Seeing Lovecraft in a New Light: The Ultimate Art Book

Every once in awhile you receive a book that displays true evidence of genius. This month that book is A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft from Millipede Press. The vision of Millipede Press founder Jerad Walters, it features over 400 pages of art either influenced by the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft or directly commissioned over the years for various editions of the iconic writer's work. With several full-color fold-out pages, essays by Harlan Ellison, Stuart Gordon, and Thomas Ligotti, among others, and a clear mission to provide variety (the art styles vary from pulp to pop to avant garde), this is the kind of tome that people leave as an heirloom to their children.

Millipede Press's mission is to bring "the finest in horror and crime fiction back into print. Our books are printed on acid-free, recycled paper, and are all, hardcover and trade paperback alike, sewn rather than glued. Millipede Press books are known for high quality printing, binding and interior design. They are painstakingly proofread."

I asked Walters how long it took to bring this amazing project to completion--his answer displaying a refreshingly fanatical approach to the details. "It took about two years. The hardest part was simply contacting all of the involved artists and narrowing down the range of material. It was physically demanding, too, in that hours and hours were spent color correcting all of the scans. Many images took upwards to 20 hours to get just right."

As for his own favorites in the book, Walters told me he likes it all, but "perhaps the Lee Brown Coye section and some of the fold-outs. The thumbnails section is useful. With any project of this size, of course there are going to be small details that you wish you could change. However, I feel very fortunate in that everything I wanted to be in the book is in the book, and everything I wanted to do has been done. I do miss the presence of Wayne Douglas Barlowe, whose Old One would have been a good inclusion. However, I feel very privileged to have made a book that includes at least one work of every major fantasy and horror artist of the last 50 years. Wrightson, Frazetta, Whelan, Giger, Morris, Potter, Fabian, Coye, Rowena, Palencar, Eggleton, Bok, Finlay, Ian Miller, Tim Kirk--they are all in here."

Millipede Press has several other books scheduled for the next year or so, and I'll keep Amazon readers in the loop as they come out.