2 crampons out of 5

First off: ya gotta’ feel bad for Antony Johnston.  The guy’s written tons of comics based on Moore’s writing and yet he rarely gets billing.  (At the same time, he’s made a name for himself doing this, so maybe you don’t have to feel bad after all.)

The title of this collection is: 1. Accurate, 2. Misleading.

Avatar Comics put out a series called ‘Alan Moore’s Yuggoth Cultures’ that is collected here.  That series was a bunch of short work very loosely tied to a series of (I think) poems from Lovecraft that were part of his ‘Cthulhu Mythos’.  Moore conceived of several pieces inspired by the poems and began writing them but lost a good chunk in a cab.  Some survived published in other works, and some were re-created for the comic series by Mr. Johnston, basing the writing on Alan’s notes or whatever.  So it all mostly sprang from Moore’s brain, and thus we can allow the naming.  But what ho, that collection was only three issues… how can it possibly take up the majority of this hefty thirty dollar collection?  …It doesn’t.

Also contained herein: an interview with Moore about magic (mostly interesting) that appeared somewhere else, an essay on Lovecraft (mostly information you’ve probably surmised or read elsewhere), AND… Yuggoth Creatures, which is a whole bunch of 2-3 page blips based on Lovecrafty stuff written by, yup, Johnston, which is attemtedly tied into a larger framing narrative.  And then the script pages for these stories, which I guess have some important referential information for what details came from which Lovecraft story, but I always figure that if you’re into this stuff you probably already know.  This takes up a little more than half of the collection, making the claim on the back of the book that this is the complete collection of Moore’s short stories accurate… but misleading if you don’t browse the table of contents.

So what of the actual stories?

Well, ‘The Courtyard’ was initially planned as part of this cycle of stories but was rightfully expanded (…by Johnston) into a much better book.  The remaining stories are mostly a miss unless you love smooching Moore’s prose.  A couple of the funny bits harken back to 2000 AD gag strips, and those are the best.  Otherwise it’d of interest to fans (especially the interviews) but boring to a casual reader.  And Johnston’s mythos contributions are probably fun for Lovecraft psychos, but they go against what made H.P. so much fun by actually showing all the creepies, sort of cheapening the experience.  The 2-3 page stories should’ve been an easy read but ended up taking infinitely longer than Moore’s portion of the book to wade through.

Only completists need apply.

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