H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time

Professor Nathaniel Peaslee had it all.  A respected teaching position at Miskatonic University, a happy marriage with children, until a fateful Thursday in 1908 when he had a seizure and became… someone else.  It wasn’t until 1913 when he became himself again and started to reckon with the time that he had lost, as well as what the intelligence that had inhabited his body had got up to in the meantime.  Why had he been possessed and for what reason did it occur?  Professor Peaslee is determined to find out, no matter where it takes him or what truths are revealed.

“The Shadow Out of Time” is the latest manga adaptation of a Lovecraft story from mangaka Gou Tanabe who has already done several that have been published by Dark Horse.  This includes “The Colour Out of Space” which turned out to be a lesser adaptation given how little was going on in that particular story and how familiar its elements turned out to be.  Which meant that I was a little worried that diminishing returns would start to kick in here and that the best of the mangaka’s output had already been published.

Fortunately this is one of Tanabe’s better Lovecraft adaptations and makes for an easy recommendation to anyone who has enjoyed how he’s translated the author’s works into sequential art to this point.  You know what you’ll be getting here:  Some very detailed art which manages to convey the general creepiness of the story along with its general plot.  This winds up being one of Lovecraft’s more involving stories and a worthwhile purchase for casual fans like me who’ve been enjoying these things.  Yeah, it leaves me with this nagging feeling that I’m probably missing out by not reading the original story and taking in the additional detail that it offers, but that’s more of a “me” problem than anything else.