its own good), the goal of Works Cited was to examine the use of allusion in major works of art, which was an admirable but narrow focus considering what I want to write about these days. As such, I will be broadening the scope to include adaptations of works into other media, such as comics, music, video games, film, and more. I already have a few ideas for where to take this series in the future, which is always a good sign.
Another item worth mentioning is the availability of Gou Tanabe's work in English. Of the books discussed in this piece, The Hound and Other Stories, At the Mountains of Madness, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth are currently the only ones officially translated into English. The other featured works—The Haunter of the Dark, The Call of Cthulhu, and The Colour Out of Space—are only available in Japanese and French, and as a result, I will be referencing unofficial English scanlations for now. I will also refrain from linking directly to those, since they occupy a legal space slightly darker than a mere grey area. With that said, I will be providing a list of cited works at the end of each part. Speaking of which:
Works Cited
Chik, Kalai. "Interview: Horror Manga Mastermind Junji Ito". Anime News Network. 17 Sept. 2019. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2019-09-17/horror-manga-mastermind-junji-ito/.151216. Accessed 26 Dec. 2023.
"DARK HORSE COMICS 2018 EISNER NOMINEES ANNOUNCED!". Dark Horse Blog. 27 April 2018. https://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/2708/dark-horse-comics-2018-eisner-nominees-announced. Accessed 19 January 2024.
"DARK HORSE RECEIVES 13 EISNER AWARD NOMINATIONS". Dark Horse Blog. 4 June 2020. https://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/3176/dark-horse-receives-13-eisner-award-nominations. Accessed 19 January 2024.
Lehoczky, Etelka. "'At The Mountains Of Madness,' Spheroid Space Monsters Are Just Like Us". NPR, 5 Dec. 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/05/784829291/at-the-mountains-of-madness-spheroid-space-monsters-are-just-like-us. Accessed 7 Jan. 2024.
Tanabe, Gou. H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Dark Horse, 2019.
Tanabe, Gou. H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Dark Horse, 2023.