Dark Horse Comics has licensed another Gou Tanabe’s manga, this time the adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” No release date has been disclosed as of yet, but it is likely that it will be a single omnibus.
Yōkai expert Zack Davisson, a well-known figure among Japanese folklore researchers, will translate the story into English, while Steve Dutro (Vagabond) will serve as a typesetter.
Dark Horse Comics has already published two Tanabe’s Lovecraft manga adaptations, namely the two-volume “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Hound and Other Stories” (also an omnibus that includes “The Hound,” “The Temple,” and “The Nameless City”).
The Shadow over Innsmouth manga was published in Japan in Comic Bean between May 2020 and March 2021.
Who is Gou Tanabe?
Gou Tanabe is a Japanese mangaka famous for his manga adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft’s works. Many of his manga have been translated into multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, German, and French.
Some of his best-known Lovecraft manga adaptations, on top of the above-mentioned ones, include The Call of Cthulhu, The Haunter of the Dark, The Colour out of Space, and The Outsider.
The history of H.P Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth
“The Shadow over Innsmouth” by H.P. Lovecraft was first published in April 1936, five years after having been written. It is part of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and is the only author’s story that was published in a book form in his lifetime (the rest of them were published in various pulp magazines, notably in Weird Tales).
The plot follows 21-year-old student Robert Olmstead who is touring New England, eventually reaching the decrepit seaport of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Being isolated from nearby towns by salt marshes, Innsmouth hides terrifying secrets Olmstead is about to uncover, to his woe.
About H.P. Lovecraft
To this day, Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft remains a seminal horror fiction writer. Born in 1890, he was a prolific writer of horror and weird, greatly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. Widely known as the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, he is still inspiring generations of prospective writers.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927)
This premise is omnipresent in all Lovecraft’s works, most of which revolve around the concept of cosmicism (the premise that humans are an insignificant species that could be destroyed at any moment by deities of chaos).
The majority of his stories are set in a fictionalized version of New England. Some of Lovecraft’s best-known works include At the Mountains of Madness (1936), The Whisperer in Darkness (1931), The Thing on the Doorstep (1937), The Shadow Out of Time (1936), The Dunwich Horror (1929), The Call of Cthulhu (1928), and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941).