Review by Ian Keogh
Since childhood Randoplh Carter has dreamed when sleeping of meeting the gods. Unknown Kadath adapts the journey he eventually takes when dreaming as an adult.
While Carter has a specific destination in mind, author H.P. Lovecraft doesn’t, and Florentino Flórez follows that path, prioritising the journey, the people met and the experiences survived. While elements of dream logic persist, this adaptation is treated as if a trek through fantasy lands where anything is possible. Lovercraft’s original text, or the discarded version that survived, meanders, but the benefit of a graphic novel is the way an artist can reinforce the reality of the strange.
Jacques Saloman (sample art left) and Guillermo Sanna alternate on the art, their styles and strengths very different. Saloman concentrates on storytelling and has a looser approach, better suited to scenes of movement, while Sanna has the eye of an illustrator and is more concerned with the power of an image. Their actual drawing though is relatively similar in style, making the transition from one to the next, chapter by chapter not as awkward as that could be. Both prioritise gloomy colours for gloomy environments, and both convey the gruesome and sinister people Carter meets.
Being able to draw a good cat is also essential, as Carter is accompanied by a talking cat for most of his journey. Flórez is faithful to the original story, allowing the artists to develop the designs, but a nice original touch is each chapter opening with a single page showing the young Carter that pastiches Little Nemo in Slumberland. It’s a neat tying together of two works dealing with dreamlands.
Kadath is the home of the gods, a place no human has ever witnessed, so a pure aim for the persistent Carter despite all the horrors he witnesses along the way. Other graphic novel adaptations of this story exist, and generally take a more ethereal tone, whereas Flórez’s Carter isn’t far removed from an action hero, perhaps a more serious Indiana Jones. The interpretation works, though, for a fantasy/horror spectacle.
