Customer Reviews

Necronauts

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I managed to score a used copy of Necronauts recently. It is a 2003 publication from Rebellion in the UK. Author and artist are Gordon Rennie and Frazer Irving. The publication is a very handsome production, oversized compared to a modern graphic novel but about the standard length. It is only available as a collector's item and it took some digging for me to get one at a reasonable price.

Necronauts joins numerous other recent graphic novels using HPL as a character. Here is at least a partial list:
Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom - MacPherson
Lovecraft - Rodionoff
Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time - Clevinger
The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft - Carter
Young Lovecraft - Torres and Oliver

In 1926 Harry Houdini pracitces one of his near death experiences and travels to far into the abyss beyond the Dreamlands. He attracts the attentions on malignant entities, great old ones if you will, who attempt to track him back to reality to gain egress onto our plane. To assist in the fight to save humanity a somewhat disparate group joins him: HPL, Sir Arthur Conon Doyle (who loved mediums) and Charles Fort. The reanimated corpse army of these entities, the Tcho Tchos, threatens the group corporally (Charles Fort and Sir Doyle do this) while the entities themselves must be combatted in the spiritual plane at the edge of the Dreamlands (by HPL and Harry Houdini). HPL turns out to be something of a jerk but sort of makes up for it. HH's real cause of 'demise' is covered up and HPL has nightmare fueled inspiration for the rest of his career. Anyway, the story was pretty enjoyable for a graphic novel and I liked the stylized art.

Idle fans won't lose out by giving it a miss but serious fans of mythos and Lovecraftian comics will need to spend a bit of money to see this.