Review by Frank Plowright

A Call to Chthulu is Norm Konyu’s love letter to H.P. Lovecraft, even though at first it appears to be exactly the opposite, with a narrator slamming his creations.

Lovecraft wrote of terrifying creatures, Elder Gods, in far off secret lands, luring the unwary and messing with their minds over a series of novels cementing his reputation as a master of horror. Many have been adapted as graphic novels (see recommendations) and Konyu stitches them together via a rhyming poem. Chthulu is the big daddy of them all, and the sardonic nature is apparent from the start as the message is delivered by a call to Chthulu’s cellphone.

It’s a slim hardcover project straddling the borderline of what comics are. Some pages are definitively comics, but they’re combined with pages of text and illustration more reminiscent of children’s books. The story is told via spreads, each moving to another location or creature from Lovecraft’s canon, with an index in the back identifying them all and noting where they originated.

The art is stunning and creative, reflecting the different environments and with particular regard to colour. Lovecraft’s atmospheric descriptions are of gloomy worlds populated by the obsessed seeking the unimaginable, yet Konyu’s imagination in illustrating them transcends the darkness. Every single spread is something you’d happily have on your wall.

The rhymes are clever, not least for managing to incorporate Lovecraft’s awkward names, but overall the entire effect is impressive and funny, but slight. Konyu also acknowledges Lovecraft’s distressing personal views, which have become a greater issue of late, but is able to separate creator and creations.