Promoting Coulthart

Seeing as I mangled John Coulthart’s name a couple of posts back, the least I can do is promote his collection The Haunter of the Dark and Other Grotesque Visions. I picked it up in Barnes and Noble one day to check for Mythos references, and I simply had to buy it.

Inside you’ll find complete adaptations of Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Haunter of the Dark.” Especially impressive is his version of Cthulhu – in comparison with the tame representations of the Lord of R’lyeh you normally get, Coulthart turns him into something primal, non-anthropomorphic, and genuinely scary. Along with this appear a few plates from an unfinished “Dunwich Horror” adaptation and the Lord Horror series.

Coulthart also includes a set of pieces – including the Fate cover – that accompany an occult pathworking written by Alan Moore. Moore is perhaps one of the coolest people alive; who’d expect the creative genius behind League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta to be writing strange pieces of Lovecraftian gematria? Plus, he’s revived an ancient Roman cult centered around a hand puppet, which means I get to talk about hand puppet cults on my blog. Kudos!

So, all around, it’s a great book, and I recommend it highly.