H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (rank 2.5)

Publisher: Dark Horse
Volumes: 2/2 Omnibuses (Complete)
Seinen
Genre: Historical Fiction, Horror, Surreal Horror, Scifi

Summary: Following the footsteps of the famous early Antarctic explorers, a group of explorers and scientists from the Miskatonic University set out an expedition to explore and discover more of the unknown Antarctic continent. The story starts with the second half of the group catching up to the advance team that had reported some extraordinary findings, and then went silent. Fearing the worst, they set out to regroup with the other team, only to find them murdered in a grisly fashion. Then the story goes into flashback and recounts what had happened up to that point.

Afterwards, they go looking for the sole possible survivor only to find a horror beyond imagination. 

Review: So for those who aren’t familiar with this story, this is H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous story that establishes the Old Ones, Cthulhu, and the Shoggoths. This is done in a western art style, although it still reads right to left. The art style works well with the story IMO, although I know some won’t care for it.

Honestly, I had mixed feelings about it as adapted into a comic. The first half of the story felt somewhat bogged down with text heavy exposition and reads like very dry historical fiction. Although halfway through volume 1, it did start to get slightly more interesting as they discovered the first remains of the ancient life forms. Then in volume 2, it quickly turns into a story recounting the ancient epic of a great civilization well before the existence of humans. This IMO, is where the artwork really shines as the mangaka envisions some gorgeously surreal and aquatically inspired out-of-this-world alien life forms, and was easily the best part of the story.

On one hand this story just isn’t as accessible as the Hound and Other Stories and this type of horror- called “cosmic horror” is quite different from a lot of more typical horror stories. On the other hand, if anyone is interested in reading H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous story, I think this adaptation is more accessible and easier to read than the original text, as the adaptation added some more emotions for the scientists instead of just being a straight up retelling of what they found, plus there are the gorgeous illustrations.

Recommended: TLDR; Definitely recommended for H.P. Lovecraft fans, as the impressive illustrations are gorgeously detailed and creative additions to the Lovecraft lore. This graphic novel also works well as an introduction to the most famous H.P. Lovecraft story. But those looking for something more casually accessible and easy to read would probably be better off checking out the Hound and Other Stories.

Age Rating: Older Teen: for some graphic gore and very detailed monsters

H.P. Lovecraft’s the Hound and Other Stories (rank 3)

Publisher: Dark Horse
Volumes: 1/1 (Complete), In Print
Seinen
Genre: Horror

Summary: This manga of adapted short stories from H.P. Lovecraft contains 3 short stories:

The Temple: The steadfast commander of a German submarine refuses to abandon his mission, while the ship’s crew start to act strangely, asking for the return of an artifact back to the ocean.

The Hound: Two wealthy young men, bored of ordinary pursuits, become interested in the thrill of grave robbing. One night, seeking a greater thrill, they decide to rob a grave of a corpse said to be protected by a Great Beast...

The Nameless City: An explorer discovers a nameless city, the ruins of an ancient race from a time before humans.

Review: As a general rule of thumb, a lot of manga adaptations of classic literature have been fairly underwhelming. But these adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s works are unusually exceptionally good. They convey the spirit and atmosphere of tense, creeping dread and otherworldly wonder of the original horror stories in a very accessible and faithful way. The art style is also very western, and doesn’t look like most manga, but it really fits well with the stories here.

Recommended: Of course this is probably of most interest to H.P. Lovecraft fans, but as a general horror comic it works very well too. That being said, H.P. Lovecraft is one of those classic writers who had so much influence on the genre that his stuff might seem passé to modern horror readers because of how much his style became a classic horror trope.

Age Rating: Older Teen: This kind of horror focuses more on atmosphere than straight up gore.

Related Works: H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountain of Madness

I Am A Hero (rank 2)

Publisher: Dark Horse
Volumes 1-11 (2in1 Omnibus Format) (Complete). Going OOP, getting hard to find
Seinen
Genre: Zombies, Survival Horror, Sci-fi

Summary: Hideo Suzuki is a 35 year old manga artist’s assistant and he’s struggling in life. His name is spelled with the kanji characters for Hero but he’s anything but. His last manga serial was cancelled and he needs to come up with a new pitch to his editor. Meanwhile his girlfriend keeps talking about her ex, whose series has been much more popular. The stress is really getting to him, and then meanwhile, the Zombie Apocalypse breaks out! Before the Apocalypse he was regarded as a loser by some, but he has one big advantage almost no one else in Japan has- a real shotgun! Is now his chance to finally become a hero?

This series won the 58th Shogakukan Manga Award in the General category in 2013.

Review: This series is pretty long, so I will be breaking up the review into parts again. I would say there are at least 4 major story arcs, but depending how you count them there could be more like 7.

Major Arcs:
Volume 1: Introduction Arc: Introducing Hideo and his life before the Apocalypse.
Volume 2-7ish: Early Zombie Survival Arc
Volume 8-13: Mature Zombie Survival Arc and introducing other surviving groups
Volume 14-22 The Zombie Virus Evolution Arc

First Arc: This Arc is a bit controversial, a lot of readers felt like the introduction went on too long and didn’t find his before Apocalypse life very interesting. Personally I can see that, but also it was interesting to see what his regular life was, and also shows a lot of his personality of what Hideo is like when he doesn’t have anyone to ground him to reality. Also, from the other reviews, I thought his hallucinations would play a bigger role in the story, but they do not.

Second Arc: So the Zombie Apocalypse breaks out. I found it a mix of scary and frustrating. The frustrating part is that in the beginning, both the regular public and also Hideo kind of refuse to take the Apocalypse seriously. Aside from a few smarter individuals, people are literally talking to Zombies like they’re just sick or crazy, and people keep calling the police even though they were basically the first to get infected. Meanwhile Hideo keeps insisting on following the law and the rules when it makes no sense to do so. But this is also presented as his main character flaw.

Third Arc: Thanks to guidance from others, Hideo finally becomes a badass Zombie killer. Meanwhile the story shifts several times to other groups, some in Japan, some in other countries, where the Zombie Apocalypse has also broken out. Some readers hated this and felt the side stories detracted from the main story-line, like filler. I would argue it’s not filler since it tells us what was happening in the rest of the world, and I thought they were interesting, but feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Fourth Arc: This part of the story shifts to showing us that the Zombie Virus wasn’t just a random mutation of an existing disease, but is actually a thing that was done purposefully towards some unknown end(s). Unfortunately this Arc ends abruptly.

So all in all, I Am A Hero is an impressively epic Zombie Apocalypse manga, but has one major issue: the series ends suddenly. It ended so suddenly, when I was reading other reviews of this manga, the most common question was: was the series cancelled? Basically the series wasn’t cancelled, but the mangaka’s Father died near the end of the story, and he wrapped up the series quickly and took a break for a while. Unfortunately this leaves us without the final volume or two that the story seemed to be building towards.

Even with an unfinished story, I don’t regret reading it, but I would definitely tell any potential readers about the rushed ending, because it leaves so many unanswered questions. We can only speculate about what the mangaka had in mind. He has tried to restart I Am A Hero a few times in new side stories, none of which are very good (except 8 Tales of the ZQN which has a short story by Junji Ito in it). But I truly hope that one day we get a proper sequel, ending or explanation one day.

I feel like I should also mention, there is actually another main character, Hiromi, a high school girl, who also has Hiro/Hero in her name. She has a major arc in the story but then it ends without ever finding out what happened to her and why.

Recommended: If you don’t mind an ending you can only speculate about, and an ending that only gives closure for like half of the characters, then this was still an excellent read.
But If you want a complete story with a strong ending, you will be very disappointed.

Age Rating: R: mostly for quite a lot of Zombies and related very graphic gore. Also some off-screen rape of one of the characters and some onscreen consensual sex.

OOP Note: This series is going Out of Print and is unlikely to be reprinted, at least for the near future. So pick it up while you can. I think it's still available in ebook though.