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A review by magnetgrrl
The House on the Borderland by Richard Corben, Simon Revelstroke
2.0
It doesn't surprise me that Alan Moore did the intro for this.
As an adaptation of a "Lovecraftian" (technically this predates Lovecraft by about a decade, at least) work, it hits the usual sweet spot of taking something in the cosmic horror realm and "updating" it so that it has action and isn't just some guy describing all his worst fears, dreams, and terrors in descriptive but largely allegorical prose, journal style. But, as something in the realm of the same way Alan Moore does this - and he does this a lot - it's added a bunch of brute violence, lengthy battle scenes, incest and other weird sex stuff, and a whole bunch of crap that's just not in the original at all.
I want to say that, if you have no patience for or don't care to find and read the original, this is a fine substitute but... it's really not. It's a well-illustrated re-interpretation, but think of this more like the 2005 reboot of The Fog than the original Carpenter The Fog, if you will. It adds some stuff, and updates some things, sure, but is it GOOD in any way? Would it have stood on its own, without the reference to the original yet being so different? Eh.... debatable.
Actually, this analogy is probably debatable and I could have come up with a better one with a different movie but... I'm leaving it where it is.
As an adaptation of a "Lovecraftian" (technically this predates Lovecraft by about a decade, at least) work, it hits the usual sweet spot of taking something in the cosmic horror realm and "updating" it so that it has action and isn't just some guy describing all his worst fears, dreams, and terrors in descriptive but largely allegorical prose, journal style. But, as something in the realm of the same way Alan Moore does this - and he does this a lot - it's added a bunch of brute violence, lengthy battle scenes, incest and other weird sex stuff, and a whole bunch of crap that's just not in the original at all.
I want to say that, if you have no patience for or don't care to find and read the original, this is a fine substitute but... it's really not. It's a well-illustrated re-interpretation, but think of this more like the 2005 reboot of The Fog than the original Carpenter The Fog, if you will. It adds some stuff, and updates some things, sure, but is it GOOD in any way? Would it have stood on its own, without the reference to the original yet being so different? Eh.... debatable.
Actually, this analogy is probably debatable and I could have come up with a better one with a different movie but... I'm leaving it where it is.