Poe and Phillips

Reader Reviews
So, okay, I like Edgar Allan Poe's work & love HP Lovecraft's work. I had really hoped that mashing up these two heavyweights of the macabre would be a Lovecraftian, Poetic epic. I mean what could be better than Lovecraft and Poe, err Poe & Lovecraft, err Poe & Phillips {??} teaming up? Sadly, I was a bit disappointed that my high hopes were dashed upon a a rocky and forlorn shore. Actually, nothing was dashed upon rocky or forlorn shore. That might have been an interesting change of pace... My point is simply that I didn't feel like either the characterization of Poe or LOVECRAFT was particularly true to their actual characters or the character of their fictive, poetic and purple prose. They were portrayed a little bit more as bumbling idiots who just happened to often get lucky in surviving and defeating their enemies. For instance, we see all of a single cosmic horror (giant eyeball in the middle of its "face" and plenty of tentacles; pretty standard variant on a Beholder or tentacled blob, so no points for originality). And it's easily dispatched by someone jabbing a magic staff in its eye. Problem solved. Really? This is the best we can do? It seems like most of their adventures just get somehow resolved with little agency on the part of Edgar and Howard. They just happened to be there. They almost seemed like 'minor characters' rather than the protagonists. Were they even necessary to the story other than to have their names in the title? Also, I couldn't help but trip over the many typographical errors apparently not caught by the editor. We are not impressed. Apostrophes missing from possessives, 'as' instead of 'has,' sentence fragments that are incomplete thoughts and other such things. Seemed I couldn't got but a couple pages without something just jumping out at me and taking me out of the story. Poe and Lovecraft were both literary critics to one degree or another. Neither would likely have put up with such sloppiness... But, the art was pretty good. Well, except on the page that I have to assume was misprinted squished into about 7/8 of the page, leaving about a 1" white margin and making all the actual images look 'wrong.' Not non-Euclidean, just wrong. (Squished.) And there was the 3-panel Poe nightmare sequence that was completely 'filler' not an iota related to the rest of the story. Could they not have bothered to make some kind of Lovecraftian 'dream cycle'-esque nightmare that would tie things back to Poe & Philli-- LOVECRAFT! (Seriously, that's another nit-picky gripe; why is it Poe & Phillips rather than Poe & Lovecraft or Lovecraft & Poe? It's Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft. It should either be Edgar Poe & Howard Lovecraft or Edgar Allan & Howard Phillips, not the mixed & matched Edgar Poe & Howard Phillips, as Edgar introduces them to a bookshop owner in the story...) Again, I'm probably just wa-aay too nit-picky for my own good. If there were only a couple mistakes, maybe I could forgive it. But it just seemed like everywhere I turned there was something else jumping out at me that just said 'all wrong.' So, yeah, I wanted to like it. 'Cause good mashups can be a thing of beauty. I haven't yet seen Necronauts, but look forward to the upcoming re-release as part of an anthology of several weird graphic novels. Which teams up Lovecraft, Conan Doyle, Houdini, and a few others. I hope it's a bit better characterized than this one is. Who knows, maybe they'll make a sequel and it'll be better? More Poe-esque and Lovecraft-esque characterization. In Lovecraft's case a bit of esoteric language and purple prose wouldn't hurt things. In Poe's case, a bit more morbidity, depression, general gloomy outlook or what have you? Just need to feel like the authors actually 'get' the characters and the actual authors' history, writing style, etc. Again, I did like the artwork, even if the plot / characterization were a bit thin. Didn't hate it, but wouldn't feel right giving a glowing review either. Somewhere int he middle. I'd like to see more. I think the premise is a fun one. But more needs to be done with it in terms of style, prose, characterization and getting back into the topics covered by Lovecraft & Poe... So, I look forward to future installments, if they remedy the shortcomings. If not, well, I guess we'll see how it fares?


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